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.
@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?
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did not understand this. Why did he feel compelled to respond. What did he disagree with exactly? He affirms common descent, so what was the argument about exactly?
Well if there are explanations of the evolution of flagellum, Josh should have presented it at the debate. As has been stated numerous times, Behe’s use of the flagellum should not have been a surprise. Why didn’t Josh present an alternative?
The only alternative presented was “neutral theory” with no explanation. What was that argument about exactly?
There wasn’t an argument at all. The evening was designed to show that Christians with different views on science could still agree on the most important matters. The audience was submitting questions and one member actually asked what they really disagreed about.
This wasn’t the appropriate venue to discuss exaptation and constructive neutral evolution. There was neither time nor audience expertise.
Ben, from your profile:
When I write, I choose my words very carefully in the expectation that people will read them correctly. I generally respond to people in the tone in which I’m addressed.
I think that neither the word “sociopathy” or the tone is in keeping with Curtis’ comment.
From what I have read, this would be my summary:
Behe: In my opinion, life looks like it was designed.
Swamidass: Opinions aren’t science.
I take it you do actually understand that this is a non-sequitur, right?
Wow. I haven’t noticed any “sociopathy” on this thread and certainly not in Dr. Henderson’s reply.
If your objection is to his mentioning the fact that the event was aimed at the general public, most without significant expertise in evolutionary biology, Dr. Henderson was simply expressing an objective fact and the stated aims of the event organizers.
Indeed, in the informal discussion after the event, I heard people asking very basic questions like “What is Neutral Theory?”, “What exactly is Intelligent Design and what makes it science?”, and “How do Drs. Behe and Swamidass differ in their views? I wasn’t quite sure.”
Still waiting for Josh to explain why he even brought up neutral theory, since he immediately backed off of it when Behe called him on it. If you weren’t prepared to defend that claim, @swamidass , why did you bring it up?
I was sitting in the front row last night, and it sounds like you and I witnessed very different events.
Keep in mind that the presentations were meant to be a discussion, not a debate. Indeed, in the interests of time constraints and intended purpose, Dr. Micah Green (the
moderator) avoided tantalizing debate points and discouraged some fascinating but secondary tangents. At some key moments @swamidass started to question Dr. Behe or expanded upon a technical issue, but he was halted in the interest of time. I empathized with the moderator because even with his valiant efforts, there was little time remaining for audience Q&A. He knew there would be a lot to cover in something like 110 minutes.