"Without becoming entangled in philosophical or religious arguments about the existence of God, what are we to make of these various reactions? I think that one can simply view them as arising from different estimations of the strengths of competing hypotheses. As an analogy, imagine that a ship- wreck marooned you on a desert island. If you see a few rocks strewn about, you might think nothing of it. But if you see some rocks on the island in a circle, then if you also think some other person may have escaped the wreck and ended up on the island, you may surmise the rocks were arranged by that other survivor, even if you have not yet encountered her face-to-face. On the other hand, if no one else was on the sunken boat and you have no reason to think another person is on the island, then you might shrug off the circle of stones as a peculiar coincidence. However, as the example becomes more and more insistent (say, instead of a circle of stones one sees a stone chimney, or stones spelling out the message “hi” vs “hello” vs “welcome, survivor”) then the hypothesis of intelligent design becomes more and more plausible. It might even reach the point where, if a natural designer were nowhere to be seen, a person would judge it more likely that God was arranging the stones than that it was a coincidence.
To many theists such as myself, the state of the biological evidence is such that the hypothesis of design is more compelling than that unintelligent processes produced the irreducibly complex systems seen in the cell, like the shipwreck survivor who thought someone else might be on the island. However, like the survivor of the shipwreck who thinks no one else is on the island, many (although not all) agnostics and nontheists draw the line differ- ently, and reach the opposite conclusion. This is unsurprising; it is frequently the case in science that when new theories are proposed people judge the evidence differently. The only unusual (but not unprecedented) feature here is that a person’s judgment on the existence of God enters into the balance."
If you want to read the entire article, google for “Behe reply to my critics”. It’s from a philosophy/biology journal from 2001.
So, it seems to me that Behe views God as the designer (not surprisingly, since he is a Catholic) and that he sees God as doing the biological equivalent of moving stones to form patterns. In conjunction with his arguments about irreducible complexity, how else would you read this? How else would God implement design?
In all my years of reading Behe, I’ve never had the sense that he leans towards front loading. It would be hard to fit front loading into his argument from irreducible complexity, actually.
Years ago when we had a back-and-forth on new genes in Drosophila, Behe contested that seeing more than one or two amino acid differences between duplicated genes is enough to suspect design. There was no discussion of how a front-loaded design might play into that situation.
Also, “God arranging stones” implies direct action. “God arranging winds or tides to order stones” would be more consistent with front loading.
The ID creationist is a special kind of creationist. ID Creationists are typically Christian, but there are very rare exceptions. They are all over the map when it comes to what parts of science they accept. For that reason, they do not have a position on how old the earth is, etc. They believe that God intervened and created certain biological structures, and that these are scientifically detectable. They believe these structures are too complex to have come about naturally. They are shy about telling us who the designer is in public, sometimes saying that there could be multiple designers, or that the designer is dead, or that the designer could be an alien. But we all know who you-know-who is.
Maybe now you’ll tell me how you get your sweeping knowledge of how biology is taught in this country, and why you think the biology teachers in Dover are not too bright. Is it simply because they refused to read the ID statement?
In one sense, all Christians are creationists in that we hold God as creator.
As applied to Behe, I held the opinion that, based on the article I quoted, that he viewed God as directly creating IC systems. I wasn’t aware of the piece you linked to. I still think that his 2001 piece is much more consistent with direct creation, but I’ll let the man speak for himself.
A clear account of the basic notion(s) behind the ID inference is found in, “Detecting Design by Eliminating Chance: A Response to Robin Collins by William A. Dembski. The argument as I read it is that specified complexity can be seen as so improbable that a scientific theory of random mutations and natural selection would be untenable. However, Dembski argues by analogy, in that specified complexity is understood through human experience as requiring causality, an intelligent agent. This quote provides a clear statement:
“…whether specified complexity can provide an adequate account for how design hypotheses are confirmed. The worry here centers on the move from specified complexity to design. Specified complexity is a statistical notion. Design, as generally understood, is a causal notion. How, then, do the two connect? In The Design Inference, and more explicitly in Intelligent Design, I argue the connection as follows. First I offer an inductive argument, showing that in all cases where we know the causal history and specified complexity was involved, that an intelligence was involved as well. The inductive generalization that follows is that all cases of specified complexity involve intelligence. Next I argue that choice is the defining feature of intelligence and that specified complexity is how in fact we identify choice.”
I find Dembskin’s argument(s) against purely random events, coupled with (any type of) natural event or selection, convincing. I cannot see however, how he hopes to argue from this to intelligent agency – it almost reduces his outlook to something like: mutations with an intelligent agency would explain the bio-world whereas random mutations would not. An alternate theory must be superior to the inadequate neo-Darwinian outlook, and will need to provide deeper insights than Dembski’s arguments.
I am tempted to discuss the uncertainty principle within the well know non-commutative concept of physics, but I do not think it is needed for this comment.