Tickets for Swamidass & Behe event are all gone. Every seat filled

I don’t think it starts for another 25 minutes or so.

Live video feed is here

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2607832099499398&ref=watch_permalink

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15 minutes in and Behe has already told a number of lies. He just stood up and claimed no one in the last 20 years has tried to explain the evolution of the flagellum, completely ignoring the work of Nic Matzke and others.

Lots of the usual ID talking points: Darwin can’t explain this blah blah blah, this is SOOOOO complex it can’t evolve blah blah blah.

ED1: Oh dear, he just broke out the Mt Rushmore argument. :roll_eyes:

ED2: Stock ID arguments. Life features look purposely designed so they must be purposely designed.

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How is josh responding?

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Dr. S just took the podium, talking about his background.

ACK! Someone just knocked the camera out of focus.

OK Fixed now.

JS points:
Dawrinism isn’t modern evolutionary theory.
God could use evolution to design but such design couldn’t be directly detected
Science is the wrong tool to try and demonstrate God.

ED1: ID can’t explain the branching pattern of the genetic phylogenetic tree.
Now describing GAE

ED2: Analogies of natural life which look like human designs doesn’t make them designed.
Points out the DI’s “scientific dissent from Darwinism” claiming Darwinism is only RM+NS is false.

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Behe back at podium.

Sound quality is terrible. Hard to make out what either man is saying.

ED1: hand waves away genetic phylogenetic tree an unimportant
Goes back to ID talking point - you can tell design just by looking at it.
Starts on how complex the biochemistry of life is, so that indicated design.
Misrepresents Neutral theory as opposing Darwinism
Claims biological life parts are purposely arranged. Keeps harping on “purposeful” but keeps mistaking function for purpose.

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Dr. S back up

Emphasized his desire to find a peaceful middle ground while still disputing ID
Emphasizes IDists are all still Christians

ED1: points to problems with ID like why did God design fatal viruses.
Didn’t say anything about Behe’s second set of points.

ED2: taking questions from audience

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Question: Expresses personal incredulity over how evolution produces complexity
Dr.S Answer : scientific processes aren’t always intuitive, we have empirical evidence evolutionary processes work

Behe: Repeats claim you know design when you see it. Offers analogy of finding a message and knowing it was designed. Offers analogy of Easter Island statues.

Dr S. Points out that analogies aren’t evidence and analogies break down when you look at the details. Points out ID arguments are intuitive, not supported with positive evidence.

Behe once again harps on the purposeful arrangement of parts, again confused function with purpose.

Dr. S again points out analogies “this looks like human design” are not evidence. Points out ID as done now is not science.

ED: Behe again goes back to purposeful arrangement of parts. Seems to be his only argument.
Behe whines how science hates ID and try to hold it back.

ED: Behe asked about his claim design often leaves “residue” (like sawdust at a carpentry shop). Behe deflects the question and instead claims the bacterial phage is exquisitely designed.

Dr.S again points out science is not equipped to answer questions about Theism.

ED: Behe whines evolution gives a false impression about how much science knows.

Session ends.

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That seems to be the sum total of Behe’s logic. Someday someone needs to press him on the controls that he has done to lend even a tiny bit of credence to this line of reasoning.

I wasn’t much impressed with Tour’s question. It is annoying to hear someone imply that no one knows anything about chemical mechanisms in operation inside living cells.

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It was about what I expected from Behe the salesman. The mindless repetition of his usual ID talking points. Dr. S took it way too easy on Behe and let him slide on a number of points IMHO, but that’s Dr. S’s peaceful nature.

Tour is probably the only IDiot with an ego bigger than Behe’s. Of course he had to inject his personal opinion as fact. Looks like Tour didn’t learn his lesson the last time he made a fool of himself by claiming no one understands macroevolution.

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@davecarlson sorry … in the antipodes here, i got confused as to the time.

So what did you think of his 5 minute response?

Makes you wonder how all those metabolic charts were made. Just where does Tour get his information?

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The audio made it hard to follow, but Behe seemed like he wanted to disagree about the human-chimp DNA similarity slide. But he didn’t really make a case as far as I could follow.

I was sitting in the front row about twenty feet in front of Joshua and the sound quality there was just as bad. The Rudder Theater is appropriately sound engineered for live musical performance but the crude P.A. system just didn’t work well for a discussion format. In fact, it was clear at times that Dr. Behe couldn’t even hear Joshua from his side of the stage.

My main impression of the evening was that Dr. Behe hasn’t changed his presentation all that much in decades. He did bring some beautiful molecular animations of “obviously designed”(!) biological structures (e.g., the flagellum) which reflected recent discoveries but which didn’t really help his argument-from-intuition approach. Nevertheless, I would certainly admit that many non-scientists in the audience probably found such visuals compelling and they left the presentation excited about ID.

@cwhenderson and I enjoyed very brisk sales at our t-shirt stand before and after the presentation. The best-sellers actually expressed my general impressions of the evening while also reflecting Dr. Behe’s celebrity status as standard bearer of a movement:

“ID, therefore I am.”
— Michael Behe

“I’m looking over my notes from Dover.”
—Michael Behe

For those on Team Joshua, we did well with:

“Behe is not IC.”

“I’ve gone GAE and that’s OK.”

Of course, the old standby catch-phrases always sell well:

“My brother at Texas A&M attended Behe-Swamidass 2020 …
… but all I got was this lousy intelligently designed t-shirt.”

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Yeah, my jaw pretty much dropped to the floor when I heard this. He repeated this later… As if repeating something that isn’t true often enough will somehow make it more true.

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Yes, this was James Tour’s personal question. He was still asking Josh about this in the elevator 30 minutes later as we left the building. He seemed sincere in wanting to understand the scientific evidence. As they had 1-2 hours in the car ride back to Houston and some more time this morning, maybe Josh can make a few points clear to him that he is missing badly right now.

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Yes, that was Behe’s argument in a nutshell - the same one he’s used for 25 years. This stuff is really complex, so it had to be designed.

Yes, it was painful to watch. I got the impression that Behe felt compelled to respond, but didn’t really know how. Josh used the human/chimp and mouse/rat comparison just to demonstrate common ancestry, a point on which Behe agrees, so it was an obvious reach. Behe himself didn’t seem like he was convinced he was making an important rebuttal.

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It truly was. Behe basically said: If DNA comparisons show that humans and chimps score a 2% difference while rats and mice score a 20% difference, then that just goes to show that these kinds of comparisons and numbers are meaningless. Just look at them, people! Rats and mice look so similar and yet supposedly aren’t all that similar. So DNA is clearly the wrong standard to use.

Seriously. I don’t think my paraphrase differs much from what he stated.

So, once again, Behe lets his powers of intuition overrule all data to the contrary.

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I think it may help to understand Behe’s criteria here. He has long maintained that the experiment to refute his argument regarding the bacterial flagellum - probably the only experiment he would accept - is one wherein a mutant devoid of all of the genes encoding the flagellum was grown for generations and generations until voila! A flagellum appears! Not just a flagellum - the exact same flagellum he is holding up as an example. Same proteins, genes, mechanisms, etc.

This is probably what he means when he claims that no one has tried to explain the evolution of the flagellum.

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