Reviewing Behe's "Darwin Devolves"

Actually he explicitly says that the only natural mechanisms that matter are random mutations and positive selection, and everything else makes evolution less likely. Your desire to defend Behe by revising his views is pretty entertaining, but also unnecessary.

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This is a bare assertion. How is my representation a straw man?

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There are times when the cover-up tells you more than the crime.

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He didn’t say “natural processes,” he said “natural selection.” It’s right there in your own quote of him.

If being honest is so important to you here is a perfect opportunity for you to lead by example.

Where?

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Let’s rearrange his quote a bit.

"If [a scientist “knock[s] out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go[es] into his lab and grow[s] that bug for a long time,” and “it produces anything resembling a flagellum…intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water.”

I REALLY don’t think I’m misrepresenting him, I’m making clearer what he is trying to say. He didn’t say “natural selection produces anything resembling a flagellum,” he said “it,” which seems to refer to the entire process. Unless he thinks that natural selection is the only “mechanism” of evolution! I doubt that.

I’m open to clarifications of this quote. I don’t know how he would be able to endorse Denton’s views AND this view. Denton has said that once we figure out the origin of biological life, it will be so simple, we’ll wonder why we hadn’t found out earlier! Simple because it would be built in to the laws of nature. Sort of like what this post seemed to be about. Spontaneous protein folding "Without Evolution"

That’s my read as well. Behe didn’t say that if a new flagellum emerged in the lab then we might be looking at a newly discovered natural process that would fit in fine with intelligent design. NOPE. Behe stated quite clearly that if bacteria reproducing in a lab produced something like a new flagellum then that falsified intelligent design. FULL STOP.

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Wording is important and when you make subtle changes you are creating a straw-man

-His argument is positioned against the Darwinian mechanism-RMNS and saying design is a better description of the cause of complex cellular machines.

-His argument is evidence for design
When you say designer that is not his argument. I have explicitly discussed this point with him.

Now, can you tell us what he meant by that? What is the theory of intelligent design and why would it be falsified, according to Behe?

i dont think so for several reasons:

  1. we dont know if its indeed an ic system. even talkorigin admit that: “even in modern reptiles the quadrate and articular serve to transmit sound to the stapes and the inner ear”.

  2. even if it is we need to check how many mutations need for such a conversion.

  3. i think that some of these supose “transitional fossils” are maybe theoretical fossils (they dont name them as you can see) so we need to check it first.

  4. order by itself doesnt prove evolution. as we can see here:

(image from https://www.aynsleyinsurance.co.uk/business/commercial-vehicle)

how many parts need for such a camera? and even if it was indeed so simple. what about the more complex cameras? do you think that you can change a simple c amera into a complex one by small steps? almost every step in that way is base on se veral parts\changes at once. so its not realy stepwise.

For a pinhole camera?

You wake up in a darkened room. But it is sunny outside. There’s a tiny hole in the window shade. Looking around, you see things from outdoors appearing upside down on your wall. That’s an accidental pinhole camera. And many people have probably experienced just this.

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He’s never articulated a scientific hypothesis, much less a theory.

so we need a window and a wall? and what about the more complex camera?

Maybe what-about-ism is the core theology of YECs.

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@Mercer

I think we should, for now, assume Behe’s God’s Pool Ball Shot scenario to be his working hypothesis.

The only miraculous aspect in this hypothesis is that God intricately arranges the Universe at the point of creation, and then he clears the Cosmos with a perfectly arranged multi-ball shot.

Since I think this is actually what God does, I have no problem with God using this approach to work out his Evolutionary plans. And in the long run, I think Behe will come to the same conclusion. The only thing that Behe differs from @swamidass and me is the epistemological aspect of Science. Joshua and I agree that Science is not able to detect whether God arranged any thing, while Behe thinks it can be demonstrated.

But interestingly, the only way to defeat Intelligent Design (as an epistemology) is to either develop a philosophical (or mathematical?) proof that Science cannot be used to confirm the miraculous.

Disproving Intelligent Design is not the same thing as disproving Creationism. For example, Behe’s working hypothesis already seems devoid of creationism. One might say that Behe’s approach to Design pretty much eliminates room for any Creationism.

Not at all. It makes zero empirical predictions, so it is not a scientific hypothesis.

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@mercer

I don’t want to be a drag… but you are incorrect about the meaning of “hypothesis”.
Theories are supposed to make predictions; and you don’t need to actually include a prediction in order to describe a theory. The point being, a good theory IS supposed to allow the making of predictions that come true.

An hypothesis is not required to make a prediction… nor does its definition even require predictions:

hypothesis
noun
1] a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.
2] a proposition assumed as a premise in an argument.
3] the antecedent of a conditional proposition.
4] a mere assumption or guess.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hypothesis

So… as I was trying to get at in my last post… it would appear that Gods Cosmic Billiards Ball Shot is as close as we come to getting to Behe’s thoughts on the matter. And from it some additional observations can be made!

Perhaps you should note that I specified SCIENTIFIC hypothesis. That is the only rational inference from your use of “working” in front of hypothesis, which makes no sense because Behe isn’t doing any scientific work, which is testing the empirical predictions of scientific hypotheses.

Indeed they are, as are hypotheses, when the context is scientific. Your distinction between theory and hypothesis is not the one used in science.

Surely you realize that dictionary definitions include all uses of a term, even imprecise ones. That dictionary definition represents lay usage of the term. Heck, it even includes the creationist misuse of the term.

Why should we care about the thoughts of someone who ignores most of the relevant evidence while making a global claim from a tiny sample–particularly when he doesn’t even get the facts about his tiny sample right?

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@Mercer

Ahhh… a “scientific hypothesis”. How ironic! I would maintain that Behe can never provide one of those, because there is no way to test a metaphysical principle.

In contrast, I would assert that Behe is making a theological hypothesis. So, am I correct in assuming that ends your interest in discussing Behe’s scenarios?

Peaceful Science is rather focused on theological issues.