Features: Behe's empty box

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Reviews and Criticisms of Michael Behe's book:
"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution"
...and the hypothesis of Intelligent Design

( and yes, I have read the book -- John )

Introduction
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From Michael Behe Current Best Excerpt Alive and Published Reviews and
Criticisms
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Last Updated: Friday, December 09, 2005

Orgel's second rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."

"Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.' I have dubbed this kind of fallacy 'the Argument from Personal Incredulity.' Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience." Richard Dawkins - River out of Eden

 

Introduction

'Scientists say...'

Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is "Intelligent Design" science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason Behe has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book? Here is a summary of the critiques you will find included on this page and others:

Irreducible or just Complex?

Michael Behe thinks he can detect design in biochemical systems and structures that are "irreducibly complex" (IC)...

"By irreducible complexity I mean a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced gradually by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition nonfunctional." [*]

But that conclusion is wrong. By his definition, many systems we see around us are IC, and yet have developed gradually and without any overarching design. Think of the chaotic growth of towns into large cities, the self-organizing forces behind market economies, and   the delicate causal webs that define complex ecosystems. So given an IC system, it will either be a product of design, or of an undirected, stochastic process. The truth is, we should expect Darwinian evolution to produce such systems in biology, and not be surprised to find them. The underlying processes are called co-adaptation and co-evolution, and they have been understood for many years. Biochemical pathways are not built up one step at a time in linear assembly-line fashion to meet some static function. They evolve layer upon layer, contingency upon contingency, always in flux, and retooling to serve current functions. The ability of life to evolve in this fashion has itself evolved over time. Detecting IC does not indicate design, and therefore Behe's hypothesis collapses. H. Allen Orr says it best in his perceptive review:

"Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required."

"The point is there's no guarantee that improvements will remain mere improvements. Indeed because later changes build on previous ones, there's every reason to think that earlier refinements might become necessary. The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches-like dry land-that were unavailable to their lung-less peers. But as evolution built on this adaptation (modifying limbs for walking, for instance), we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries-they are essential. The punch-line is, I think, obvious: although this process is thoroughly Darwinian, we are often left with a system that is irreducibly complex. I'm afraid there's no room for compromise here: Behe's key claim that all the components of an irreducibly complex system 'have to be there from the beginning' is dead wrong." [*]

The Fallacy of Conclusion by Analogy

When it comes to explaining science to the public, analogies and metaphors are essential tools of the trade. We all can better understand something new and unusual, when it is compared to something we already know: a cell is like a factory, the eye is like a camera, an atom is like a billiard ball, a biochemical system is like a mouse trap. An A is like a B, means A shares some conceptual properties with B. It does not mean A has all the properties of B. It does not follow that what is true for B is therefore true for A. Analogies can be used to explain science, but analogies cannot be used to draw conclusions or falsify scientific theories. Yet Behe commits this fallacy throughout his book. For example:

  1. A mousetrap is "irreducibly complex" - it requires all of its parts to work properly.
  2. A mousetrap is a product of design.
  3. The bacterial flagellum  is "irreducibly complex" - it requires all of its parts to work properly.
  4. Therefore the flagellum is like a mouse trap.
  5. Therefore the flagellum is a product of design.

The Psychic Detective

Is it fair to ask for a frame-by-frame instant replay of the evolution of the bacterial flagella or the Krebs cycle? Should Evolutionary Biology perish without it? Of course not. As with any historical science, we arrive on the scene after the fact, as a detective to a crime. We look for evidence and rational explanations to account for that evidence. Even the best detective cannot, and should not, reconstruct every footstep, and every word that took place. But he does not need to in order to solve the crime. Consider the following: The evidence for evolution is overwhelming at all levels of biology. Published attempts have been made to uncover possible historical scenarios. The evidence for intelligent design is simply non-existent.

Designer in the Gaps

I should point out that Behe's hybrid vision of life does accept common descent as reasonable, and does allow for cases of Darwinian natural selection and random genetic drift. So how can we distinguish evolution from design? Simple: To Behe, a system has evolved when he, or others, can imagine how it has evolved, otherwise it was a product of intelligent design. "Irreducible Complexity" has nothing to do with it.

An unnamed designer?

In the last few years Michael Behe has become the new poster boy for religious groups who are hostile to evolution and Darwinism. Meanwhile, Behe has refused to identify the 'designer' when confronted, even though he professes belief in the Judeo-Christian God, is more than willing to speak at religiously-sponsored events, and get his attacks on evolutionary biology published in conservative magazines. I feel he should not be allowed to have it both ways.

 

From Michael Behe

Alive and Published

"There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems... In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish" --Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box p.179)

Current Best Excerpt

The danger of this book -- and why it receives so much attention -- is partly that it is so well written (or so some find; I among them, I must confess). I learned a huge amount from it (I think), and it was only my wary eye that held me back from slipping along with the argument. Moreover, here we have a real, and very competent (but deeply misguided) scientist purveying some very good science and pointing up some very important omissions in our current understanding. Dr. Behe and his book must be as gold-dust among the dross of the general run of creationists and their so-called literature. The general reader will not know the limitations of his argument, or be aware of his misrepresentations of the facts, and will easily be seduced by his arguments. After all, it seems so very much easier, and certainly avoids a lot of intellectual effort, to accept that God did it all, even though we have to interpret the carefully coded allusions to this incompetent figment of impoverished imaginations.

--Review of Michael Behe's, Darwin's Black Box by Peter Atkins, University of Oxford

Book Reviews and Criticisms

Related Topics

Strange Bedfellows

"I'm a Roman Catholic, I believe in God, but as far as the scientific evidence, I just say that the -- you know, that these things were designed. I don't claim anything about the personality of the designer..." --Michael Behe

Has Behe identified this unnamed designer by his associations and actions? You decide...

? Quiz Time ? :)

When the conservative magazine National Review needs to find someone to review Richard "atheist" Dawkins' recent book Climbing Mount Improbable, who do they ask?

  1. Darwinian thinker Daniel Dennett
  2. Semi-Darwinian thinker Steven Jay Gould
  3. "Intelligent Designist" Michael Behe

 


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