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How to deal with Dr. Behe?

He's still beating that dead flagellum?

Crikey. Talk about intellectual dishonesty.
 
Silentknight said:
2. Darwinism works only by breaking what's already there. In other words, mutations can't add information, merely distort and rearrange old information.
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That sounds un-Beheish. Are you sure he didn't say that selection can't add information, but only break what's there?
 
Still with the stupid mouse trap analogy! Everyone in the audience should have worn a tie and and used a partially dismantled mouse trap as a tie clip. That would have been amusing.
 
He's like George W. Bush: no matter how many times you prove a point wrong, he just keeps repeating it.
 
Information about manufacturing things builds up in human societies like for the mousetrap. Some caveman did not sit down and make a mousetrap. Technology to work wood and metal came first then the concepts of the spring and latch and axel that are used to make the mouse trap. Then someone put them all together to make a mousetrap. Evolution works similarly, information builds up then (by accident which is not typical of humans but perhaps sometimes similar in that people who create things are sometimes trying to create something else) it's put together in a functional manner and that information is widely distributed.
 
Sorry I'm late to the party but I find that the RealWorld® has a tendency to interfere with my time here.

If anyone ever gets another chance, an interesting question might be: "The Dover trial about teaching ID was an exhustive process taking 40 days with ID exponents such as you Dr. Behe being able to present the case for ID fully and completely. The judge said in his summation, 'The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. ', was the judge wrong?

This is on the page at:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision.html
 
Meadmaker said:
That sounds un-Beheish. Are you sure he didn't say that selection can't add information, but only break what's there?
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Yeah, I'd put it into my own words. Your phrasing sounds closer to what he said.

Anyway, here's what happened after his presentation. The questioning session actually went rather smoothly, and the people got in some very good questions.

The first question was from a student. When you refer to an intelligent designer, who or what does the designer refer to? He dodged this, probably wisely, and said that it could refer to any kind of intelligence, although he admitted that if you're a Christian like he is, then it could refer to the Christian God.

The second question was from Professor Dill of the biology department, and he covered one of the potential questions I had planned ahead of time. Where is the science? Where is the proof positive for intelligent design? Behe simply fell back on his earlier argument, that the evidence is in the observed complexity in the physical structures themselves. He brought up the fact that science is inductive, rather than deductive, although he wasn't willing to admit that the argument from design is a fairly huge inductive leap of logic.

The third question was from another biology teacher, Professor Smalley, who went back to what Behe had said about the hill-climbing model. The professor pointed out that, while Behe was talking about whole complex structures as if they had arisen as is, what about a progressive development where evolution works in steps and each successive step confers an advantage of its own? They actually had a little back-and-forth, where Behe said that the problem with stepwise evolution is that the environmental conditions would have to be just right for each change that occurs to be beneficial, while Professor Smalley asked if that necessarily makes it impossible for advantageous changes to build up. After all, the environment is always changing.

Then I got a chance to ask my question. I ended up combining two of the questions I had on the list I posted earlier. Assuming intelligent design is science, then how could we obtain experimental or observational evidence of an “intelligent designer” in the act of designing? In other words, what mechanism or process for design do you propose, and how can we scientifically test for its existence? Behe responded, "I don't know," and actually admitted that there's no known mechanism for design. It was almost as if the question had caught him off guard, which kind of surprised me.

Let me repeat that one more time. Dr. Michael Behe had to admit in front of everyone that he did not know of a way to test intelligent design, and that there is no proposed mechanism for design! :yahoo

However, to try and dig himself out, he compared intelligent design to the Big Bang theory back when it was first proposed. He said that it was based on the observations of galaxies moving farther apart, but as with ID, we can't experimentally test it, and we haven't observed anything like it. Many people opposed the Big Bang theory and called it ridiculous, yet nowadays it's widely accepted, and people have even built new theories off of it. The impression I got was that he has faith that intelligent design will eventually be vindicated by the evidence (even though this has yet to happen and the future looks quite bleak for it).

The next question was asked by another student. She said that Behe seems to be arguing that evolution and ID are necessarily in opposition to each other. But why can't they be part of the same thing? What if intelligent design is a part of evolution itself? Behe responded that they could very well be, and for the record, he has never said that they are mutually exclusive, and does not deny that some evolution can occur.

The last question had to do with whether concluding that intelligent design must have occurred is tantamount to throwing up your hands and giving up. Behe replied that as a scientist, he's just following the data where it goes. So he wouldn't call it "giving up."


After the session was over, I noticed that the biology and philosophy professors had congregated and were discussing the topics of the lecture, so I decided to join them. I spoke with my logic professor from last semester, and asked him if he was familiar with the argument from personal incredulity fallacy, or the argument from ignorance fallacy. He said he hadn't thought of it that way, and wasn't familiar with the incredulity one, but that it could very well be the case with intelligent design.

Then I got in on the discussion that the biology professors were having. They were bringing up all the questions and comments they didn't get to voice during the Q&A session, including practically all the questions that have appeared in this topic and others about Behe. For example, if life was designed, then who designed the designer? We talked about sub-optimality arguments, the flaws in analogizing living things to non-living objects, the evolution of the flagellum, and the role and purpose of skepticism and the scientific method. In other words, just about everything that regularly gets discussed around here. I ended up giving away my printout on the flagellum to one of them, figuring he would have more use for it than I do.

One professor said he's actually grateful for ID and people like Behe, because he believes science should be open to debate and questioning. I pointed out that the main problem I have with ID is that, even though Behe claims it's not a religious argument, the Wedge Document from the Discovery Institute says otherwise. They said they'd heard about this. I brought up the 2005 Dover trial and told them about the transcripts, if they were interested.

Towards the end of the discussion, we were talking about how ID is often used as a placeholder, but once science does find the answers, ID has to be bumped further back. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know all the answers, but let's find out." It might have just been me, but the biology professors seemed somewhat impressed with my take on the subject.

In the end, I'm glad I attended the lecture, and I'm glad I got the chance to cast some doubt on intelligent design. I'll post pictures of my taser burns later...

Only kidding. :D
 
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Thanks for your interesting and well-written account, Silentknight.
 
Silentknight said:
Then I got a chance to ask my question. I ended up combining two of the questions I had on the list I posted earlier. Assuming intelligent design is science, then how could we obtain experimental or observational evidence of an “intelligent designer” in the act of designing? In other words, what mechanism or process for design do you propose, and how can we scientifically test for its existence? Behe responded, "I don't know," and actually admitted that there's no known mechanism for design. It was almost as if the question had caught him off guard, which kind of surprised me.

Let me repeat that one more time. Dr. Michael Behe had to admit in front of everyone that he did not know of a way to test intelligent design, and that there is no proposed mechanism for design! :yahoo
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:clap: :clap: :clap:

Yep, that made my day!!

I would love to see video of that! Was any taken?
 
Unfortunately, no. There were no cameras as far as I could tell, I didn't get to ask if it was recorded, and I don't think they record their lectures. It didn't occur to me to whip out my cell phone and use that, but then again that probably would have gotten me kicked out. :rolleyes:

On the plus side, a major weakness of ID has been exposed. Not that we didn't know about it beforehand.
 
Good job, SK. Surprising that your logic prof never heard of the common fallacies.
 
Silentknight said:
Yeah, I'd put it into my own words. Your phrasing sounds closer to what he said.
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OK. That's more Beheish.

Good job catching him off guard. I often discuss what the best way to fight ID is, and my opinions on the subject don't usually go over so well on JREF. I think the key is to catch people off guard. Very few questions do that, but yours was just sufficiently different from the "standard" questions and comments that it worked, at least a little bit, which is the best that could be hoped for.

The real target is the potential believers in the audience, and seeing him uncertain was probably more influential than any of the arguments inherent in the other questions
 
Darn - I got here too late to suggest a question.

Mine would have been:
How many copies of your books have you sold and what is your cut?

Behe is an educated man, most certainly not stupid, and he has been embarassed in public more than once - how can you explain his dragging out those previously debunked arguments? Book sales.
 
Well done SilentKnight! In particular thanks for posting such a detailed account. I'm a bit surprised that nobody hit him with Occam's Razor. He pretty much admitted that he can't identify the mechanism of ID, or the designer, which is hardly a parsimonious position.

Surely the personal incredulity fallacy is at the heart of science? By that I mean, it's not possible to prove a negative, only to provide evidence for a positive. If something looks incredible, it doesn't mean it supports in any way an alternative view, unless evidence exists to support that view. Lack of evidence does not prove anything.

There are gaps in our knowledge, but that doesn't mean they will never be filled. This is why I'm always wary of using the implausibility argument against homeopathy, without qualifying it with evidence (or lack of it!).
 
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