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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Category: Genetics • Molecular Biology • Science
Posted on: August 2, 2007 7:20 PM, by PZ Myers
Abbie of ERV has made her first guest post on the Panda's Thumb, and it's a good one. Go see how Behe was wrong and there are documented genetic and biochemical changes in the evolution of HIV, including the evolution of new molecular machinery.
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Comments
Doesn't matter what you find - he'll keep his eyes tightly shut and refuse to look.
Q: What is the difference between someone who is blind and someone who refuses to open their eyes?
A: There's hope for the blind.
Posted by: Caledonian | August 2, 2007 7:44 PM
Behe is on Colbert tonight. Yow.
Posted by: factician | August 2, 2007 7:50 PM
I cant shake the feeling he did this on purpose, because there is no way out of this for him. Like he wanted to paint himself into a corner...
Meh. Or hes just a Creationist.
Posted by: ERV | August 2, 2007 8:22 PM
It's behe. Pronounce it in Dutch and you get the sound that sheep make. Sorta. Apologies to our woolly friends.
Posted by: slang | August 2, 2007 8:27 PM
Yay! I'm a big fan of ERV. I'm sure it will be a killer.
Ehrm, I mean... oh, right, Abbie Smith. Phew! The ambiguity was doing me in.
(Oh, ERV's are fascinating things in themselves. As long as they keep away from harming me, that is. :-P)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | August 2, 2007 8:55 PM
And yet this guy is in the genetics section of our libraries.. nice..
Posted by: Tom @Thoughtsic.com | August 2, 2007 9:26 PM
He'll ride off into the sunset in his Behara.
Posted by: John Danley | August 2, 2007 9:40 PM
Oh lord (no pun intended), Behe's on the Colbert Report tonight. I can't believe he's giving the moron air time, but hopefully the interview will consist of mocking Behe's idiocy.
Posted by: Chris | August 2, 2007 11:42 PM
My heads about to explode refuting Creationists over at the Parade article that PZ posted yesterday. BUT I CAN'T STOP!!!
Posted by: Loc | August 2, 2007 11:44 PM
That was weird. Colbert didn't exactly skewer him, but he timed the interview so that it ended before Behe got the chance to respond to the last question, which was about science making God smaller.
Posted by: CL | August 2, 2007 11:56 PM
One for the album.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | August 3, 2007 12:00 AM
I was hoping that Colbert would make the point that the parts of a mousetrap have other uses, and found it interesting that Behe had no real response for that point. He said something along the lines of "well, none of those things is a mousetrap, though" which totally misses the point of the analogy.
Posted by: Chris | August 3, 2007 12:06 AM
Behe's talking points consisted entirely of the same stuff he's been touting since 1996. Lame.
Posted by: Jim Anderson | August 3, 2007 12:37 AM
I tried to watch Colbert's interview of Behe from the point of view of someone who has no idea who Behe is and some general idea what evolution and ID are. I don't think such a person would have thought Behe looked like either a genius or an idiot. I don't think they would have been moved much one direction or the other on the issues at hand.
Posted by: Glenn | August 3, 2007 2:33 AM
Watch the Colbert interview yourself
here.
Posted by: factician | August 3, 2007 7:44 AM
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | August 3, 2007 9:35 AM
The interview went at breakneck speed, but Colbert did get a zinger in.
Somebody'll have the transcript, but the gist is, when Behe said if you take away the parts of a mousetrap, what you're left with is useless, Colbert said, "Yeah, because wood and springs have no other use."
Posted by: Adam | August 3, 2007 12:33 PM
Adam (#17):
I have a partial transcript and some reactions available now.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 3, 2007 1:30 PM
Why would we need to? The scientific model is the most likely, by passing several tests.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | August 3, 2007 1:50 PM
Great review at sunclipse, Blake. Did you like how Behe admitted that God was the Intelligent Designer? After so many years of denying what everyone already knew it was nice to finally hear the truth. Additional links about the show are available at The Primate Diaries.
Posted by: The Primate Diaries | August 3, 2007 3:33 PM
I've got the video of Behe's appearance on the Colbert Report last night up here. And to make it "fair-and-balanced" of course, there is also Dawkin's appearance on the Report from last October.
Behe got less airtime, being rather abruptly cut-off. And I liked two of Colbert's comebacks last night. The opening "Should all science begin with looking for how to limit a theory?", and, on the mouse trap, "Yeah, 'cause if you take away the parts of the mousetrap, all you have is wood, a piece of metal and a spring, and there's no other possible use for any of that stuff."
Posted by: Madhu | August 3, 2007 6:02 PM
In all earnesty, I'm having difficulty understanding what Behe's argument tries to accomplish. He cites two point mutations that lead to resistance, and have apparently happened at least 3 times in recent history...and uses this example to establish the difficulty of beneficial mutations in general?
What's the point? It happened, but it should have happened more often? It happened in bacteria, but it couldn't happen in humans?
A more compelling approach would be to find an example where humans engineered resistance in a strain via a couple of point mutations, yet such resistance has never been seen in the wild. That's a difficult task, from an evolutionary point of view...but it shouldn't be so difficult in Behe's universe.
Posted by: ngong | August 4, 2007 3:30 AM