The Massive Confusion On ID and Evolution

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

I actually don’t see that view as demanded by the book, though I can see why people read it that way. Indeed, even the title of the book suggests that design is something over against “evolution”. However, you will notice that, despite the title, Behe usually qualifies “evolution” with “Darwinian” or “neo-Darwinian” (those words you don’t like again – they keep cropping up!). He rarely if ever says that “natural” processes can’t produce something, or even that “evolution” can’t produce something (except where the context makes clear that he has in mind evolution as driven by random mutations). So I read the book as saying: If evolution works the way classical neo-Darwinism says it does, it wouldn’t be adequate to produce radically new body plans, etc. But evolution might work some other way. It might be supplemented by interventions (option 2 above), or designed outcomes might be built into it that are realized by natural means other than Darwinian mechanisms (option 1 above). So I take the book as saying, not that “evolution” can’t produce certain things, but that evolution without design involved somehow can’t produce those things.

We will have to agree to disagree. Random mutations are defined by methodology, and the observed processes of mutation are random as determined by that method. What Behe is saying is that the DNA changes he is talking about do not come about by the processes we see occurring in the lab. That is, Behe is saying that they didn’t come about through natural means.

He may very well say that natural processes are possible within ID, but it doesn’t seem to be the option he believes is responsible for these changes.

@Eddie

So whatever conclusion you come to about Behe, don’t impute Behe’s personally preferred view to all ID proponents. Don’t say “ID insists on interventions” merely because you feel sure that Behe insists on interventions. Just say, “Behe believes in miraculous interventions to steer evolution,” or, more cautiously, “I think Behe’s position in The Edge of Evolution logically requires him to believe in interventions,” and leave it at that.

That’s the problem. Different ID supporters mean very different things when using the same terms. This results in mass confusion.

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@T_Aquaticus:

You write: “Behe has stated outright that he believes the designer is
the Christian God. It isn’t a stretch to say that Behe is putting God
forward as directly causing these mutations.”

Right. But the question is how is he causing these mutations? Is
he doing it my direct, miraculous, non-lawful engagement? Or is he
doing it by means of a long causal chain of natural (not
super-natural), lawful operations.

You don’t specifically say, but imply, that the Pool Shot Model can’t
be right because you remember Behe’s “claims that seeing an I.C.
system evolving in the lab would falsify Intelligent Design.”

But if you listen to the details he offers around his Pool Shot
discussion … he says there is no special structure of “Intelligent
Design” obvious in the Design of the Pool Shot. The Design is
“installed” (“installed” is my word) … installed into the system
by means of the exact positioning of all the balls and the exact
positioning of the cue stick. But, of course, you must have read
Eddie’s comments that Behe was only discussing it as a hypothetical.
But it’s important to at least understand what the hypothetical model
means.

Here’s a One-Question Pop Quiz on the understanding of the model:

If we agree that God was the ultimate cause behind the Dino-Killing
Asteroid that hit Earth … which of 2 possible scenarios is most
likely to fit the Pool Shot Model?:

[1] God “poofs” the asteroid into existence in outer space, and sends
it to Earth in a way to have it collide in a specific way.

vs.

[2] God makes the Dino-Killing Asteroid a part of his “Front-Loaded”
plan, before the very moment of the Big Bang, so that in a long causal
chain of natural operations, an asteroid is formed naturally, is
bumped naturally, and is sent naturally all the way to Earth to
collide in a specific way?

It is my contention is that Option [2] is the only version of the
Asteroid’s story that fits the Pool Shot Model.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

T. aquaticus:

There is a difference between saying:

1. “Behe explicitly affirms that natural processes cannot be responsible for larger evolutionary changes.”

and saying:

2. “Even if Behe never explicitly affirms that non-natural activity is happening, and even if he personally conceives that non-natural activity is not necessary for design, in fact non-natural activity is logically required by his position.”

Do you see the difference? In the first case, you would be imputing to Behe a view he never states. In the second case, you would be inferring something based on what Behe says – and in that case, you must take responsibility for the inference yourself, and not impute to Behe the thing that you infer, as a conscious affirmation of his own.

Is it the second thing you are saying here, or the first?

If it’s the first, I disagree.

If it’s the second, I admit that such a position is possible, based on his writings.

But even if that is the correct view of Behe, it still does not show that miracles, interventions, etc. are required by all ID theorists. The case of Denton is a counterexample, even if Behe isn’t.

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@gbrooks9

It is my contention is that Option [2] is the only version of the
Asteroid’s story that fits the Pool Shot Model.

If we are assuming that God is omniscient and is outside of time, then options [1] and [2] are equivalent. Or, at least, that’s how it looks to me.

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@nwrickert

You write: “If we are assuming that God is omniscient and is outside of time, then options [1] and [2] are equivalent. Or, at least, that’s how it looks to me.”

And so how would you explain that to someone? One option has God magically causing a giant rock to appear… maybe right next to the moon. And you are saying it is fundamentally the same as watching the universe run its course for billions of years… planets form… planets fly apart… and one of the chunks starts heading towards our solar system… it looks like it is going to miss completely … but as the sun is progressing through the galaxy at a huge velocity, we have the earth swinging around it… and suddenly the asteroid and the Earth smash together.

So: where did the asteroid come from in Option [1]: seemingly from the middle of something, looking very much like some kind of unlawful, miraculous event.
And in Option [2] we have a known trajectory and a known origination, and we have all the physical cues and markers that suggest it has been under natural cosmological laws for the entire time.

Tell me how you can say they are equivalent? The result seems to be equivalent. You seem quite interested in using some kind of metaphysical principle of “identity” to assert the two options are equivalent. But I really don’t see why a scientist would ever arrive at such a conclusion. One option is quintessentially scientific in its form, source and history. And the other is quintessentially miraculous in the classical sense.

So what gives? Is there some kind of Candid camera around that I can’t see?

[T_aquaticus]

@gbrooks9

But if you listen to the details he offers around his Pool Shot
discussion … he says there is no special structure of “Intelligent
Design” obvious in the Design of the Pool Shot. The Design is
“installed” (“installed” is my word) … installed into the system
by means of the exact positioning of all the balls and the exact
positioning of the cue stick.

This is directly contradicted by his rejection of observed natural mechanisms of mutatagenesis producing the DNA changes he is talking about. Behe’s position may have changed since he made those comments, but his previous comments are not consistent with the Pool Shot model.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

There is a difference between saying:

1. “Behe explicitly affirms that natural processes cannot be responsible for larger evolutionary changes.”

and saying:

2. “Even if Behe never explicitly affirms that non-natural activity is happening, and even if he personally conceives that non-natural activity is not necessary for design, in fact non-natural activity is logically required by his position.”

Do you see the difference? In the first case, you would be imputing to Behe a view he never states.

He states that the observed natural processes of mutagenesis could not produce the DNA changes in IC system right here:

I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.
Michael Behe

You even said it yourself:

@Eddie

However, you will notice that, despite the title, Behe usually qualifies “evolution” with “Darwinian” or “neo-Darwinian” (those words you don’t like again – they keep cropping up!). He rarely if ever says that “natural” processes can’t produce something, or even that “evolution” can’t produce something (except where the context makes clear that he has in mind evolution as driven by random mutations).

The observed natural process of mutagenesis is random as determined by the scientific method. The natural process is random. If he rejects mutations being random, then he rejects the natural process. Even more, he explicitly states that the mutations were deliberate.

Let’s read what others in the ID community have said about Behe’s position:

Proteins commonly interact with other molecules through a “hand-in-glove” fit, but these interactions often require multiple amino acids to be ‘just right’ before they occur. In 2004, Behe, along with University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke, simulated the Darwinian evolution of such protein-protein interactions. Behe and Snoke’s calculations found that for multicellular organisms, evolving a simple protein-protein interaction which required two or more mutations in order to function would probably require more organisms and generations than would be available over the entire history of the Earth. They concluded that “the mechanism of gene duplication and point mutation alone would be ineffective…because few multicellular species reach the required population sizes.”
Casey Luskin

Again, we see that the observed natural process of mutagenesis is said to be insufficient.

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@T_Aquaticus ,

@Eddie writes a good sentence; I’m going to modify the punctuation a little and put it here: "evolution might work some other way. It might be supplemented by interventions (option 2 above), or designed outcomes might be built into it that are realized by natural means other than Darwinian mechanisms . . .

So I take the book as saying, not that “evolution” can’t produce certain things,

but that

evolution without design (involved somehow) can’t produce those things.

Mr. T, your response is: “. . . Random mutations are defined by methodology, and the observed processes of mutation are random. . . What Behe is saying is that the DNA changes he is talking about do not come about by the processes we see occurring in the lab. That is, Behe is saying that they didn’t come about through natural means.”

I would encourage you to broaden your imagination a little bit here. You write “the observed processes of mutation are random”, and then you stop chasing the rabbit! Pick the rabbit up again, if you would, and answer one or two simple questions:

1] what are the top 2 or 3 causes for mutation that you know of? This isn’t a trick question. I don’t need to know precisely the most common triggers for mutation might be. But I do need you to have 2 or 3 of these “natural causes” in your mind.

2] Now that you have something reasonable and natural as a source of mutation (a stray enzyme in the cellular fluid?, a tiny electrical current between neighboring cells?, a physical impact on the cell? whatever you think is credible)… if we review the Pool Shot Model again, we realize what Dr. Behe was trying to say: how do you know there isn’t design at work if a cosmic ray that triggers a mutation in an offspring wasn’t arranged for since the original “Big Bang” started the pool ball collisions that would eventually lead to triggering that cosmic ray!

3] What Behe is saying is if God had originally intended the cosmic ray that triggered the original mutation … the odds that this specific mutation would occur is “are just too low”!

4] Sometimes I’m sympathetic to that logic; sometimes I’m not. But the one thing I avoid is thinking that Behe is speaking about magical, miraculous causes of mutation. Eddie is right. In this context, Behe is being perfectly consistent with the scientist in him… with the exception being how he estimates probabilities!

[T_aquaticus]

@gbrooks9

1] what are the top 2 or 3 causes for mutation that you know of? This isn’t a trick question. I don’t need to know precisely the most common triggers for mutation might be. But I do need you to have 2 or 3 of these “natural causes” in your mind.

The 2 main causes are base mispairing and CpG methylation. This is why we see more transitions than transversions because A and G are chemically similar and C and T are chemically similar. Nucleotides that are similar to each other can be misidentified by the enzyme that is copying the DNA:

CpG mutations are caused by methylation of the cytosine in a CpG. This is deaminated into a uracil and then copied as an adenosine. CpG are naturally the most susceptible to mutation, and the most common type of substitution mutations seen when comparing the genomes of two species are CpG mutations (on a per base basis).

These mutations are considered random with respect to fitness because they are consistent with being random in experiments. The two main experiments are the Luria-Delbruck fluctuation assay and the Ledergergs’ plate replica experiment.

If we are talking about “Darwinian” or “neo-Darwinian” evolution, then these are the definitions of random mutations. In every experiment done the mutations are random (scientifically speaking).

@gbrooks9

2] Now that you have something reasonable and natural as a source of mutation (a stray enzyme in the cellular fluid?, a tiny electrical current between neighboring cells?, a physical impact on the cell? whatever you think is credible)… if we review the Pool Shot Model again, we realize what Dr. Behe was trying to say: how do you know there isn’t design at work if a cosmic ray that triggers a mutation in an offspring wasn’t arranged for since the original “Big Bang” started the pool ball collisions that would eventually lead to triggering that cosmic ray!

We don’t know if God is involved or not, but Behe seems to think he does know. For experiments being done in the lab, Behe clearly thinks there is no design going on and doesn’t expect products of intelligent design to be produced. Behe thinks random natural processes are what we see going on in life, and those processes can not produce the structures he is talking about.

@gbrooks9

4] Sometimes I’m sympathetic to that logic; sometimes I’m not. But the one thing I avoid is thinking that Behe is speaking about magical, miraculous causes of mutation. Eddie is right. In this context, Behe is being perfectly consistent with the scientist in him… with the exception being how he estimates probabilities!

If that is what you think, then you are ignoring decades of Behe’s writing.

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@gbrooks9

And so how would you explain that to someone?

I’m not sure how to explain it.

If God is outside of time, then God doing something at the beginning of time is the same as God doing something in the middle of time. The middle of time is when we experience, but not when God experiences it.

Perhaps the idea that God is outside of time appears incoherent to you. Perhaps it really is incoherent. As an agnostic, I don’t have to resolve those issues. But people do talk of God being outside of time

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@nwrickert

Perhaps it really is incoherent. As an agnostic, I don’t have to resolve those issues. But people do talk of God being outside of time

@nwrickert

I agree that God is outside time.

But it never occurred to mw that by being outside time that it means God doing something miraculous and god doing some thing thru natural laws should be seen as “the same”.

To me there are clear differences.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

T. aquaticus:

Before we get into the details of your most recent answer, can you answer the question I put to you in the before?

My question was about the difference between Behe saying “natural causes cannot explain X” and some reader inferring “Behe believes that natural causes cannot explain X”.

Here is what I wrote:

---

There is a difference between saying:

1. “Behe explicitly affirms that natural processes cannot be responsible for larger evolutionary changes.”

and saying:

2. “Even if Behe never explicitly affirms that non-natural activity is happening, and even if he personally conceives that non-natural activity is not necessary for design, in fact non-natural activity is logically required by his position.”

Do you see the difference? In the first case, you would be imputing to Behe a view he never states. In the second case, you would be inferring something based on what Behe says – and in that case, you must take responsibility for the inference yourself, and not impute to Behe the thing that you infer, as a conscious affirmation of his own.

Is it the second thing you are saying here, or the first?

---

I think this is the sort of question you can answer without getting into much scientific detail, since the question required you to explain only what your claim about Behe was – not for you to defend that claim scientifically.

[Zachary_Ardern]

I haven’t yet read all of the above, but am very interested in this topic.

I was interested to see one of Denis Lamoureux’s books very positively cites Denton, at least his ‘Nature’s Destiny’. I found this passage from ‘Evolutionary Creation’ rather shocking [emphasis added] …
“It is important to recognize that though Denton presents scientifically credible data, its organization into a comprehensive theory of evolution, which features directionality and teleology, is in the first stages of development. Nevertheless Nature’s Destiny challenges the secular belief that evolution is driven only by blind chance, and Denton’s identification of law-like evolutionary mechanisms certainly points toward intelligent design.”

Note that Denton is not, as far as I’m aware, a theist, so he can’t really be described as a theistic evolutionist as some have here.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

My question was about the difference between Behe saying “natural causes cannot explain X” and some reader inferring “Behe believes that natural causes cannot explain X”.

The difference doesn’t matter because Behe has emphatically stated that the observed natural processes can not produce IC systems and other markers of intelligent design.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

The difference doesn’t matter because Behe has emphatically stated that the observed natural processes can not produce IC systems and other markers of intelligent design.

The difference does matter, because you are reading more into Behe’s statements than his words warrant.

How do you get from the very specific natural processes Behe mentions – random mutations coupled with natural selection, or what he calls “neo-Darwinian” processes, to all possible natural processes, known or unknown?

The fact he does not think that random mutations filtered by natural selection could produce major evolutionary change (he certainly grants that these things can produce minor evolutionary change) does not establish that he thinks that major evolutionary change is outside of the reach of natural processes. “Random mutations filtered by natural selection” constitutes only a subset, not the entire set, of “all natural causes.”

If Behe ever wanted to say that “natural processes cannot account for what we see”, why hasn’t he ever said that, in those words, in over 20 years? Don’t you find it odd that you can’t find any clear and direct statement by him, if that is what he believes?

So again, you are avoiding the question.

Are you claiming the Behe personally believes that no natural cause, no set of natural causes, could by itself account for macroevolutionary change – that supernatural help would be needed?

Or are you making a lesser claim, i.e., that whatever Behe may think personally, his line of argument (whether he understands its logic or not) entails that natural causes need to supplemented by supernatural ones?

Why can’t you simply answer this question? Surely you know your own mind, and therefore you know what you are claiming.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

How do you get from the very specific natural processes Behe mentions – random mutations coupled with natural selection, or what he calls “neo-Darwinian” processes, to all possible natural processes, known or unknown ?

I get there from this statement:

I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.
Michael Behe

Behe is saying that the natural processes we see occurring in the lab are unguided and random mutations. So if the mechanisms are not present in nature, then where do those mechanisms exist?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Hello, Zachary. Yes, Lamoureux’s admiration for Denton has long intrigued me. It’s almost as if Lamoureux is less wedded to the proposition that “there can’t be any scientific evidence for design” than many other TE leaders are. In any case, the lack of interest in Denton’s work among scientists from BioLogos and the ASA is astounding to me. (Well, originally it was astounding to me, but now I’m used to the general incoherence of the thought of those people, so I no longer worry about it too much.)

I think Denton might be described as a “deistic evolutionist”, since his God, as set forth in Nature’s Destiny, seems in many respects like the God of Deism.

Whether Denton has, in his more recent books, backed away a bit from the direct affirmations of design in Nature’s Destiny, is also an interesting question.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Behe is talking about a lab setup designed to test “random mutations plus natural selection.” If “random mutations plus natural selection” can produce a flagellum, then the design hypothesis would be redundant.

But what if random mutations plus natural selection can’t produce a flagellum, after decades of experiments specially designed to give it every chance to do so? Would that prove that “no natural causes” could produce a flagellum? No, it would not prove any such thing.

Experiments are not designed to test “all possible natural causes” for a thing. They are designed to test for a limited set of causes.

Instead of putting words in Behe’s mouth, such as “natural causes”, why don’t you listen to Behe’s own account of what he thinks? You base your arguments on his two books, correct? Well, did you read the statement of his I linked to earlier, written after his two books, and presumably taking into account what he wrote in them?

https://evolutionnews.org/2009/11/god_design_and_contingency_in/

There Behe is invited by a correspondent to settle clearly for the public whether or not his thought requires “supernatural interventions.” Do you see any insistence upon “interventions”, “miracles”, or non-natural processes anywhere in his discussion? Would that not be a logical place for him to state if he thought evolution required supernatural intervention? But he doesn’t do that. He speaks over and over about detecting design, not detecting whether or not the cause of the design was supernatural. He says nothing about natural causes being unable to produce this or that.

You seem determined to force your vocabulary, and your set of intellectual categories, upon Behe.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

Behe is talking about a lab setup designed to test “random mutations plus natural selection.”

That lab setup has life doing what it does naturally. Behe is saying that there is no intelligent design when life does what it does naturally. Behe is saying that the bacteria do not have the natural capacity to produce IC systems. If these mechanisms don’t exist naturally in life, then where do they come from?

If life has the ability to produce IC systems, then why would Behe say that we should not see IC systems appearing in these experiments?

@Eddie

There Behe is invited by a correspondent to settle clearly for the public whether or not his thought requires “supernatural interventions.” Do you see any insistence upon “interventions”, “miracles”, or non-natural processes anywhere in his discussion? Would that not be a logical place for him to state if he thought evolution required supernatural intervention? But he doesn’t do that. He speaks over and over about detecting design, not detecting whether or not the cause of the design was supernatural. He says nothing about natural causes being unable to produce this or that.

He is hiding it under a bushel.

[Timothy_Horton]

@Eddie

Behe is talking about a lab setup designed to test “random mutations plus natural selection.” If “random mutations plus natural selection” can produce a flagellum, then the design hypothesis would be redundant.

No it wouldn’t because even if some scientist wasted the time and money to evolve a flagellum in the lab, the IDers would just move the goalposts to the next target. They’d claim the blood clotting system or ATP or the ribosome must be “Designed!”. Their Designer God will just keep hiding in the next available Gap.