Every few years the world of the supporters of Intelligent Design becomes ecstatic when the founding father of their thought liberating movement – Dr. Michael Behe – publishes a new book against Darwinism…Due to that, apparently some churches’ records show an increased mass attendance, confessions, donations…etc. It is almost as if one the apostles of Jesus Christ wrote another book of the Bible even though Behe clams his publications are not religious but rather scientific…
But not everyone is celebrating… Does this mean the end of evolution?
The Intelligent Design movement has many powerful enemies who not only represent the opposite to ID, or atheistic (materialism), views of life origins. Some even claim to support intelligent design…of sort, as long as that design also includes evolution…Confused? Wait until the debate gets heated… 😉
So, what’s this book kerfuffle all about, one might ask?
Well, in short: some of most profound world views are colliding…again… as Behe and many of his comrades at the Discovery Institute also had published many books and papers in the past.
The Three Musketeers of neo-Darwinism, or some sort of theistic evolutionary theory, involved in the upcoming debate are represented by:
Dr. Richard Lenski – an experimental scientist who claims to have achieved an equivalency of millions of years of human evolution by growing bacteria in the lab for the last 25 years…
Dr. Nathan Lents – Professor of Biology, John Jay College; Admin, The Human Evolution Blog; Blogger, Psychology Today; Author of “Not So Different” and “Human Errors.”
Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass, MD PhD, a professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, the confessing scientists and a Christian, who some believe became “the devil’s advocate” in order to defeat the enemy of true science (in this case represented by neo-Darwinism or evolution) the intelligent design movement and its founding father Michael Behe…
Today, February 7th at 2 pm, of unknown time zone, “the circus” (as Swamidass described it) of the differing worldviews will have begun; the three musketeers against the lone ranger, Dr. Michael Behe, PhD- Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
What’s at stake? Some might agree that everything…
The subject of the first stage of “the circus” and the major speck in the eyes of the three musketeers representing evolution is the book by Michal Behe:
Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution
This article criticizing Behe’s book and the discussion blog will appear at Science Magazine:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/590
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2019/02/07/darwin-devolves/
It should be entertaining 😉 I hope to be a small part of it… Some of my colleagues promised to join in as well…
Let the hunger games of Evolution vs ID begin!!! 😉
Will TSZ transition from being the anti-UD site to being the anti-PS site? LoL.
I don’t see these authors claiming that gods are involved in evolutionary processes in their criticism about Behe’s newly published piece of shit.
What’s UD?
How does one believe in guided evolution then? UFO did it?
BTW: Keep your frustrations to yourself or I’m going to have our unbiased admins ban you! 😉
Someone just alerted me that the main article is paywalled…
I didn’t notice this…anybody having the same problem?
Behe responded to the Muskeeters’s attack,..
The Muskaterees have nothing to offer…
What a bloody joke!
If I were Swamidass, whose dream is to become and a successful scientist, I would seprarte mysef from the two underachievers like Lenski and Lents…
First of all, the antiblotic resistence is such a joke… If it existed in lifesystems before the antibiotics were developed, what a waste of his 25 years in the lab would be…
Lents has not done his homework and has no clue about quantu mechanics in regards to the function of human eye being optimal…
How are these people even criticising Behe’s book? The Sceince Magazine has no more qualified scientists?
Mike Behe, You can rest assured.. lol
Darwin’s boys are in full throttle of excuses at PS…
I have a feeling that their experimental evidence will not be quoted?
It jus hit me! Lenski is the only one that has gone to the lab be he must know the anti-biotic resistance is bs…
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/darwin-devolves-the-end-of-evolution/4270/19
I didn’t find the authors claiming anything about guided evolution either. Maybe you should learn to read. BTW, the second link has the whole thing, not paywalled.
What frustrations? Your inability to read for comprehension doesn’t frustrate me.
Ban me for what? For evidencing that you didn’t read what those guys wrote, since you were mistaken enough to imagine that they were claiming that gods direct evolution in a comment in Science Magazine? That’s an offence around here? I didn’t know that.
What a surprise! Neither you nor Behe can read. Behe claims that the authors didn’t answer his main argument, then Behe writes what the main argument is supposed to be. Lo and behold, the authors of the Science comment attack that piece of bullshit head on.
Is this really the best creationism, in its ID incantation, can offer? Argumentum ad illiteratium?
Sure, because it must be so bad to have well funded research programs in top universities and being invited everywhere to talk about those interesting results.
Some of the genes involved in antibiotic resistance existed before the use of antibiotics, some evolved after the heavy use of antibiotics, and some have evolved to attack newly developed, artificial antibiotics. But suppose all of the genes were ancient. Should we stop studying antibiotic resistance and how it spreads across bacterial pathogens just because they’re old? Is it a waste of time to try and figure out how they spread and then try and figure out a solution just because they’re old? What a twisted way of thinking you have J-Mac. If that can be called thinking at all.
I didn’t know that everybody had to know each and every detail about the capabilities of the human eye. Interesting perspective.
Behe’s book is about quantum mechanics and the human eye? Who knew?
Well, since Mike said that his argument is about degrading mutations, and did not mention quantum mechanics and the human eye, I guess he made a huge mistake, and cannot rest assured on that basis. However, what saves Mike is his inability to read. The quantum mechanics of his eye cannot compensate for his problems reading for comprehension. So much efficiency gone to waste.
😩
Behe has been putting on the big red nose and size 46EEEEEE shoes every time he opens his mouth for some time now. My personal opinion is Behe realized some time ago how useless the ID movement is scientifically and has decided to milk the IDiot rank and file for as much cash as he can. Hence yet another science-free book pandering to the IDiot mouth-breathers.
j=mac. i don’t see any accurate summery of the times we live in regarding these issues. if folks are readsing this years from now for school projects on the demise/victory of evolutionism/God denyingism it will not be from this thread.
Sorry J=mac. Keep to what you know1
Fortunately, we can always rely on Byers to keep us focused on the fact that evolution, especially the wildly inaccurate characterizations of evolution, is a refutation of a religious doctrine, irrespective of any scientific merit.
Young Earth Creationism, of course, is resoundingly refuted by science across the board, from astronomy to geology to physics to botany and zoology. But these refutations don’t come under such determined attacks because, unlike biology, they do not attack the Believer personally.
Byers may not understand population genetics, selection, drift, or any of biology’s underlying detail, but he does know he ain’t descended from no monkey, a level of discourse he sees no reason to elevate.
From the OP:
Fluctuations in church attendance are normal. Whatever happens, one can find some churches that have increased attendance right after it. The Patriots won the Super Bowl too — maybe that was the cause of “some churches” showing increased attendance.
Who are these churches, and where is there the slightest evidence that the increased attendance was due to the appearance of Michael Behe’s book?
Unevidenced speculations aside, I’d be happy to see an increase in church attendance myself. We have a number of fine old buildings in our area with long-standing cultural significance that are sadly mothballed for lack of congregation. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m going to start attending myself, or promote nonsense just in order to get bums on seats.
I have seen evidence of an increase in church attendance.
When the Discovery Institute’s road show, starring Michael Behe, came to Oklahoma City, the performance was in a church sanctuary. The church saw an increase in attendance, though not an increase in attendance of its Sunday services. It received payment for the use of its facilities. Perhaps, to preserve its tax-exempt status, the church classified the payment as a donation.
The choice of venue was a fantastic way to underscore the message that ID is not religion.
That is an interesting read, as Behe states what he calls the “Overwhelmingly Important Point”:
First thought in my mind:
Why the hell do organisms possess genes that decrease reproductive output? That’s not a very helpful feature, dear Designer. Perhaps Behe elaborates a bit in his book, or considers interactions with the environment, but it seems a strange concept from an ID viewpoint. Any pro-IDer here with views on that?
By the way, I assume that all TSZers that in the past rejected the ability of natural selection to increase the frequency of beneficial alleles will also reject Behe’s argument, since it explicitly relies on NS doing its job*.
Right?
ETA: * AND the existence of beneficial mutations AND the existence of fitness variation.
Corneel,
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Have you been missing out on on BruceS’s comments on causation in biology? Do you realize you are doing philosophy, not biology?
Natural Selection doesn’t do anything. It’s a filler term for our ignorance of what really happened. Now, while I agree that ignorance can cause many things, evolution is not one of them.
What caused those particular alleles to increase in frequency.
Natural Selection (hand-waving furiously). It boils down to stuff happens.
Why woudn’t they?
The Designer is a woman. You think women want to go through child birth more often?
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2019/02/07/darwin-devolves/
Mung,
Therefore (handwaving furiously) stuff happens by Design?
Is a detailed causal account necessary? Do Behe, or Sanford, provide one?
Over at PS, Paul Nelson wrote the following comment regarding the three musketeer’s review of Darwin Devolves:
“Puzzling sentence from the review:
“Behe asserts that new functions only arise through ‘purposeful design’ of new genetic information, a claim that cannot be tested.”
Yet the rest of the review summarizes and cites evidence which, the authors claim, tests (and refutes) Behe’s arguments. So design cannot be tested, except when we test it.
Gotta agree with Mike on this one: the review largely ignores his main thesis in Darwin Devolves, but revisits old controversies. I expect his full reply, coming in a few days, will hammer that.
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/darwin-devolves-the-end-of-evolution/4270/27
I might add the so-called bad designs, or “human errors”, can also be detected by science and tested, just like a human eye for example…
The problem this kind of science has though is when the previously detected by science “bad design” turns out be optimal, just like in case of the human eye being able to detect a single photon…
So, what we have been able to establish in
Round 1 Three Musketeers vs D’Artagnan is that science can detect and test design…It is just when the results of detecting and testing designs are inconvenient, because of the preconceived ideological views, the denial of science’s ability to detect and test design is introduced…
Behe scores 1:0 !!! 😉
… and neither is devolution. So Behe is wrong to claim that “natural selection itself acts as a powerful de-volutionary force”?
We are created in her image.
I’m not quite sure about this causality issue. It’s not demanded elsewhere – you note a phenomenon, then you look for a cause, isn’t that how it works? Willow bark cured the ancients’ headaches perfectly happily before someone said ‘salycilic acid’ or looked at the biochemistry.
In the case of NS, you can look at patterns across taxa. Some parts of genome vary much less than others. Plugging the numbers in, and correlating with fossils, you can get a handle on neutral evolution rate. You can look at silent substitutions in exons and cross check. There is a distinct ‘striping’ of the genome into conserved and nonconserved segments. Conserved regions are reasonably supposed to be kept so by purifying selection. It’s a good way of looking for genes and other functional regions.
At no point would it be sensible to disbar a region from analysis because we don’t know its causal relation with fitness.
Optimism bias.
I was being facetious, Joe! 😉
It’s called sensationalism!
Someone recently offered me to buy a small, old but beautiful church, which could easily be converted into a home or a small condominium building…
As I was reviewing Behe’s book, I have begun to wonder whether books buy ID proponents, like Behe, would have had any impact on preserving the closures of the many churches…In case of the church I have mentioned, the issue boiled down to the parish not having enough money to remove the mold from the structure… It was just cheaper to have people drive further to another church and put this one for sale…
Well, confirmation bias hasn’t worked, has it? 😉
That’s a 3-exclamation-mark scoreline, hard to argue.
Swamidass apparently believes in some kind of God guided evolution…I don’t know about Lents…Something about God trying to fool us and guiding the development of humans from the ancestor’s of humans and chimps embryo…It’s confusing…
We should probably wait for his upcoming book to find out…
BTW: Whenerver you use obscenities, I imagine you foaming suliva in your mouth that is dripping on your keyboard…😉
Many people are looking for novelty… and apparently the reconciliation of science and religion…Good idea!? Maybe …but at what cost? Swamidass apparently is that novelty with his speculations about guided human evolution from some kind of monkey-like-embryo…
Proving his speculations is going to be a major problem…
BTW: How much funding does he get? Venter gets over $120 million just from the government plus much more from private investors… The anti-aging funding alone is worth billions…😉
If that was the issue, why did She design the present system?
Now we are getting somwhere…Tell us more…😉
I think the 3-exclamation-mark descended from an ellipsis.
How do you know that natural selection is a just filler term if we don’t know what really happened?
Ignorance would only be an causative issue with intelligent design.
If you make a claim of bad design or human errors, like Lents, you’d better know you are right or someone like me will hammer it with vengeance…I have no mercy when I see hypocrisy…
No arguments?! Pity…😃
There’s more in the very next sentences, but it seems like one sentence per paragraph per day is your limit. Meaning this one will take you three days to understand. Four if we count this sentence. It seems though, that sometimes after the first sentence you can go no further, so you might never get to understand this paragraph.
I don’t think so…but here is the an interesting prospective:
If Behe believes in some kind of common descent but doesn’t believe Darwinian processes are responsible for the descent with modifications other than by breaking genes or decreasing gene functions, how has the descent with modification happened? Did God/ID really guided it? Or, is there something Behe doesn’t know?😉
Since Behe wasn’t talking about quantum mechanics in the human eye, your “point” is irrelevant to the criticism of Behe’s book of bullshit.
On the other hand, given your illiteracy, I doubt that you hammering anything with a vengeance means much. I still find it hilarious that you think that there’s quantum mechanical vision optimization going on in the blind spot.
Exactly my point. Thanks J-Mac. I never thought you’d admit to writing irrelevant shit.
I’ve read it…
Why would the antibiotic resistance exist in life systems before antibiotics were even developed?
What doesn’t mean for the supposed evolution of antibiotic resistance if the resistance had already been there?
Do you get my point?
I’ve told you once.
In short:
Behe’s book is about ID…
Lents says Human Eye is bad design… He criticizes Behe’s book but he had embarrassed himself by making the claim of human eyes’ design being bad…
I say no. Human eye design is optimal.. because of QM, which clearly makes Lents no really qualified to be the critic or Behe’s book…
That was my point!
You don’t like it? Too bad! We all know what the ignore button is for…😉
So further discussion with you is pointless, just like with Entropy?
Thanks!!!
More saliva foaming? Why? I thought you’d be happy that your beliefs are baseless…I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? 🤣
Maybe, but you didn’t understand it. Otherwise you would not have asked what you asked here, yet again.
Because the first antibiotics developed were the natural products of some Fungi, and then some bacteria. Those antibiotics existed before we started using them en masse.
You missed the next sentences. We developed other, artificial, antibiotics, and the resistance to those artificial antibiotics did not already exist in nature. That one evolved.
I got it from the very first time, and your point was not only wrong, but irrelevant to the careers of those scientists. You were insinuating that the prior existence of antibiotic resistance made these scientists’ careers pointless, as if understanding the spread of antibiotic resistance was irrelevant just because some genes existed before the widespread use of antibiotics. So I was pointing out your two mistakes:
1. That’s false, while some antibiotic resistance existed before, antibiotic resistance to modified/artificial antibiotics evolved.
2. Even for pre-existing resistance genes, the evolution of antibiotic “cassettes,” and understanding how antibiotic resistance spreads to pathogenic bacteria is still an important research area.
See? You cannot even remember why you brought something up, and you cannot understand more than a few sentences at a time. Time to reconsider your educational options. Start with reading for comprehension please.