Coyne published a review of Darwin Devolves: Coyne’s Scathing Review of Darwin Devolves
Behe responds today: Bullet Points for Jerry Coyne | Evolution News.
Behe seems fairly relaxed and glad to be engaging with an atheist again.
On human origins, a rare public comment from Behe. I like it:
Since humans are placed in the same family as other great apes (Hominidae), Behe’s theory predicts that we arose without a designer’s intervention. But here he backpedals, asserting that there are “excellent reasons to suspect those differences [between humans and other apes] are well beyond Darwinian processes.” Sadly, he doesn’t give these reasons, but I’d guess they stem from the Christian belief that Homo sapiens is a special creation of God .
Actually, they stem from our personal awareness that we can reason, speak, think abstractly, and so on — in other words, that we have minds — which arguably is the most profound attribute in the world. By the way, I also wrote in the book that there are good reasons to doubt that giraffes could arise from a shorter-necked relative like the okapi, even though they are in the same biological family. For some reason Coyne doesn’t ascribe my skepticism there to Christian belief.
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Hardly worth mentioning, but Klinghoffer also wrote an article: Coyne: “The Tuxedo Is Fraying”! | Evolution News
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I did think Coyne’s review was kinda lame. So not many complaints against Behe here. Some of his comments just made me realize even more how chaotic and messy ID is. Family level diversification is fine except for humans and I guess Giraffidae? Ok…why? Why are these two families incapable but others are capable? They can never answer this question and they seem ok with that. That’s what’s so frustrating about ID.
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