Hi George,
Upon reflection, I think I was a bit too parsimonious in my words. Trying to understand what the major thought movements are in the origins debate is useful. Trying to understand a particular individual’s thought primarily through the prism of which camp they are presumably loyal to is, I think, not as helpful. It can miss important nuances, or even miss important disagreements that might exist within a particular camp.
Better?
Warm Advent wishes from warm SC,
Hi George
I have had a couple of conversations with Mike Behe and find him to be quite a rational and evidence based thinker. His support of common descent is based on positive evidence from DNA data. He acknowledges that there are genetic differences that have yet to be explained.
I think Dennis’s point that there are some weaknesses to his edge of evolution argument is possible valid, his design argument based on the observed workings of complex micro machine like the bacterial flagellum motor is interesting.
[quote=“Billcole, post:144, topic:9418”]
The above paragraph is supporting my argument that the search part of the process is not entirely stochastic.[/quote]
Evolution of other proteins isn’t entirely stochastic either, so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
Biological processes don’t search through genomes. Again, other searches don’t search all of sequence space either, so you’re pointing to an identity, not a difference.
[quote]The difference between this mechanism and the neo darwinian mechanism is that the search is patricianly directed and narrows the search space.
[/quote]You haven’t demonstrated that the latter mechanism searches through all of the search space. It’s highly constrained as well.
Hi Ben
Evolution does not equal search. The non random part of evolution is after the search. If the searches are successful and the organism has superior reproductive capability then the random search gets fixed.
You appear to be claiming that the random change or search part of the neo darwinian process is somehow directed as the immune system is. If truth is that the direction is non existent or a different mechanism then you are comparing apples and oranges.
They aren’t different. Both searches are highly constrained by their starting points. Both are directionless. You have yet to identify a relevant difference between them.
Hi Bill - the mutations that occur in forming antibodies are not directed in any way. They are random. They are biased towards a certain part of the genome, but the mutations that occur are not specified by the mechanism. We discard millions and millions of failed immune system cells that do not have useful mutations. We save and use the ones that work.
There is something “odd” in how he seems to relate to YECs more warmly than I would expect (which is not necessarily bad) …but definitely more warmly than he relates to BioLogos - - which I do find troubling…
And nobody has yet explained how this might be so…
Hi George
Let me give this a shot. 
Behe’s design argument is that some things in nature and life cannot be explained by Darwin’s mechanism of natural variation followed by selection. His design argument is a replacement for part this theory.
If some of the participants on BioLogos believe that this mechanism explains all life’s diversity then it is directly contrary to Behe’s argument.
Although he is clearly not a YEC their beliefs are not contrary do his design argument so there naturally is less friction with this group.
If Behe is willing to publicly endorse Old Earth, with common descent… with SOME miraculous acts of God in the chain of Evolution … we should be throwing him a party.
I’ve heard MUCH weirder stuff right here on BioLogos… by someone who SUPPORTS BioLogos.
There may even be some pro BioLogos folks who think there is such a thing as de-evolution!
Hi George
The big question is when a reasonable discussion of the design inference would be constructive on BioLogos. Without that environment a discussion with Mike Behe would probably not be fruitful.
Hi Dennis
Just so I understand. Are you saying the evolution only happens one mutation at a time? Behe is talking about an adaption that requires 2 mutations. One mutation at a time only works if the mutations find the right positions. If survival requires an adaption that requires 2 specific mutations then isn’t Behe’s math is right?
I see what you are saying.
I would think if Behe has any interest (and certainly @Eddie seems to imply that he would … though would deny it I’m sure if this allusion were to made like I’m doing so now) then the learned Behe could certainly make it clear that he would enjoy such affinity … and would deserve it based on a renewed and energetic statement of his belief in an Old Earth and Common Descent!
The Umbrella of BioLogos should be commodious enough to allow yet another individual with eccentric treatment of the Universe around him - - considering the great number that are already under the umbrella, and seemingly delighting in their own eccentricities!
That, thankfully, is very easy to answer.
It is constructive to talk about the design inference whenever you want at BioLogos. The challenge is that we talk about “design” much differently than the ID movement. In general…
We tend to place very high importance on “demarking” that these design inferences are outside of science (because science is limited this way).
We do not hesitate in shooting down bad arguments for design. In fact, some of us feel bad arguments for design can do great harm. As much as explain evidence for design is important, we think purging bad arguments is urgently important too.
We generally find arguments against common descent and against “evolution” to be poorly conceived. These are often presented as arguments for design; but we find them to be very weak arguments. That being said, we talk about these arguments all the time here. We’ve taken the, time, for example, to talk about splicing with you.
We tend to like design arguments from Scripture and fine tuning as more compelling demonstration of design. Generally speaking, we do believe that God “designed” us, though not everyone here uses that term or means the same thing by it. Remember, we believe God created us too.
So go for it. Talk about design. That is welcome here. We just do it differently
I’ve talked with Behe several times. Conversations with him have always been fruitful. Nothing in the current environment prevents this.
I agree completely with this analysis.
Just to phrase this more clearly. The notion here is that 2 specific mutations are required to produce a selectable function, that are not individually capable of creating that function. And there are no other mutations that could produce that function (that is the specified part of CSI).
His math is not right in this case, because in the real situation one mutation can be fixed by drift first (without requiring any selection). And then the second one can arise later. Biology in this case follows a sequential model, rather than the simultaneous model Behe’s math requires to be correct. Moreover, there are usually multiple ways to encode the same function, so this “specified” cases is exceedingly rare.
How many non-selected and specific mutations were required in (say) the path from our common ancestry with chimps to us? Well, first of all, probably no specific mutations were required. In Biology there are more than one way (in DNA) to encode the same function. And how many unselected steps? How many possible solutions are there? We have no idea. No one knows, and it is very hard to even conceive how we could know.
So let’s say that Behe is right that it is impossible to evolve a new function that requires 4 simultaneous mutations. There is no evidence that this is required (for example) in to make humans out of our common ancestor with apes. Maybe it was. But no one knows if this was the case. Or even how to demonstrate this one way or the other.
Hi Joshua
Would a discussion of the design inference that is supported by the bacterial flagellum motor be of interest?
We talk about the flagellum all the time. It is the iconic Irreducible Complexity (IC) example for Behe.
I’ll speak for myself here, but I think many agree, that the flagellum argument is a poor design argument. It is not that we do not think God designed us. Of course we do. Rather, the argument fails to make its case.
Before we get into that though. There are two definitions of IC that are very different. Conversations about IC get very confusing if we do not keep these definitions straight. Which definition of IC do you use? What do you think it means?
The case he made was that the bacteria would not survive unless the 2 adaptions occurred. In this case his math is right because until the two adaption occurred death is guaranteed. According to Lynch’s model, adaptions requiring multiple mutations take lots of time and large populations to fix. Since there are probably thousands of mutations to convert a Chimp to a Human this does pose doubt to the CD inference.
Ok. I think his argument on the flagella is outstanding so we have a discussion here 
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