The Three Musketeers vs D’Artagnan

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!!! 😉

453 thoughts on “The Three Musketeers vs D’Artagnan

  1. Another musketeer,PAUL BRATERMAN, has joined the circus of bear devolution…

    https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2019/02/darwin-does-devolve-sometimes-so-what.html

    Don’t those people have any dignity or shame left? What is this? Dodging evidence and contradicting their own beliefs with nonsense is the way science works?

    “…Behe describes the changes as damaging. His evidence is that related changes in humans give rise to unhealthily high accumulations of cholesterol in the blood. But you are not a polar bear, and have not evolved to live on a polar bear’s diet…”

    Can anyone spot the contradictions???

    This is going to be easier than I thought… 😉

  2. dazz: No, Behe deliberately cut & pasted half the table, leaving out the data that DISPROVED his claim that ALL mutations to ApoB were damaging.

    And of course you are prepared to show us where in his book Behe actually claimed all mutations to APOB were damaging. Perhaps start on page 20 of his book.

  3. February 26, 2019 at 2:15 pm
    dazz: No, Behe deliberately cut & pasted half the table, leaving out the data that DISPROVED his claim that ALL mutations to ApoB were damaging.

    MungAnd of course you are prepared to show us where in his book Behe actually claimed all mutations to APOB were damaging. Perhaps start on page 20 of his book.

    Is this pure dishonesty or just stupidity? I guess the “okapi evolution” embarrassment continues…

  4. Mung: February 26, 2019 at 2:15 pm

    dazz: No, Behe deliberately cut & pasted half the table, leaving out the data that DISPROVED his claim that ALL mutations to ApoB were damaging.

    And of course you are prepared to show us where in his book Behe actually claimed all mutations to APOB were damaging. Perhaps start on page 20 of his book.

    dazz made no claim about Behe’s book, so your comment is off-topic.
    We have already shown, on this thread, where Behe cut and pasted half of Table S7, whilst falsely claiming that he was providing “the relevant detail”, and

    Those who can understand the table will see that it supports every actual, undistorted claim I made about the polar bear.

    That is false.
    You appear to be trying to obscure this behavior of Behe’s…

  5. DNA_Jock: You appear to be trying to obscure this behavior of Behe’s…

    You appear to be trying to obscure this comment by dazz:

    “…his [Behe’s] claim that ALL mutations to ApoB were damaging.”

    It is clear from reading his book that Behe does not claim that “ALL mutations to APOB were damaging.”

    Yes, I have already read enough of the book to know that claim is false. You should do likewise.

  6. Mung,

    I agree with you that Behe doesn’t claim that all mutations are damaging. He even insisted in that blog that he was not an absolutist. However, he does misrepresent the data by selectively cutting it to show just what he prefers people to see. That’s where I’d say there’s some suspicious behaviour.

    This is why I wrote:

    Entropy:
    Hum. So, Behe’s “point” on that s that he was not an absolutist about damaging mutations. Oh well, then why the hell should anybody bother? Since in evolution both, damaging and benign mutations can be fixed, there’s nothing that nobody already knew, and nothing that makes evolution ineffective, let alone “Darwin devolve.”

    It’s also a bit curious that Behe posted only the predicted-to-be-potentially damaging mutations from Table S7, and from one column only. There’s two estimates in the table, one had less predicted-to-be-potentially “damaging” mutations than the other.

    A quick look, 23 mutations are predicted to be benign by the first score, 25 predicted to be damaging (with two levels of confidence in how damaging they might be). The second score predicts that 32 are benign, and 16 might be damaging.

    There’s also some explanations by Lenski about Behe’s problematic interpretation of the table, since the method used to predict whether a mutation would be beneficial, semi-damaging, or damaging, assumes that the protein is performing the very same function, when the point of the article is that the function changed.

  7. Entropy: There’s also some explanations by Lenski about Behe’s problematic interpretation of the table, since the method used to predict whether a mutation would be beneficial, semi-damaging, or damaging, assumes that the protein is performing the very same function, when the point of the article is that the function changed.

    Are you suggesting the authors’ interpretation of the table is correct? Tell us more…

  8. Mung: It is clear from reading his book that Behe does not claim that “ALL mutations to APOB were damaging.”

    Are you suggesting, what I think you are suggesting, that they didn’t actually look at the table they linked???

  9. Behe, Axe, and Swamidass: Invitation to “Debate” Received!

    It looks like at least one of the three musketeers, Swamidass, has been invited to debate D’Artagnan-Behe… Will he hold his ground without the support of the other 2 musketeers Lents and Lenski? Or is he going to get Axed? 😉

    If it happens, I will make sure to attend it…
    This could actually be very interesting… 😉

    https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/behe-axe-and-swamidass-invitation-to-debate-received/4867

  10. J-Mac: Are you suggesting, what I think you are suggesting, that they didn’t actually look at the table they linked?

    No. I’m suggesting that dazz avoid making false statements and that DNA_Jock stop trying to cover for it.

    ETA: And OMagain.

  11. Mung: No. I’m suggesting that dazz avoid making false statements and that DNA_Jock stop trying to cover for it.

    Suggest away, quoteminer.

  12. LoL@Swamidass. They have so much to lose. While he refuses to debate me because he has so much to lose.

  13. Mung,

    No. I’m suggesting that dazz avoid making false statements and that DNA_Jock stop trying to cover for it.

    🙂

  14. Mung: No. I’m suggesting that dazz avoid making false statements and that DNA_Jock stop trying to cover for it.

    Doesn’t that make two false statements?

  15. Mung,

    I am through about 25% of the book and it is his best by far in my opinion. Swamidass Lents and Lenski’s review was juvenile and did not scratch the surface of the depth of Behe’s arguments.

    This is really embarrassing work for leaders in their fields. This is what happens when ideology takes presidents over science.

  16. Mung:
    LoL@Swamidass. They have so much to lose. While he refuses to debate me because he has so much to lose.

    Swamidass is attention seeking… He might go for it… 🙂

  17. colewd:
    Mung,

    I am through about 25% of the book and it is his best by far in my opinion.Swamidass Lents and Lenski’s review was juvenile and did not scratch the surface of the depth of Behe’s arguments.

    This is really embarrassing work for leaders in their fields.This is what happens when ideology takes presidents over science.

    Keep reading! 😉

  18. J-Mac:
    Are you suggesting the authors’ interpretation of the table is correct? Tell us more…

    Are you suggesting that you’re too stupid to read my whole comment for comprehension?

  19. J-Mac: Another musketeer,PAUL BRATERMAN, has joined the circus of bear devolution…

    He writes:

    “Note, by the way, the endless references to Darwin, as if we had learnt nothing since 1859.”

    If you actually read the book you’ll find that nothing could be further from the truth. It’s because we’ve come a long way since Darwin that we can actually evaluate the reasonableness of his theory.

  20. colewd: This is really embarrassing work for leaders in their fields. This is what happens when ideology takes presidents over science.

    I think Lenski had very little to do with the actual content of he review.

    I believe they are testing a theory, that given enough mistakes in the review something beneficial might result.

  21. Mung,

    “Note, by the way, the endless references to Darwin, as if we had learnt nothing since 1859.”

    About the cause of complex adaptions like eyes they have indeed learned nothing. Let the tap dancing continue. 🙂

  22. No Mung, I am not particularly concerned that dazz was misled into thinking that Behe had claimed that all APOB mutations were “damaging”. After all, Behe posted a table that he had edited to omit all “benign” mutations.
    I am entertained at your continued efforts to obscure the fact that Behe edited Table S7 to only include those mutations that were”damaging”. And he posted that edited version of the Table at ENV, with the false caption:

    Below is the relevant information from Liu et al.’s Table S7. Those who can understand the table will see that it supports every actual, undistorted claim I made about the polar bear.

    How many other people may have been misled by Behe’s flagrant dishonesty?
    How far will Mung go to obscure this?
    Am I correct in assuming that, in his book, Behe cites Liu et al but does not provide any information from Table S7?

  23. DNA_Jock quoting Behe:
    Below is the relevant information from Liu et al.’s Table S7. Those who can understand the table will see that it supports every actual, undistorted claim I made about the polar bear.

    Exactly! It doesn’t matter if Behe doesn’t claim that all mutations are damaging, how could anybody know if the table supports Behe’s claims if he omits the beneficial mutations and then presents only the score with the highest proportion of “damaging” ones? If Behe is saying that he did not claim that all mutations were damaging, then how would anybody verify such thing if he selects only damaging mutations for display? The mutilated table gives the impression that he wants to claim that only damaging mutations occur. Why do that? Looks too much like an attempt to mislead. Sorry, but it does look that way.

    Why doesn’t any of the creationist complain about the mutilated table? If I presented mutilated data, but talked in more tentative terms, would creationists accept the mutilated data as ok? If not, then why is it acceptable from Behe and not from me?

  24. DNA_Jock: No Mung, I am not particularly concerned that dazz was misled into thinking that Behe had claimed that all APOB mutations were “damaging”.

    I expected no less of you. You should have corrected him rather than perpetuate the myth.

  25. Entropy: If Behe is saying that he did not claim that all mutations were damaging, then how would anybody verify such thing if he selects only damaging mutations for display?

    They could read the book. like me. And Bill. Ignorance is no excuse, except when it is.

  26. DNA_Jock: Am I correct in assuming that, in his book, Behe cites Liu et al but does not provide any information from Table S7?

    Not even in a highly edited version. Which is why it is actually important to understand what Behe was claiming. Which you can find in his book.

  27. DNA_Jock,

    How many other people may have been misled by Behe’s flagrant dishonesty?

    Can you make an argument without ad hominem? Please make useful criticisms as your opinion short of logical fallacies is valuable.

  28. In his book, Behe claims that “the magnificent Ursus maritimus has adjusted to its harsh environment mainly by degrading genes its ancestors already possessed.”
    Now explaining to a lay audience why that claim is unsupported involves delving into comparative genomics. More accessible is the fact that Behe edited Table S7 when he posted it at ENV, but gave it the caption:

    Below is the relevant information from Liu et al.’s Table S7. Those who can understand the table will see that it supports every actual, undistorted claim I made about the polar bear.

    Are you willing to admit, Mung, that that was a dishonest thing to do?

    colewd,
    “ad hominem”, you keep using that phrase. I do not think that it means what you think it means.
    Behe’s argument is rubbish. [Rumraket and others here have explained why. The “Three Musketeers” have explained why. No-one has offered up anything here to counter the substance of these takedowns.]
    Behe should know better. Therefore….
    Please learn to distinguish insult from ad hominem.

  29. colewd:
    DNA_Jock,
    Can you make an argument without ad hominem? Please make useful criticisms as your opinion short of logical fallacies is valuable.

    Can you explain to me why it is acceptable from Behe to present a mutilated table of mutations to show only supposedly damaging ones? Would it be acceptable if I did the very same but against the conclusions that you prefer?

  30. Mung:
    Not even in a highly edited version. Which is why it is actually important to understand what Behe was claiming. Which you can find in his book.

    So he neither cited that article nor presented a full table even in a highly edited version of the book? And you think that’s the right thing to do?

  31. Entropy,

    No. Behe did cite Liu et al in the book. Just in a highly misleading way:

    …65%-83% of helpful, positively-selected genes are estimated to have suffered at least one damaging mutation

    ETA: I think that the Three Musketeers review stung him into a rash, and rather foolish, response at ENV. His books seem to be more artfully written.

  32. Entropy,

    Can you explain to me why it is acceptable from Behe to present a mutilated table of mutations to show only supposedly damaging ones? Would it be acceptable if I did the very same but against the conclusions that you prefer?

    I will let you know after I finish the book. Have you seen it first hand and taken it in context? If there is an error I will point out to him and I am sure he will edit future releases if it is material.

  33. colewd:
    I will let you know after I finish the book. Have you seen it first hand and taken it in context?If there is an error I will point out to him and I am sure he will edit future releases if it is material.

    I’m talking about Behe’s own blog entry Bill. So, again, is it ok for him to mutilate that table? If so, would it be ok for me to do the same only against your preferred coinclusion?

  34. DNA_Jock,

    No. Behe did cite Liu et al in the book. Just in a highly misleading way:

    Again, I suggest you read the book as you may of taken this out of context. The reviewers fell on their sword as they showed no comprehension of the first half of the book. Let’s see if you can make an honest appraisal and stop sharp shooting.

  35. DNA_Jock,

    How many other people may have been misled by Behe’s flagrant dishonesty?
    How far will Mung go to obscure this?
    Am I correct in assuming that, in his book, Behe cites Liu et al but does not provide any information from Table S7?

    So it’s dishonest to support a claim with a referenced article? Again argue the point not the failing of the person you are addressing. The ad hominem makes you look like you don’t have a legitimate counter argument which you may not.

    So you claim that he is dishonest for supporting his claim? Your funny Jock.

  36. Entropy,

    So, again, is it ok for him to mutilate that table?

    Mutilate the table? He showed the mutations that were probably harmful from Liu S7. This is a nit and a blatant attempt for you to find a nit to make an ad hominem argument. I am interested in substantive arguments not political non sense.

  37. colewd:
    So it’s dishonest to support a claim with a referenced article?

    Nope. What’s dishonest is to “support” a claim by mis-referencing an article, which is what Behe did. He quotes his own claims in his own blog entry, and I checked the article. He cherry-picks and misrepresents the predictions presented in the table, and he, supposedly a biochemist, didn’t even bother to re-check the kinds of mutations he presented as “damaging.” The table doesn’t support is claims, and, worse, biochemistry contradicts his claims even further.

    colewd:
    Again argue the point not the failing of the person you are addressing.

    DNA_Jock argued the claim. Rumraket presented the full table here. I could argue even further if necessary. Do you need more?

    colewd:
    The ad hominem makes you look like you don’t have a legitimate counter argument which you may not.

    It looks like ad hominem to you because you haven’t bothered to check the explanations and counterclaims. You read what Behe said and you left it there. Why not give the same careful consideration to those counterclaims Bill? Why is it so hard to check that too? Did you see the complete table? Did you see the mutilated table that Behe presented? I’m tired of linking to them already, and you won’t check them. Why?

    colewd:
    So you claim that he is dishonest for supporting his claim? Your funny Jock.

    Again, no. Behe misrepresented results in order to “support” his claim. I’d say that’s dishonest. What do you think? Is it?

  38. colewd:
    Mutilate the table? He showed the mutations that were probably harmful from Liu S7.This is a nit and a blatant attempt for you to find a nit to make an ad hominem argument. I am interested in substantive arguments not political non sense.

    Come on Bill, you can do better than this.

    Not only he deleted the mutations predicted to be beneficial, he also selected results from just one column, dismissing the column where fewer mutations were predicted to be “damaging.” (ETA: The second column of results predicts two of the mutations in APOB, presented by Behe as damaging, to be benign, for example. Again, why is this omission ok?)

    Do you really not see the problem with presenting only the supposedly damaging mutations, and only from the results that looked more like what he wanted you to see? Seriously? So, if I did the same, but against your preferred conclusion, you’d be ok with that? You would not say that I’m cherry-picking? What if I present only the beneficial mutations from the second column? Would my claim be “truer” than Behe’s?

    What if, instead, I use my knowledge of biochemistry to check the supposedly damaging mutations presented by Behe and claimed them to be pretty-much neutral? That one would be unbiased and would not require cherry-picking. Would that convince you?

  39. LMFAO, Behe clearly was trying to make it look like all mutations to ApoB were damaging by leaving out every entry in that table that pointed to benign substitutions. You guys are pathetic

    Now Mung, you can kick and moan all you want, you can play the word lawer till hell freezes over: “wahhh, Behe didn’t explicitly claim that all mutations to ApoB” are deleterious, whaahhhahahaha!!11!1one!!”

    Pffftt

  40. What if it was 10 selected from 10 million? Would the selection be more obvious then? It’s like the Monty Hall problem for creationists…

  41. dazz: Behe clearly was trying to make it look like all mutations to ApoB were damaging by leaving out every entry in that table that pointed to benign substitutions.

    That’s your personal interpretation. But you made a claim that was demonstrably false, because you made an assumption and jumped to a conclusion without hearing all the facts. But it’s everyone else that is to blame. Wah indeed.

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