The Massive Confusion On ID and Evolution

This is only half-true. Laboratory experiments are designed to isolate one or two objects of investigation, and need to shut out various complex interactions that occur in natural, uncontrolled environments, so that the objects under investigation can be clearly seen and measured. This has been the case since Galileo rolled the balls down the sloped surface. In the case of Lenski’s experiments, for example, the bacteria are fed and grow in an environment deliberately designed to and controlled so as to reveal certain things. If one was looking for different things, one would devise a different experiment. In the case of an experiment designed to see if bacteria could develop flagella, one would have to set up the artificial environment so that motility would give a selective advantage. If one wasn’t careful to do that, if other things in the setup gave the bacteria a different selective advantage, then the experiment would give muddled results.

But he doesn’t say either of these things. The words “natural capacity” are yours, not Behe’s.

You see? This is your question. And your “if” clause already biases the answer, since Behe hasn’t said “don’t exist naturally in life” – he has only said something about the limitations of the purported mutation/selection process – which is not all what goes on in life. Again, you are treating a subset of natural mechanisms as if they are all of natural mechanisms. That is like treating the subset “mammals”
as if they covered the whole set “vertebrates”.

Ah, so this is what your argument comes down to. You think that Behe is being deliberately dishonest with his readers. Therefore you allow yourself to impute any belief you like to him, even without evidence from his texts, on the assumption that he is trying to conceal the full import of what he means. You are in effect conversing with Behe (through me as intermediary) in bad faith, because you are not allowing that he says what he means, and means what he says. And in this habit you are typical of so many critics of ID. But tell me, do you regularly do this when you interact with other scientists? Do you regularly question their sincerity, their motives, etc.? I do not normally see such accusations in the technical scientific literature which you uphold as the model of good science. I see arguments against what other scientists claim, not imputations that they claim things they haven’t said.

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@T_aquaticus,

The answer is 1 hr and 23 minutes in that video on the pool shot model.

God sets up the pins, balls and legos, then he says Go! Naturally, this implies that god arranged to make flagella just enough times as deemed necessary.

If it happened now… in a lab… i think he would be shocked… what else could he think other than God is deliberately trying to embarrass him!

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Do you think Behe would expect to see a flagellum evolve in the right conditions?

Behe says that IC systems will not evolve in the lab. Those are his words.

Then why don’t you show us the natural mechanisms that allow for the evolution of an IC system. Perhaps you can cite Behe’s work where he discusses these natural mechanisms that can give rise to IC systems.

It’s pretty obvious he is avoiding the question. If Behe thinks there are naturally occurring mechanisms that give rise to IC systems then why didn’t he describe them?

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I’m not a mind-reader, so unless Behe tells me directly, I can’t say what he might “expect”. All that he has said directly is that it is unlikely that evolution could produce a flagellum if evolution is driven by random mutations plus natural selection. He has not ruled out the possibility that evolution could produce a flagellum if evolution proceeds differently. He has not said that “evolution” (except when the term is explicitly or implicitly qualified by “neo-Darwinian”) could build a flagellum, or that it couldn’t. He has not said that “natural causes” could build a flagellum, or that they couldn’t. You keep imputing to him the view that it couldn’t – without a shred of textual warrant – not one direct statement from over 20 years of his writings.

That is your paraphrase of his words. That paraphrase leaves out the context of hundreds of pages of careful qualifications in his writings. And does “will not evolve” in your words mean “cannot possibly evolve” or “have not so far been observed to evolve”? The first meaning expresses a theory-bound commitment, the second merely an empirical fact.

I’m not obliged to, as I’ve made no claim on this subject. I don’t have to provide evidence for a claim I have not made.

As I’ve already said, he has made no statement one way or the other regarding whether “natural mechanisms” can give rise to IC systems. He has said that design would almost certainly be necessary to build some systems, since the probability of their forming by neo-Darwinian operations is vanishingly small. But he has not said that the design has to be delivered through supernatural interventions. That is your addition to his words. The fact that he endorsed Denton’s book, which offers a wholly naturalistic account of how design becomes actual in the world, should be sufficient evidence that Behe does not rule out all naturalistic understandings of evolution. But you have brushed aside Behe’s endorsement of Denton, as you have brushed aside his pool shot analogy. Brushing aside statements that authors do make, while imputing to them statements that they have not made, seems to be a standard part of your argumentative style.

I didn’t say he thought that. I don’t know what he thinks. I know only that he thinks it is logically possible that the universe could be designed in such a way that evolution could proceed entirely by natural causes (though not by neo-Darwinian causes alone). Whether he thinks that is the way the universe actually is, is another question. If you want to know his view on that, why don’t you ask him, instead of guessing, speculating, and making shaky inferences?

I don’t agree that Behe is avoiding any question. He is stating what is possible within a design framework: evolution could be a designed process that proceeds by wholly natural causes, or it could be a process in which unguided natural processes are supplemented by interventions. He expresses the first possibility in his pool shot analogy, and by his endorsement of Denton’s second book (the endorsement not implying that Denton’s views are entirely true, but only that they are worth considering). He admits to the second possibility in various places, including the passage I presented. He does not say which is the correct view, and the most natural reason for this silence, given all that he has written about design detection, is that design inferences, even when made with the greatest care, only can tell us whether or not something is designed, not how the design was actualized. (E.g., we can know that the Great Pyramid was designed, but without historical knowledge we can’t tell whether it was put there in the desert by the god Ptah or erected by thousands of slaves using certain ancient construction techniques.) If a design could have been actualized either with or without supernatural interventions, then design theory must remain silent on which of those two possibilities expresses what really happened historically. Behe doesn’t need to settle the question, for his own purpose, which is to persuade the public and other scientists that design is a real causal factor in nature.

It is also quite possible that he personally has not made up his mind on the question. That would be in keeping with his intellectual temperament, which is exploratory rather than dogmatic. I would speculate that he perhaps envisions the designer as “tinkering” with natural systems, i.e., as “intervening,” but that is wholly my speculation, and I have no proof of that from anything Behe has written, so I don’t offer it as Behe’s view, or pretend that I can establish it from Behe’s writings.

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Differently how?

Yes, not once has Behe said that natural processes can produce a flagellum. I think that says something.

Here are Behe’s own words again:

Behe says that the bacteria growing in the lab do not have the capability of producing a bacterial flagellum all on their own. He describes intelligent design as being deliberate.

You are claiming that there are additional natural mechanisms that can produce IC systems. It would be helpful if either you or Behe would describe what those mechanisms are.

Then what other mechanisms are you proposing other than those you would classify is neo-Darwinian?

With this in mind, why isn’t it possible for IC systems to arise naturally in bacteria in the lab? Why does Behe state that such an observation would falsify intelligent design?

I asked you a long time ago to answer a simple question, i.e., what your claim about Behe was. You still have not answered the question. You are dancing around it, as you claim Behe is dancing around questions that you want answered.

I asked you whether you were claiming that Behe anywhere directly affirms that natural causes cannot produce complex systems, or whether you were making the lesser claim that, even if Behe doesn’t affirm that, it is logically required by other things that he says. Twice you refused to answer the question.

It is now clear – despite your refusal to answer what was a very easy question to answer – that you are claiming the latter of my two options, i.e., that whether Behe formally excludes all natural causes or not, other things he says imply that no combination of natural causes could do the job. That is, you are claiming, based on inferences you make from his statements, that Behe’s position is not coherent unless he asserts supernatural activity, whether he is fully conscious of the dependence of his scheme on supernatural activity or not.

Why you couldn’t have answered that question earlier is beyond me.

Not that there are, but that there may be. I do not rule out the possibility that some combination of natural mechanisms can produce IC systems. On the other hand, I do not affirm this possibility as a fact. I do not know whether purely natural mechanisms could produce IC systems. I believe that is Behe’s position as well – that he does not know, one way or the other. (He is pretty certain that some proposed natural mechanisms aren’t up to the job, but he has never generalized that skepticism to cover all possible natural mechanisms.)

The “other mechanisms” you ask for are all natural mechanisms, known or yet to be discovered, which could be fit into evolutionary schemes that are called “front-loaded.” One such scheme is set forth in Nature’s Destiny by Michael Denton. If you want an idea of what people generally mean by “front-loaded” evolutionary schemes, I think Denton’s book is a very good place to begin.

@T_aquaticus,

Behe’s natural mechanisms are all the natural causes that ordinarily cause mutations… but arranged by God to occur by means of his Pool Shot Model.

I have answered the question multiple times. Behe denies that natural processes can produce IC systems in this quote:

You claimed that there are natural causes that wouldn’t be present in a lab experiment which could produce an IC system, and you have refused to answer my question of what those mechanisms are.

Then why doesn’t Behe think that IC systems can emerge in populations in the lab or in the wild? Why does he model the emergence of chloroquine resistance in falciparum on random mutations and selection as if those are the only mechanisms available to the parasites?

It’s also interesting to read what Behe said about evolution:

It would seem that Behe would also have to conclude that ID is also immune to falsification for those very same reasons, yet he stated quite clearly that ID is easily falsifiable.

Then why wouldn’t we see IC systems emerging in the lab? Why does Behe think this wouldn’t happen?

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No, he does not. In this quotation he denies that natural selection can produce the bacterial flagellum.

“Natural selection” is not “all natural causes.” Natural selection is only one out of many possible natural causes. I have been trying to drill this very basic point of English vocabulary into your head, but without success.

Though you ask it rhetorically, that is a good question. And your own answer to this question is an inference that for Behe no natural causes could generate IC systems. That may be a plausible deduction. But Behe doesn’t say that. Again and again I am trying to get you to distinguish between what an author says and what you think an author implies. And again and again, you keep saying that Behe says something which at best he only implies. This is poor scholarship on your part. If you want to say “I think Behe implies that no natural causes can generate IC systems,” then say that. But don’t put those words into Behe’s mouth – admit that you are making an inference from his words. That’s all I’ve been asking for.

Why don’t you ask him?

@eddie we have asked him. Would you ask him to engage with us? That would be really interesting. I would make it a protected thread to enable real dialogue.

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That is false. He states that bacteria can’t produce a new flagellum on their own. Behe never lists any other natural mechanisms that the bacteria have that could produce a new flagellum. The only natural mechanisms he describes for any species is random mutations and natural selection. He models naturally occurring populations with random mutations and natural selection as if those are the only mechanisms they have available to them.

The implications are pretty obvious.

I think we can see who is avoiding the questions.

By using the term “implications” you have conceded that I am right. You cannot find any direct statement of Behe, in the passage you presented for evidence, that “natural causes cannot produce IC systems,”, but you infer what he thinks from what he says. I have not challenged your right to draw inferences. I have challenged the propriety of claiming that an author says something when at best he implies it.

All I am asking you to do is to modify your choice of words, not to surrender your position. But you won’t even do that. Something about surrendering even the tiniest point to someone you perceive as an ID proponent seems to grate on you. I don’t consider this an attitude very becoming of a scientist. A scientist, as Joshua has said many times, should be willing to retract errors in public. And here you’re not being asked to retract a scientific position, but merely an inaccuracy in expression about how Behe’s sentences are to be characterized. Yet you’re unwilling to do even that much. If you dig in your heels so deeply about such a little point, if you are willing to argue for post after post, day after day, in order to defend a choice of words which you can’t justify from Behe’s written text, when you could easily just say, “OK, he doesn’t say it directly, but I believe it’s implied,” that suggests a characteristic intellectual stubbornness which does you little credit. I hope that such a “man the battlements” attitude toward your own assertions does not govern how you present yourself in your own scientific field.

Since we can’t agree to make a distinction between “asserting” and “implying,” despite my repeated attempts to get you to do so, I would suggest that this discussion is no longer profitable (and probably hasn’t been, for some time). So I’m exiting it.

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I have noticed that Behe, like Meyer (and unlike Dembski, Nelson, Hunter and some others) tends to avoid internet debating sites. He will attend formal debates at universities, on the radio or television, etc., but he does not seem to wish to invest time in the blog-site setting. I don’t know the reasons for this. Perhaps he thinks he will reach a larger audience through the other media, and only a small audience of largely inflexible debaters on a blog site. Or perhaps he has seen enough of the typical kind of angry, ad hominem statements that are made about him on blog sites, some coming from scientific colleagues whose professional manners should be much better than they are, that he is averse to frequenting such discussions.

Time may be a factor as well. A number of his opponents seem to have academic positions that are exclusively or largely research positions, requiring little or no teaching commitment. He has a regular faculty position at Lehigh, which (I’m guessing) involves preparing lectures and labs for at least two courses each semester, and maybe three or four courses in some semesters. This also could involve much grading – undergraduate classes can be quite large. Not to mention weekly faculty meetings, and other university administrative events. If he has, say, only 10 hours of discretionary time per week to publicize his ideas after all his teaching and administrative work is done, he may not feel that debating on a blog site is the best way to spend that time, as opposed to making a video for a wider audience.

I could try asking him, but based on his history – over 20 years of avoiding internet debating sites – I think his answer will be no. In any case, I would rather wait until his book is out on the market, and people here have all had time to read it, so that any discussion here with him (on the slight chance that he consents to join in for a space of time) will be able to focus on his current conclusions and his current way of expressing them, rather than things he said 10 or 20 years ago. I think the book is due out in February – the time to invite him might be February or March. The chance of having an intelligent discussion about his new book, under a protected thread, might sway him to depart from his usual practice. Remind me again once the book comes out.

The propriety? What are you talking about? It is very normal to read a scientific paper and determine what it implies for the larger field of biology.

Behe implies that natural mechanisms are incapable of producing IC systems. This implication is as plain as day. If all you can say is, “How dare you!!” in response then I can only surmise that you see the same implication.

And now we have the usual diversion into rhetoric and questions of character instead of addressing the scientific points.

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No, it is not normal in scientific writing to claim that a scientist SAID something when he didn’t SAY it.

I never raise questions of character when people remain on topic (science, theology, etc.). However, it is quite proper to raise questions of character, motivation, or attitude when there appears to be unnecessary obstruction of the conversational process. Why, one wonders, is the other person unwilling to grant even the smallest point – even a point which does not require surrendering anything of his scientific or theological position, since the point is not about either science or theology, but only about the difference in meaning between “say” and “imply”?

Basic common sense would appear to teach the simple rule: If you don’t want to be accused by others of being conversationally stubborn, don’t hold out for a ridiculously long time to maintain a point which is not only wrong but not even necessary to your argument. Just grant the point quickly so that the conversation can get back to issues of substance. You could have saved thousands of words for both of us by simply saying from the outset, “I grant that Behe never anywhere says directly that natural causes can’t produce IC systems. However, I think he is implying it in passages like this…” The fact that you chose to force me to drag that admission out of you, instead of conceding it right away, does, in my view, say something about your personal attitude – whether toward me, toward Behe, toward ID, or some combination of those. So if you don’t like the criticism of attitude, my suggestion would be to change the attitude. :slight_smile:

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Would you agree that Behe said bacteria can’t produce a new flagellum all on their own, or if they did produce a flagellum all on their own that it would falsify Intelligent Design?

Physician, heal thyself.

I’ve actually, through much practice, become quite good at this. :smiley:

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I am very, very skeptical that your guess is correct.

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I’m puzzled by this. Are you claiming that research is easier or less time-consuming than teaching?

That was not your original claim, way back. Your original claim was broader; it was that Behe said that “natural causes” cannot produce IC systems. I asked you to find a passage anywhere from the time of Darwin’s Black Box to the present where he explicitly generalizes to “natural causes.” You could not do it. So you should have immediately conceded that you could not produce such a statement, and then gone to say that you thought that position was implied in his writing. That’s what a trained Classicist, Philosopher, Historian, etc. would have done in a similar situation.

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