Behe: Falling off mount improbable

[npetreley]

http://www.petersnet.net/research/retrieve.cfm?recnum=834

I nearly fell on the floor laughing when I read this part...

One membrane, which is more effective than zero? Hmm-let's think about that. If a cell has ninety-one light-sensitive membranes, or ninety, or just one, then clearly it already has the information to make a membrane. But if a cell has zero membranes, then it does not have the information, so how is it able to construct one? Consider an analogy. Suppose there were ninety-one bacteria in a flask. The ninety-first bacterium was formed by reproductively splitting from the ninetieth, the ninetieth from the eighty-ninth, and so forth. Where did the first come from? By splitting from the zeroeth? Going from one to two of something is a mere doubling. Going from zero to one is an infinite increase. Some smooth gradient.

Does the holder of the Oxford Chair in the Public Understanding of Science not grasp such a simple logical principle?

 

[npetreley]

Another side-splitter...

Despite the open secret of Haeckel's dishonesty, few scientists cared. I debated an evolutionary biologist a few years ago and expressed anger at the fact that Haeckel's drawings, widely known in the biological community to be grossly inaccurate, were still being used in college texts to persuade students of the truth of evolution. My opponent was unperturbed, mildly noting that textbooks can take a while to catch up with scientific advances. Like a hundred years.

I guess this is offset by the fact that they've updated the Ambulocetus fossil drawings.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Is Behe's beef with evolution or abiogenesis? It would seem to me to be the latter. After all, simple membranes have been around since the first cells.

Is the development of a membrane from simpler proteins such a gosh darn miraculous happening that only God could have done it?

Behe is an idiot.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie
Is Behe's beef with evolution or abiogenesis?

A better question: Did you read the article or didn't you? Let me guess...

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Nick says that Behe says:

I debated an evolutionary biologist a few years ago and expressed anger at the fact that Haeckel's drawings, widely known in the biological community to be grossly inaccurate, were still being used in college texts to persuade students of the truth of evolution.

Are they really?

Where?

I won't deny they are sometimes used (unwisely IMO). But I doubt they're used as nefariously as Behe would have us believe.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie
I won't deny they are sometimes used (unwisely IMO). But I doubt they're used as nefariously as Behe would have us believe.

Considering that some here threw a feces-fit about an AiG site having slightly out of date info about ambulocetus (updated in 1994, I think?), I'd say 100 or more years is enough time to make the correction universal.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by npetreley
Considering that some here threw a feces-fit about an AiG site having slightly out of date info about ambulocetus (updated in 1994, I think?), I'd say 100 or more years is enough time to make the correction universal.

Misrepresenting the data is poor scholarship either way.

But before we indict the textbook writers, I would hope you could provide us an example of where a recent textbook misrepresents Haeckel in the same way that AiG misrepresents Ambulocetus.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie
Misrepresenting the data is poor scholarship either way.

But before we indict the textbook writers, I would hope you could provide us an example of where a recent textbook misrepresents Haeckel in the same way that AiG misrepresents Ambulocetus.

Huh? I never said they misrepresent Haecklel. They perpetuate his fraud very accurately.

 

[choccy]

References still missing.

Choccy

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by npetreley
Huh? I never said they misrepresent Haecklel. They perpetuate his fraud very accurately.

Examples please?

 

[OutletOverkill]

The guy is an idiot. Come on. First of all, just for laughing at those "ideas," you are a dork. Nextly, God's very existence would present the same problem of origin. But of course, I keep forgetting. God can be infinite, nothing else can.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Bump.

Waiting for examples of textbooks perpetuating Haeckel's fraud.

 

[Morat]

  I've seen Haekel's embryos in several high school and college texts.

  Of course, they were in a "History of Evolution" section, for the most part. When they weren't, I always saw a nice little blurb about how Haekel's ideas were wrong, and his drawings fudged...

 

 

[Lanakila]

I have been away from this forum for a few weeks and I find the same argument again. I am holding in my hand a Biology textbook copyrighted 1997 that has those same photographs that you guys are talking about. Haekel's idea is given and not refuted. It does not have the ontogeny recaptitulate phologeny in there, but if you read the approximated 3-4 paragraph's in this textbook and look at the photo's you will be left with the impression that all embryos go through all the same stages of evolutionary change, that has been disproven over 100 years ago. In other words this false theory is being perpetuated still just as Behe has stated. Calling a world class scientist that you happen to disagree with an idot just proves you don't know what you are talking about. (Name calling is a sure sign, LOL)

 

[Kookaburra]

In fact, Michael (isn't that right?) Behe is a brilliant scientist who clearly you are not on par with enough to understand and debate his ideas. Only a very high-level scientist who understands the mind of another scientist can offer such an off-hand remark about his theories and ideas. That paragraph made perfect sense to me, however.

:: shakes head ::

Some things really confuse me. Some people confuse me as well.

Oh, and human minds can't comprehend God. He created time. In fact, we might be able to understand him if we hadn't sinned, because death came from the origional sin, so it started the cycle before we existed.

 

[Morat]

Lankila: Text, edition, and page number please. If possible (and if it's not too much work), typing in those three or four paragraphs would be great. Haeckel's ideas were discarded, but you do realize that he was almost right, don't you? Embryo's don't replicate adult forms of their past as Haeckel thought, but embronyic forms. I'd like to see if that is the context the book is discussing.

This is the general treatment given to Haekel's embryo's.

As you read this, you may wonder why evolution should be limited to changes tacked on at the end of the process of development. So did evolutionary biologists, and Haeckel's idea was quickly discarded. In fact, evolution can affect <I>all</I> phases of development, removing developmental steps as well as adding them, and therefore embryology is not a strict replay of ancestry. Nonetheless, many of the stages that embryos pass through can indeed be understood as remnants of their evolutionary past.

&nbsp;&nbsp; As Haeckel's ideas are firmly dismissed, I fail to see how his embryo's can be such an "Icon".

&nbsp;Or, you might note that Wells himself seems to have a problem with facts when it comes to Haeckel. Here:

[*]Numerous other mistakes and distortions could be mentioned, here is but one. Regarding Futuyma's use of the Haeckel embryo drawings in the 3<SUP>rd</SUP> edition of <I>Evolutionary Biology</I>, Wells writes (p. 109), "But it was Futuyma who mindlessly recycled Haeckel's embryos in several editions of his textbook, until a 'creationist' criticized him for it." However, an inspection of Futuyma's 1<SUP>st</SUP> and 2<SUP>nd</SUP> editions of <I>Evolutionary Biology</I> reveals that <I>no</I> such drawings were included in these editions. In the first edition, Haeckel's biogenetic law and the problems with it are discussed on page 153 in respectable fashion (this corresponds with page 303 in the second edition) -- and in fact the primary issue surrounding Haeckel in textbooks, which has always been to debunk Haeckel's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" oversimplification, is in fact admirably discussed in all three editions.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by Lanakila
I have been away from this forum for a few weeks and I find the same argument again. I am holding in my hand a Biology textbook copyrighted 1997 that has those same photographs that you guys are talking about. Haekel's idea is given and not refuted. It does not have the ontogeny recaptitulate phologeny in there, but if you read the approximated 3-4 paragraph's in this textbook and look at the photo's you will be left with the impression that all embryos go through all the same stages of evolutionary change, that has been disproven over 100 years ago. In other words this false theory is being perpetuated still just as Behe has stated.

Name of the textbook, please? And the page numbers?

It would be great if you could quote the text you mention. I might actually have to concede the point.

Calling a world class scientist that you happen to disagree with an idot just proves you don't know what you are talking about. (Name calling is a sure sign, LOL)

World class scientist! LOL! What awards has Mr. Behe received or groundbreaking papers has he published that justify granting him world-class status?

If you don't think I know what I'm talking about, then maybe you would trust the opinion of someone who does:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/behe-review/index.html

 

[Morat]

&nbsp; Given how poor Behe's research was when he wrote Darwin's Black Box, I'm not sure how you can call him a "world-class scientist". The man couldn't do a simple pubmed search. Or chose not to.

&nbsp;

 

[kaotic]

Originally posted by Kookaburra
In fact, Michael (isn't that right?) Behe is a brilliant scientist who clearly you are not on par with enough to understand and debate his ideas. Only a very high-level scientist who understands the mind of another scientist can offer such an off-hand remark about his theories and ideas. That paragraph made perfect sense to me, however.

:: shakes head ::

Some things really confuse me. Some people confuse me as well.

Oh, and human minds can't comprehend God. He created time. In fact, we might be able to understand him if we hadn't sinned, because death came from the origional sin, so it started the cycle before we existed.

He might have been smart, but he didn't do any good research. Lol that makes no since (Only a very high-level scientist who understands the mind of another scientist can offer such an off-hand remark about his theories and ideas) lol i am studying to be a physicists, and i can understand the minds of other scienctist.

 

[MSBS]

Just curious...how many of you that champion Behe (I'd particularly like to hear from npetreley) agree with his opinion on this:

For example, when Michael [Behe] and I [Kenneth Miller] engaged in debate at the 1995 meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, I argued that the 100% match of DNA sequences in the pseudogene region of beta-globin was proof that humans and gorillas shared a recent common ancestor. To my surprise, Behe said that he shared that view, and had no problem with the notion of common ancestry. Creationists who believe that Behe is on their side should proceed with caution - he states very clearly that evolution can produce new species, and that human beings are one of those species.

from http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/behe-review/index.html
first linked by LiveFreeOrDie above.

Miller is the Christian and Biology professor that wrote Finding Darwin's God.