@Eddie why do you think of all people and topics they decided to engage in a prolonged debate with ME about COMMON DESCENT? In particular, at no point did I argue against design, and CD is ostensibly part of their big tent. The initial article I wrote wasn’t even directed to them.
Several of us at BioLogos (@BradKramer for one) have wondered about this odd strategy. We have some theories, but before I pollute the water, I wonder if you could tell us your assessment. It really makes little sense to me. Can you explain it?
I think it’s a sign of a tepid science that debates over core questions about the details of what they propose to study are not actively debated. From a scientific perspective, I’d expect to see a fierce debate over common descent and the age of the universe followed by a fairly rapid culling, leaving the strongest ideas. I don’t see that so much in the field of ID. It’s very much “open tent, no filter”, defined more by what it isn’t than by what it is.
Prior to formulating how a designer was at work it’s necessary to establish a groundwork of essential details about life. Here are some basic questions that have direct impact on the type and mode of designer(s):
How are species and organisms related to each other?
What are the patterns of relationships found?
When did various species emerge?
I’m not convinced one can effectively create a ‘theory of design’ in a framework which is agnostic to temporal relationships between species or the age of the Earth on which they exist.
Regarding Behe, this is exactly what I say. I say that he is a theistic evolutionist, and I only have a disagreement with him about if science can prove God’s design. It is true that BioLogos has often been antagonistic to him, but I have personally remained in correspondence with him and never publicly attacked him.
Hi @Eddie - It seems to me that Behe’s view of origins has evolved over the years. In Darwin’s Black Box, he insisted that no evolutionary mechanism whatsoever (including drift, which was just taking flight in evolutionary theory) could explain the appearance of complex protein interactions. Instead, he invited the reader to imagine the wondrous appearance of a first organism that possessed the genetic instructions for all complex proteins that would ever exist in all earthly life forms. However, he wrote, the vast majority of the proteins were not expressed in that very first organism. Then, he wrote, various forms of life throughout all of history made their appearance as the genetic instructions deteriorated everywhere in the descendants, while somehow some of the original capabilities that had lain inert got activated in various populations by mutations in genetic switches.
Anyone who is passionate about squaring the insights of biology with orthodox Christianity could hardly be expected to welcome such a view. Behe’s claim that he believed in common descent didn’t seem credible when his view of genetics was so radically different than that of the biological science community. His profession of common descent was viewed by biologists the way that the Bahai claim of belief in Christ is viewed by evangelicals.
I have read a few of Behe’s more recent articles on ENV, and to my eye his views don’t seem to have changed much. But not having read his recent work comprehensively, I might have missed something. Please point me to anything Behe has written where he acknowledges the appearance of previously absent protein instructions via the standard genetic mechanisms (as described by neutral theory, for example). I would be quite interested to learn how his views have changed.
You will notice that I worded my statement very carefully, which I think you will appreciate. I did not state that Behe drove a stake in the ground and said that the imaginative scenario was absolutely what really happened. I said he invited the reader to imagine, which he most certainly did in the paragraph starting at the bottom of page 227 in the hardcover edition, in the section “A Long, Long Time Ago.”
His dismissal of neutral theory is on page 178 of the same edition.
Cheers,
EDIT: I missed one of your questions. I don’t think Behe was trying to mislead anyone about his beliefs; it’s just that his approach to the theory believed in was so radically different than the rest of the biological science community’s. That’s why I chose the Baha’i analogy; they are sincere in their profession of believing in Christ, but adherents of orthodox Christianity like myself do not count them as Christians. I’m not claiming that Behe is not a biologist; I’m just saying that the variant of common descent that he advanced, particularly in the DBB speculative scenario, was vastly different than the accepted science.
Since I have a little time while I wait for a conference to begin, I’ll type out Behe’s paragraph:
“Suppose that nearly four billion years ago the designer made the first cell, already containing all of the irreducibly complex biochemical systems discussed here and many others. (One can postulate that the designs for systems that were to be used later, such as blood clotting, were present but not ‘turned on.’ In present-day organisms plenty of genes are turned off for a while, sometimes for generations, to be turned on at a later time.) Additionally, suppose the designer placed into the cell some other systems for which we cannot adduce enough evidence to conclude design. The cell containing the designed systems then was left on autopilot to reproduce, mutate, eat and be eaten, bump against rocks, and suffer all the vagaries of life on earth. During this process, pace Ken Miller, pseudogenes might occasionally arise and a complex organ might become nonfunctional. These chance events do not mean that the initial biochemical systems were not designed. The cellular warts and wrinkles that Miller takes as evidence of evolution may simply be evidence of age.”
your description of the argument of Darwin’s Black Box is so far from what Behe actually argues in the book that I wouldn’t know where to begin.
It is true that Behe trained most of his fire on the “Darwinian,” “gradualist” school of thought. However, he did not restrict his dismissal of evolutionary mechanisms to the neo-Darwinian school. As I already mentioned, he addressed (and dismissed) neutral theory (p. 178). He also addressed and dismissed:
Kauffman’s self-organizing peptides theory re:abiogenesis (p. 179)
Margulis’ symbiosis theory (pp. 188-189)
Complexity theory (pp. 189-192)
His critique of all non-ID, evolutionary frameworks rested on the inability, up to that point in time, for any of them to provide a detailed account of the emergence of complex protein interactions. A good summary of this critique can be found on pp. 176-177.
In retrospect, though, we see that his critique rested on the inavailability of (affordable) DNA sequencing and modeling. A stunning amount of progress has been made since 1996. Today, high school science fair projects can use the BLAST tool to establish mammalian phylogenies by measuring the mathematical distance between genomes. Such an ability was a pipe dream when Behe wrote DBB. Today, we have the Lenski’s Long-Term Evolution Experiment, and computational biology using AVIDA, and field discoveries of the emergence of novel protein sequences such as nylonase. And I am just scratching the surface. A real expert like @Swamidass would make a far stronger case than I have made in this little post.
History shows that the scientific community is eventually able to overcome initial resistance against useful paradigm shifts, simply because the new paradigm explains the data better than the extant paradigm. We see this with respect to relativity, quantum mechanics (“spooky action at a distance”), plate tectonics…the list could go on and on.
The reason Behe’s formulation of ID in DBB never gained traction in the scientific community is that it never explained the data as well as competing theories. And a growing body of new kinds of evidence is only making that more abundantly clear. But I will leave any detailed explanation of that growing body of evidence to experts like @Swamidass, @DennisVenema, and @Argon, who know it so much better than I, and have been very generous in sharing their expertise with us.
Another thought, @Eddie. When Behe outlined what a research agenda for ID-influenced biology would look like (pp. 230-231), he started by pointing out that research at the cellular level or above would be largely unaffected. At the molecular level, though, a large amount of effort would be poured into determining whether various systems have significant specificity between components–in which case they would be deemed irreducibly complex and thus the result of information injection from an intelligent designer–or if they were sufficiently simple/irreducible to be explained by nondesign mechanisms. Besides calling balls and strikes on the design vs. nondesign issue, research would explore several design-related themes:
'Work could be undertaken to determine whether information for designed systems could lie dormant for long periods of time, or whether the information would have to be added close to the time when the system became operational. Since the simplest possibles design scenario posits a single cell–formed billions of years ago–that already contained all information to produce descendant organisms, other studies could test this scenario by attempting to calculate how much DNA would be required to code the information (keeping in mind that much of the information might be implicit). If DNA alone is insufficient, studies would be initiated to determine if information could be stored in the cell in other ways–for example, as positional information. Other work could focus on whether large, compound systems (containing two or more irreducibly complex systems) could have developed gradually or whether there are compounded irreducibilities.
Such an agenda is anything but open-minded. If a molecular biology system has significant specificity between components, it is classified as designed, full stop. Research would then move to (presumably) more fruitful design-driven biology, such as classifying borderline cases as designed vs. not designed.
It’s not hard to see that Behe’s research agenda would have prevented most, if not all, of the advances in molecular biology that have emerged from research labs over the past two decades. Instead, precious resources would have been diverted into barren, unfruitful activities.
ID’s inability to explain a growing mound of molecular evidence is sufficient to explain why it has not gained traction in the scientific community. But if you’re looking for motivations beyond the purely rational, the effect that the success of ID would have on the biology research program would be worth pondering.
Cheers,
EDIT: Added page numbers, corrected a tttyppppoooo
Yes, that and the fact that Intelligent Design theory is philosophy, not science. That is why the Discovery Institute version of ID and others we commonly hear about are:
(1) mostly about personal incredulity fallacies and argument from ignorance fallacies; [See Michael Behe’s Dover Trial testimony.]
(2) never provide a formal comprehensive scientific theory of ID which one would expect to see systematically presented in a peer-reviewed journal—and never will;
(3) never propose a falsification test regimen for the never-formally-defined scientific theory;
(4) and as my favorite professor and colleague liked to emphasize, never get around to providing a useful set of heuristic rules allowing one to determine “intelligently designed” or “not intelligently designed” for any entity or phenomenon X.
If ID proponents were to ever actually try to cooperate with the scientific method and the peer review community, I might be more impressed. Yet I get the impression that after years of this charade, the Discovery Institute associated IDers (at least, if not most others also) actually depend upon this continued state of ambiguity, confusion, and lack of basic scientific rigor.
If this status quo ever changes and I see a a version of “ID theory” that actually starts looking like science instead of poorly executed philosophy masquerading as science, I will be delighted to take it more seriously. I definitely believe that God intelligently designed the universe in terms of creating it so that it would operate consistent with God’s plan, including God’s will for the laws of physics which inevitably brought biological life and the evolutionary processes which adapt and diversify that life, just as God intended.
And before anyone runs wild with misunderstandings of what is and isn’t Deism, I’ll just point out that I’m a Molinist. I believe God chose the “reality path” which produced all that we observe, including a wonderfully, “intelligently designed” physics which produced the evolutionary outcomes we observe all around us—and which we are as humans created in the Image of God. I don’t consider this to involve “tweaking” because God is outside of the time dimensions he created and he need not interfere or nudge in order to bring about what he has already ordained and chosen as the Sovereign Creator of all. Everything we observe is the reality path God established.
If ever an actual scientific theory of intelligent design is published in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal, I will be delighted to see what develops. If it survives peer review and years of falsification testing, I will praise God as I excitedly explain it to my students and even preach it from the pulpit. Nevertheless, in the meantime I don’t tend to get too caught up in hypotheticals, especially when the track record for ID “theory” thus far is so very appalling. Embarrassing even. And very lamentable. For the most part, it’s been very damaging to the Great Commission because of extremely negative associations with evangelical Christianity. (William Dembski’s clickable fart-machine on the website he built to protest the Dover Trial decision and his various “evolution defending” enemies is one of many sad memories that I wish I could permanently erase from my mind.)
Sadly, even the term “Intelligent Design” is probably damaged beyond any possible positive reclamation. (After all, it has become a virtual synonym for pseudo-science at best, and origins-ministry propaganda entrepreneurship at worst.) And that’s a shame. If a credible version of the ID concept were to arise—representing actual science and not just amateur philosophy— it will probably require a new term, at least within the academy.
Absolutely. The very fact that they are self-declared agnostics about the age of the earth, proves they are not doing science. They’re doing theology, philosophy at best.
My level of expertise in biology is probably about the same as yours, Eddie. I do read a good bit outside of Biologos, paying particular attention to sources pointed out by biologists in the public eye such as Sean Carroll.
But we happen to have reliable survey data about what scientists believe. The 2014 Pew Research polls show that the science community overwhelmingly rejects ID. 90% of the AAAS members surveyed agreed with this statement about evolution:
“Humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection.”
Only 8% agreed with the opposing proposition:
“A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today”
Note that the two responses could overlap: some respondents could be like Richard Denton and affirm both statements (or so I understand from what others have said about Denton). So it is entirely possible that both numbers (90% and 8%) should be higher, and should total to greater than 100%. The important point is that it would be highly unlikely that scientists who affirm the first proposition (“humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection”) would agree with Behe’s model, according to which an intelligent designer acting outside of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology has injected information into the evolutionary process. The injection of information by an intelligent designer, after all, does not figure in standard biology textbooks.
It is also worth noting that the trend is against ID: the 90% agreement with evolution by natural processes is up from 87% in 2009.
What do you think, Eddie: do you disagree with my statement that evolutionary biologists, as a community, overwhelmingly reject ID? What evidence would you adduce against it?
You seem to be saying that defining evolution as common descent, or descent with modifications, is good enough. I agree that it suffices for some purposes. However, most scientists I know and read seem to care deeply about mechanisms. To take an extreme example, the RATE report professes belief in physics, insofar as it claims that the acceleration of radioactive decay was the result of a change in a fundamental constant, rather than a change in the laws of physics themselves. But the views of the RATE report are far outside the bounds of what the overwhelming majority of physicists would accept. In the same way, your notion that the scientific community should accept Behe’s model as just another pea in the pod of evolutionary mechanisms does not appear very palatable to the scientific community, if Pew Research can be trusted.
Indeed. But a biologist like @Swamidasshas said basically the same thing. He also liked my post you are challenging. Since you seem to be in a mood for posing rhetorical questions: are you saying you are better qualified than Dr. S in judging the evidence?
Wow. I seem to have touched a nerve.
Perhaps you are right. On the other hand, perhaps I am able to read Behe’s passage more accurately because I do not have a prior commitment to harmonizing Behe’s views with evolutionary biology.
I have quoted the passage at length, and I have provided adequate information for the curious who might care to investigate the context. I will leave the judgment about which of us is being more accurate to those who care to investigate the matter for themselves.
Enjoy your day, @Eddie. Carpe diem, and may you enjoy the Lord’s blessings!
Thank you! That was my criticism the moment they started trying to use the political process to cram their philosophy into science textbooks. Shameful and shortsighted.