Interesting:
"I can't speak for the other two, but having read _Darwin's Black Box_,
I can answer unequivocally "nope, not at all".
First of all, "Darwinism" is a creationist bogeyman; there is no such
thing as "Darwinism," except in the minds of professional
creationists. The science of evolutionary biology is based on
Darwin's insight that natural selection is one of the major motive
forces for change in the gene pools and morphology of organisms over
the course of generations, but there is no "-ism" in the "advocacy
for" sense of the suffix. Rather, there is a long history of
increasingly accurate observation and increasingly detailed controlled
laboratory experiment that supports the conclusion that natural
selection really does what Darwin claimed it does. Creationists seem
fond of using the term "Darwinism" because it sounds like a belief,
rather than an observation. No scientist "believes in" Darwin as
such, because Darwin did not propose a prescriptive set of behaviours,
only descriptive observations.
Second, _Darwin's Black Box_ by Michael Behe fails to "disprove"
evolution on numerous grounds.
1) Behe himself acknowledges that natural selection and common descent
are both accurate descriptions. Whenever anyone cites this book in
support of creationism, ask them what Behe says about the age of the
universe and the hypothesis that all life descends from one common
ancestor. (The answer is in the last paragraph on page 5.) In my
experience, the majority of creationists who cite Behe as support have
not actually read his book. Rather, they have heard other
creationists tout it and parroted the claim.
2) Behe's hypothesis has several major faults. First, like Dawkins,
he claims that the molecular level has explanatory superiority to the
organism level. There is no question that the operation and
interaction of cells and even of single genes is significant in
evolution, but *not* to the exclusion of the significance of organs,
organisms, populations, species, or other even more inclusive sets of
objects. Behe's reductionist approach misses the importance of these
more inclusive levels, and thus can not account for as much as
mainstream evolutionary biology.
3) Behe falsely equates [evolution as a whole] with [evolution by
natural selection]. Darwin correctly surmised that natural selection
was a major factor in evolution, and he personally felt that it was
the most important mechanism, but he did not believe it was the *only*
mechanism. In the intervening 142 years, we have discovered that
mutation, migration, and drift are also fundamental forces, and the
relative significance of mutation to migration (in increasing the
variation present in a given gene pool) and of selection to drift (in
decreasing that range of variation) are topics of considerable
interest to biologists. Behe, while emphasising his efforts to
"...search the scientific literature on evolution...", somehow missed
this aspect. Given the significance of these additional mechanisms,
one must wonder how thorough his search actually was.
4) Behe over-extends the metaphor of molecular "machines". There are
ways in which our cells are analogous to human-made machines, and the
metaphor is useful in explaining some aspects of cell functioning at
an introductory level. However, the metaphor rapidly breaks down on
closer examination. First off, our machines do not make copies of
themselves, while most of our cells do. Second, our cells operate
mainly through a series of chemical reactions, rather than mechanical
interactions, so our intuitive ideas about what "machines" are is
quite different from the way that cells actually function, and the
metaphor is misleading.
5) Behe's main point is that he claims to have found certain molecular
systems that could not have evolved by natural selection; ignoring the
fact (as mentioned above) that evolution operates by other mechanisms
as well. It is this main point that is fatally flawed, because Behe
falsely characterises the process of natural selection as both
goal-oriented and (more importantly) a drive toward increasing
complexity. In other words, Behe asumes that complex systems can
arise from simple systems, but that simple systems can *not* arise
from more complex ones. This assumption is trivially false, even in
our own "macroscopic" experience. We can remove parts from a complex
system and it will continue to function. My car would work just fine
if I took out the radio, removed the rear spoiler, pulled off the
hubcaps, removed the quarter panels, took off the doors, pulled out
the seats, cut off the roof, etc. etc. etc. The same is true of
organisms. Obligate internal parasites can lose their motive power
(e.g. limbs, "swimming" tails, etc.) without suffering, and in fact
many have. Cave fish can lose the ability to see without any decrease
in fitness, and so forth. The same is true at the molecular level.
6) The loss of parts and increasing simplicity examples above are
significant, because Behe's critique relies on his observation that
some molecular systems are "irreducably complex". In other words,
some systems are so simple that removing any piece from them will
cause them to cease functioning. *IF* evolution only worked by a
process of adding pieces to functioning systems, Behe would have a
point, but evolution can also operate by removing redundant pieces
from a more complex system. Thus his idea of irreducable complexity
is simply irrelevant as a critique of evolution, because it is only in
conflict with something that evolutionary theory doesn't actually
state. Behe has constructed a straw man charicature of evolution and
has successfully argued against that, but this has no bearing on
actual evolution.
7) Behe emphasises his "...search of the scientific literature on
evolution..." but he also seems to have failed to come across the
articles that explain the evolutionary pathways to most of the systems
that he cites as examples of irreducable complexity. I just did a
search of PubMed for "flagella", sorted by date, and found over 50
articles on the chemistry, evolution, and genetic pathway to the
bacterial flagellum (which is one of Behe's most famous examples) that
were already in print or in press and publically available at the time
Behe published _DBB_. In other words, one of the "irreducably
complex" systems that he claimed could not be explained by evolution
_already_had_been_ by the time he made the claim. I didn't bother
checking for blood clotting or any of his other examples, but you can
search PubMed on your own at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ if you
wish.
8) Behe's most influential claim is that no pathways exist to these
irreducably complex systems, but this claim is misleading. What Behe
is really saying is that *he*, personally, is unaware of any such
pathways (as mentioned, other researchers had already found some of
them). Behe neglects to inform his readers that nature is not bound
by the limits of Behe's imagination. I can't imagine how anyone with
such a shoddy grasp of elementary logic that they base an entire book
on an argument from incredulity, and yet is still able to get tenure
at a university, but nevertheless, there Behe is. That just goes to
show that the limits of our ability to imagine something are not
limits on reality.
In short, Behe's "black box" is empty. I suspect the same is true of
the other creationist tracts that you mentioned, but I'm not willing
to shell out my own money to check. I have no desire to tithe to my
wife's church, and I'm sure as heck not going to send money to Rev.
Moon or any of the other aspiring theocrats behind the creationist
jihad. If you have read these books, or know someone who has, and
want to present their major arguments and supporting evidence, I'll be
happy to listen, but I'm not interested in paying for that dubious
"privelege", thanks.
-Floyd"
This is found here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=54522494.0310051106.12a6b03a@posting.google.com
"I can't speak for the other two, but having read _Darwin's Black Box_,
I can answer unequivocally "nope, not at all".
First of all, "Darwinism" is a creationist bogeyman; there is no such
thing as "Darwinism," except in the minds of professional
creationists. The science of evolutionary biology is based on
Darwin's insight that natural selection is one of the major motive
forces for change in the gene pools and morphology of organisms over
the course of generations, but there is no "-ism" in the "advocacy
for" sense of the suffix. Rather, there is a long history of
increasingly accurate observation and increasingly detailed controlled
laboratory experiment that supports the conclusion that natural
selection really does what Darwin claimed it does. Creationists seem
fond of using the term "Darwinism" because it sounds like a belief,
rather than an observation. No scientist "believes in" Darwin as
such, because Darwin did not propose a prescriptive set of behaviours,
only descriptive observations.
Second, _Darwin's Black Box_ by Michael Behe fails to "disprove"
evolution on numerous grounds.
1) Behe himself acknowledges that natural selection and common descent
are both accurate descriptions. Whenever anyone cites this book in
support of creationism, ask them what Behe says about the age of the
universe and the hypothesis that all life descends from one common
ancestor. (The answer is in the last paragraph on page 5.) In my
experience, the majority of creationists who cite Behe as support have
not actually read his book. Rather, they have heard other
creationists tout it and parroted the claim.
2) Behe's hypothesis has several major faults. First, like Dawkins,
he claims that the molecular level has explanatory superiority to the
organism level. There is no question that the operation and
interaction of cells and even of single genes is significant in
evolution, but *not* to the exclusion of the significance of organs,
organisms, populations, species, or other even more inclusive sets of
objects. Behe's reductionist approach misses the importance of these
more inclusive levels, and thus can not account for as much as
mainstream evolutionary biology.
3) Behe falsely equates [evolution as a whole] with [evolution by
natural selection]. Darwin correctly surmised that natural selection
was a major factor in evolution, and he personally felt that it was
the most important mechanism, but he did not believe it was the *only*
mechanism. In the intervening 142 years, we have discovered that
mutation, migration, and drift are also fundamental forces, and the
relative significance of mutation to migration (in increasing the
variation present in a given gene pool) and of selection to drift (in
decreasing that range of variation) are topics of considerable
interest to biologists. Behe, while emphasising his efforts to
"...search the scientific literature on evolution...", somehow missed
this aspect. Given the significance of these additional mechanisms,
one must wonder how thorough his search actually was.
4) Behe over-extends the metaphor of molecular "machines". There are
ways in which our cells are analogous to human-made machines, and the
metaphor is useful in explaining some aspects of cell functioning at
an introductory level. However, the metaphor rapidly breaks down on
closer examination. First off, our machines do not make copies of
themselves, while most of our cells do. Second, our cells operate
mainly through a series of chemical reactions, rather than mechanical
interactions, so our intuitive ideas about what "machines" are is
quite different from the way that cells actually function, and the
metaphor is misleading.
5) Behe's main point is that he claims to have found certain molecular
systems that could not have evolved by natural selection; ignoring the
fact (as mentioned above) that evolution operates by other mechanisms
as well. It is this main point that is fatally flawed, because Behe
falsely characterises the process of natural selection as both
goal-oriented and (more importantly) a drive toward increasing
complexity. In other words, Behe asumes that complex systems can
arise from simple systems, but that simple systems can *not* arise
from more complex ones. This assumption is trivially false, even in
our own "macroscopic" experience. We can remove parts from a complex
system and it will continue to function. My car would work just fine
if I took out the radio, removed the rear spoiler, pulled off the
hubcaps, removed the quarter panels, took off the doors, pulled out
the seats, cut off the roof, etc. etc. etc. The same is true of
organisms. Obligate internal parasites can lose their motive power
(e.g. limbs, "swimming" tails, etc.) without suffering, and in fact
many have. Cave fish can lose the ability to see without any decrease
in fitness, and so forth. The same is true at the molecular level.
6) The loss of parts and increasing simplicity examples above are
significant, because Behe's critique relies on his observation that
some molecular systems are "irreducably complex". In other words,
some systems are so simple that removing any piece from them will
cause them to cease functioning. *IF* evolution only worked by a
process of adding pieces to functioning systems, Behe would have a
point, but evolution can also operate by removing redundant pieces
from a more complex system. Thus his idea of irreducable complexity
is simply irrelevant as a critique of evolution, because it is only in
conflict with something that evolutionary theory doesn't actually
state. Behe has constructed a straw man charicature of evolution and
has successfully argued against that, but this has no bearing on
actual evolution.
7) Behe emphasises his "...search of the scientific literature on
evolution..." but he also seems to have failed to come across the
articles that explain the evolutionary pathways to most of the systems
that he cites as examples of irreducable complexity. I just did a
search of PubMed for "flagella", sorted by date, and found over 50
articles on the chemistry, evolution, and genetic pathway to the
bacterial flagellum (which is one of Behe's most famous examples) that
were already in print or in press and publically available at the time
Behe published _DBB_. In other words, one of the "irreducably
complex" systems that he claimed could not be explained by evolution
_already_had_been_ by the time he made the claim. I didn't bother
checking for blood clotting or any of his other examples, but you can
search PubMed on your own at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ if you
wish.
8) Behe's most influential claim is that no pathways exist to these
irreducably complex systems, but this claim is misleading. What Behe
is really saying is that *he*, personally, is unaware of any such
pathways (as mentioned, other researchers had already found some of
them). Behe neglects to inform his readers that nature is not bound
by the limits of Behe's imagination. I can't imagine how anyone with
such a shoddy grasp of elementary logic that they base an entire book
on an argument from incredulity, and yet is still able to get tenure
at a university, but nevertheless, there Behe is. That just goes to
show that the limits of our ability to imagine something are not
limits on reality.
In short, Behe's "black box" is empty. I suspect the same is true of
the other creationist tracts that you mentioned, but I'm not willing
to shell out my own money to check. I have no desire to tithe to my
wife's church, and I'm sure as heck not going to send money to Rev.
Moon or any of the other aspiring theocrats behind the creationist
jihad. If you have read these books, or know someone who has, and
want to present their major arguments and supporting evidence, I'll be
happy to listen, but I'm not interested in paying for that dubious
"privelege", thanks.
-Floyd"
This is found here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=54522494.0310051106.12a6b03a@posting.google.com
