The latest transcript is out. It is the day 12 am transcript, which is part 2 of the cross examination of Michael Behe. There's a laugh-out-loud moment near the start. Before they began the cross of Behe, our attorneys wanted to alert the judge that they might be using material from the next draft of the textbook Of Pandas and People, just a couple short passages, during the questioning. That draft is protected by a court order and cannot be released publicly, so they wanted to alert the judge that they were going to use a small bit of it in case he wanted to do that part of the questioning in closed session to protect that order. The judge suggested that they contact the attorneys for the publisher of the textbook to make sure they were okay with that, and they agreed but asked whether they should wait until the lunch break to do so or do it right then. That prompted this exchange, which happened in the judge's chambers:
MR. ROTHSCHILD: Your Honor, should we suggest a time -- I mean, do you want to do that at a lunch break or find out --
THE COURT: How much more cross do you have?
MR. ROTHSCHILD: It will be inversely proportional to mentions of the Big Bang, I think.
THE COURT: So you're going to go all day.
MR. ROTHSCHILD: It could be quite a while.
Hilarious.
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Do you think he meant "directly proportional", or did Behe really say very little about the Big Bang?
No Behe mentioned the Big Bang every chance he got.
Personally, I think Plate Tectonics would have been a better example for him of a now generally accepted idea that was dismissed by the scientific establishment but then later accepted as true -- but Plate Tectonics doesn't have the advantage of the creation of something out of (as far as we can know) nothing, as the Big Bang does, and that is inevitably going to resonate with creationists.
My own impression of Behe from reading his testimony is here (in an update to the post). He is either quite fuzzy in his thinking or was being deliberately obfuscatory throughout his testimony on cross. A typical exchange would go something like this:
Q Doctor, would you agree that X?
A Well, I'd want to have some more detail on that, because N and G and Q and W and R.
Q OK, suppose then that those are all valid, would you then say then that X?
A Well I wouldn't state it exactly that way. I'd say that X prime.
Q Alright, you agree that X prime?
A Except that N and G and Q.
Q Well, we're taking those as given -- so you would agree that X prime?
A If N and G and Q, and W and R, then it's possible that X prime, except that I'd prefer to say that X doubleprme.
Q So given all those conditions, you would say that X doubleprime?
A Well, really, it would be better to say X tripleprime.
Q OK, so you agree X tripleprime?
A Yes, X.
How Rothschild put up with this man's b.s. is beyond me -- I'd have reached into the witness box and whacked him a couple of times.
Q Your honor, may I approach the witness to slap him upside the head
THE COURT You may.
The exchange that Ed posted above certainly made me laugh out loud -- especially since I missed at first that they were in chambers.
John Wilkins wrote:
Yeah, he clearly meant "directly proportional." It's still hilarious though.