Michael Behe

In a recent post, I noted that Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments on the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade in his book, Only a Theory. When I blogged at the end of last year about Miller’s similar mistakes at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Dr. Miller responded by making me aware of something I did not previously remember: apparently Michael Behe wrote the section in Of Pandas and People on blood clotting. The treatment of the blood clotting cascade in Pandas (1993) could possibly be subject to Miller’s arguments, but as I showed, Behe’s treatment of the topic in Darwin’s Black Box (1996) would not be refuted in any way by Miller’s arguments. To summarize and review, Read More ›

Recently, I discussed how in his book Only a Theory, Kenneth Miller badly misrepresented intelligent design (ID) as it relates to common descent. Another egregious error in the book comes in Dr. Miller’s section titled “Just Not Good Enough” (pgs. 70-74). Anyone familiar with the Dover trial knows exactly what Miller’s error is and where this is going. Dr. Miller claims that when the plaintiffs’ attorneys at the Dover trial did a literature-dump bluff on Michael Behe during cross-examination — placing before him over 50 papers and nearly a dozen books purportedly explaining the evolution of the immune system — Behe said, in Judge Jones’s report of the exchange, that they were “not ‘good enough.’” Miller even goes so far Read More ›

Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at Professor Scot McKnight’s Beliefnet blog, Jesus Creed. The first post in this series is found here, and the second here.

The Origin of Beauty

Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt’s masterful book A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature gives the following illustration of how modern scientific reductionists treat nature and the arts:

Imagine hearing the following account of one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s symphonies: ‘We have been able to prove that this particular symphony is actually reducible to a series of notes that happen to be played both at the same time in chords and one after another, creating a string of disturbances in the air caused by different frequencies. We realize, of course, that these disturbances cause further disturbances in the audience, due in part to the presence of Earth’s particular atmosphere and in part to the effect such disturbances have on the apparatus of the ear as transmitted by neurons to the brain–so disturbing, in fact, that some break into voluntary tears, remarking that they seemed to be hearing the very harmonies of heaven. Happily, we now know that there is nothing more to Mozart’s work in particular and to music in general than mere notes, themselves reducible to waves disturbing air.’

When Christian intellectuals hear such things, their general response is to think that they can have their Darwinian cake and merely scrape off the reductionist icing. But Darwinism, if I may continue the strained metaphor, is, it turns out, a layered cake with icing all throughout.

Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at Professor Scot McKnight’s Beliefnet blog, Jesus Creed. The first post in this series is found here.

Intelligent Design and the Deity

In the predominant narrative, Charles Darwin was a humble scientist who proposed a strictly scientific theory. Upon publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, religious folks like Bishop Wilberforce voiced theological objections to it; and thus began the most salient episode in the ‘war between science and religion.’ Many Christians adopt a similar narrative, but suggest this was all a misunderstanding; Darwin’s theory simply has nothing to do with religious or philosophical questions.

If I may be so bold, I’d like to suggest that both narratives are wrong.

Update: On May 4, 2009, The New York Times, perhaps unsurprisingly, came out with a story casting the swine flu as an example of evolution, titled “10 Genes, Furiously Evolving.” Similarly, the staunchly pro-evolution site LiveScience.com has an article on the swine flu that opens by mocking Darwin-skeptics, stating: “Anyone who thinks evolution is for the birds should not be afraid of swine flu. Because if there’s no such thing as evolution, then there’s no such thing as a new strain of swine flu infecting people.” As is discussed in Luskin’s piece below, such a claim is a cheap-shot that completely mis-states and misrepresents the position of Darwin-skeptics. A few years ago, the media was abuzz over the scare of Read More ›

In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller purported to refute Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade, but actually badly misrepresented Behe’s arguments to Judge Jones. In short, the purported knockout experiments (in the form comparative biochemistry) that Ken Miller cited to Judge Jones, where the blood-clotting cascade still worked in the absence of certain factors, dealt entirely with factors that Behe specifically did not claim were part of the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade. Behe explained this problem in Miller’s argument to Judge Jones, but apparently Behe’s testimony fell on deaf ears. In Part 2, I discussed how Miller might not have even refuted the more expansive arguments for irreducible complexity of Read More ›

In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducibility of the blood-clotting cascade to Judge Jones during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, such that Judge Jones wrongly ruled that “scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe’s predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade.” To briefly recap, Miller told Judge Jones that Behe’s discussion of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin’s Black Box was “essentially identical” to the discussion of the blood-clotting cascade in Of Pandas and People, implying that any critiques of Pandas also applied to Behe. But unlike Pandas, Behe explicitly did not argue that all of the components of the blood-clotting cascade were required for it to function properly. Read More ›

During the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial three years ago, biologist Kenneth Miller claimed that biochemist Michael Behe’s arguments in Darwin’s Black Box regarding the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade were false. Miller’s testimony led federal district court judge John Jones to assert in his decision that “scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe’s predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade.” But an analysis of Miller’s arguments demonstrates that he refuted Behe in no way whatsoever, and that in fact it was Behe who refuted Miller at trial, although Judge Jones ignored Behe’s testimony. Miller continues (I am told) to go around lecturing on this topic, claiming that the blood-clotting cascade of lower vertebrates demonstrate that Read More ›

Whenever biochemist Michael Behe’s argument for design from “irreducibly complex” molecular machines appears, there is a Darwinist waiting in the wings with a devastating critique (or so he thinks).

Take as an example the following passage from biologist Craig M. Story. He recently reviewed Fazale Rana’s new book The Cell’s Design for Christianity Today (see “Same Song, Second Verse“). In his review, he critiques Behe’s argument, because according to Dr. Story, Rana merely regurgitates Behe.

Rana, like Behe before him, may be commended for providing a layman’s description of a number of astonishingly intricate cellular processes. But his portraits of cellular workings will fail to convince most mainstream scientists for the same reason that Behe’s book has been roundly dismissed: The analogy between manmade machines and cells is a poor one at best. Cellular components, although machine-like in some respects, do not behave like manmade machines. They self-assemble and self-manufacture, and they are able to transform available energy sources such as light to fuel metabolic activity.

Now what’s wrong with this reply? Didn’t we all learn from Hume that arguments from analogy are inherently weak?