Let me add a quick addendum to the previous post. People aren't appreciating yet how hard-core a designist Behe actually is; one comment mentions that "apparently God is directly responsible for the creation of drug-resistant malaria."
No. The Designer, who must have godlike powers, specifically created malaria itself. The drug resistance is the one thing that evolved.
Here's something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts. C-Eve's children died in her arms because an intelligent agent deliberately made malaria, or at least something very similar to it.
Got that? Plasmodium falciparum was explicitly and intentionally constructed to infect, make ill, torment, and kill human beings. He goes farther than most YECs—the parasite was not simply a product of corruption at the Fall, it had to be carefully modified, built, and released to carry out its designed job of causing suffering.
Of course, when it comes time to speculate on the nature of this Designer or make predictions of purpose, Behe just throws up his hands and makes no conclusion at all, other than that it could be anything.
A torrent of pain undeniably swirls through the world—not only the world of humans, but the world of sentient animal life as well. Yet, just as undeniably, much that is good graces nature. Many children die, yet many others thrive. Some people languish, but others savor full lives. Does one outweigh the other? If so, which outweighs which? Or are pleasure and pain, good and evil, incommensurable? Are viruses and parasites part of some brilliant, as-yet-unappreciated economy of nature, or do they reflect the bungling of an incompetent, fallible designer?
Ah, yes…the Designer works in mysterious ways.
He goes still further, though: you can tell Behe really dislikes Darwin.
Whether on balance one thinks life was a worthwhile project or not—whether the designer of life was a dop, a demon, or a deity—that's a topic on which opinions over the millennia have differed considerably. Each argument has some merit. Of the many possible opinions, only one is really indefensible, the one held by Darwin. In a letter to Asa Gray, he wrote: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living body of caterpillars."
Wasp larvae feeding on paralyzed caterpillars is certainly a disquieting image, to say nothing of malaria feeding on children. So did Darwin conclude that the designer was not beneficent? Maybe not omnipotent? No. He decided—based on squeamishness—that no designer existed. Because it is horrific, it was not designed—a better example of the fallacy of non sequitur would be hard to find. Revulsion is not a scientific argument.
Neither is incredulity.
That last paragraph, though, is palpably ignorant and wrong. Darwin did not reject the possibility of a "designer" at all. At the end of his life, he was more agnostic than atheist, and had leanings towards deism. He did not conclude that no designer existed on the basis of squeamishness, nor is it even suggested in that quote: he rejected the idea of "beneficent and omnipotent God", and that's perfectly fair. The only one engaging in special pleading and trying to make excuses for his beliefs here is Behe, who wants to think there might be some good reason somewhere for his beloved designer to kill small children with a painful disease.
No, Darwin abandoned design because he had discovered a powerful mechanism for organic change that did not require a designer. Behe is trying to diminish the power of that idea by pretending it was merely a consequence of somebody being squeamish. What can I say? Not only is Behe a poor scholar and a deluded fool, but he is contemptible in the way he misrepresents far better scientists.
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"All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul, and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
Amen."
Behe is a Monty Python fan.
Yet again, bad science leads to bad theology.
Or the reverse. I guess it's a chicken/egg sort of thing.
Whoever tries to reconcile religious belief with science in this manner is bound to head into some strange territory - at times even stranger than pure YEC. I'm not even sure it's a step in the right direction.
Also added to the list. Dang, the reality-based community is prolific. :-)
Well, I'll give Behe credit for being the first to forthrightly answer one of my favorite questions: What does ID/Creationism say about all the examples of IC-type stuff related to predation and parasitism?
Apparently, the Designer dunnit, and that's OK by Mike. Kudos to him for not shrinking from the consequences of his own logic.
I'll be very interested to see who reviews EoE in the leading book-review publications, particularly the New York Times, and whether they take scientific points of view or go for some BS pseudo-balance.
I'd be interested to know if there are any pro-science types left who still think Behe is arguing in good faith.
The vision of the "intelligent designer" he has is simply impossible to reconcile with any naturalistic or "reasonable" supernatural designer. If you're a deity and you've got as far as cilia and individual species of microbes, why stop there? Why not have the whole universe sustained by your will? Conversely, if you're going to allow evolution of physiological traits, why not speciation? Does the designer intervene to prevent speciation as well as cause it?
Can we not all now agree that Behe's work is a bunch of cobbled together fallacious arguments against natural selection to prop up his metaphysical preferences?
No, no kudos to Behe for that. Well, maybe one kudo.
We know he's got some Christian apologetic rattling around in his brain, but he just can't share it without tipping his hand with regard to the fact that ID is Abrahamic creationism in disguise.
He has no choice but to mention the unpleasant aspects of the so-called designer's designs, because they're so painfully obvious.
I'd say Behe is arguing 'our' case better than we could.
AND DI is sponsoring it!
Revel in the irony!
Same with Egnor and his 'altruism must be induced by a deity' argument: it's a last-ditch effort to find a phenomenon that has no obvious cause. Thunder, earthquakes, sun rise, fire, floods, wheat rust... on and on. Of course, they're both wrong. Science has proven that gods are unnecessary explanations.
Behe and Egnor are scraping around the bottom of the barrel to try to find SOMETHING that SOMEONE MAY find a god necessary for. Think about it: how pathetic is this scrabbling?
I say: "let them babble; they are only hurting their own cause." While DI funds them to do it.
If Behe's just slinging mud instead of doing proper science, why bother coming to this conclusion? It doesn't seem like the sort of drivel that would satisfy the religious folks, and it certainly isn't satisfying to science. Is he just nuts, then?
You nail the theology perfectly, P.Z. Scary, ain't it?
Darwin concluded the processes of nature that are observable, including the parasitism of the caterpillars, the behaviors of cats toying with mice before killing them, etc., were not designed by a benificent god, but instead by a process unencumbered by such conscience.
In that way, Darwin's god (God if you prefer) remains more kind, gentle, and benificent, than Behe's. Which is one reason we should fear the ID movement, especially if they claim not to recognize that distinction.
Odd, no?
"Kudos to him for not shrinking from the consequences of his own logic."
I was lamenting the fact that this book should, but won't, destroy his credibility with his target audience. But maybe I was wrong. This was a serious misstep on his part, and given how important this "Special Creation With Negligible Variation" model seems to be for his approach, I think he's going to have a hard time backing off it.
Now that is interesting. Apparently Behe is a dystheist.
Must suck to be him.
The claim that god deliberately designed malaria does fit the evidence of the Bible, which shows a supreme being who delights in killing innocents by the thousands.
Behe believes that God created malaria, just like some conspiracy theorists believe that the US government created AIDS.
An interventionist deity is the ultimate conspiracy theory.
Behe should take the fact that he has to do acrobatic lying to even indirectly defend his position as a sign that his position is not viable.
is Behe deliberately trying to make himself look like a weasel-worded propagandist? because, as you noticed, we can of course validly conclude quite a lot just from the things he's explicitly stated about his designer, and not a little of it is notably disquieting.
in fact, just from what you've mentioned in this fragmentary review so far, i think i could make a surprisingly solid philosophical / ethical argument that Behe's designer is universally evil. to just helplessly throw up his hands and proclaim ignorance, in the face of even the possibility (and it's quite obvious) of such an argument, seems intellectually irresponsible of Behe at very best. more likely, it's a pretty clear hint as to his ulterior motives.
"Many children die, yet many others thrive. Some people languish, but others savor full lives. Does one outweigh the other? If so, which outweighs which?"
That's nonsense, because they are not mutually exclusive, and things don't need to "balance out". If pain exists, and was designed by a Designer of the type Behe envisions, then that Designer bears full responsibility for it, whether or not S/He was kind enough to also give us sunsets, fluffy bunnies and orgasms.
It seems however that Behe is simply endorsing a traditional Catholic view of physical suffering as a redemption tool. The view that gave the world self-flagellation and the cilice, to be precise. Mortificat carnem.
Huh. Turns out that Behe is the Devil's Chaplain.
Behe's theology seems to be veering off from some sort of christian variant into heresy at best and more likely just crackpot paganistic weirdness. God, our beneficient father is responsible for HIV, malaria, tapeworms, AK47s, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, ebola, and so on. And he is a micromanager as well. Hasn't He ever read Tom Peterson or any other new age management gurus? After all he probably created them to improve human job satisfaction.
His peculiar biology is going in the same direction as well. Whatever.
Tenured faculty crack up occasionally. At my old U., one developed a vicious drinking problem which complemented the vicious personality he acquired, another joined an esoteric eastern sect, two got depressed and shot themselves. I never heard of this guy Behe before but I'm seeing some similarities here. Is Behe losing his mind?
"If Behe's just slinging mud instead of doing proper science, why bother coming to this conclusion? It doesn't seem like the sort of drivel that would satisfy the religious folks, and it certainly isn't satisfying to science. Is he just nuts, then? "
Not necessarily, though I wouldn't rule it out. It seems more likely he "bothers coming to this conclusion" so that he can portray himself as openminded and sciencey, which in turn allows the DI and other creationists to point to him and say: "Look - he's a biochemist who believes in common descent, and even he thinks evolution is rubbish." Plus his books seem to sell well enough.
if a human "designer" were to dole out harm and gain, pain and pleasure, in equal amounts on arbitrary or entirely random terms for no purpose that was not either obviously apparent or clearly explained beforehand, that human would be judged as insane at best, or more likely outright evil. we know that random reinforcement of this sort tends to be mentally and emotionally deleterious when deliberately inflicted on test subjects, so a Beheian designer that knowingly inflicts it on an entire biosphere had better have a damn good reason.
if Behe cannot provide such a reason, yet pointedly refuses to draw the obvious conclusion (or at least mention it!) then Behe puts his own ethical character at risk to at least some degree.
okay, that last seems a bit harsh; Behe is, after all, offering the pretense of having written a scientific screed that ought to be purely descriptive and not prescriptive or judgement-passing. but the whole reason that natural science sticks purely to descriptive terms is that nature is not a moral agent we can reasonably pass judgement on! if Behe wants his designer to enjoy that same immunity, he ought at least to tell us why --- but that would be describing (a facet of) the designer, something he apparently flat out refuses to do. which, again, tells us something about Behe.
So does this make Behe a gnostic? Does he believe that the world is created by an evil deity, whose aim is human suffering? Is he actually anti-Christian?
Nope. The word is "kudos." No such thing as a "kudo."
notthedroids,
It can't be an egg/chicken thing because we know the egg came before the chicken, but haven't made much progress in figuring out the cause of Behe's deplorable philosophical views. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
I think we need to do more of this. We need to call people like Behe to the carpet for their deplorable moral views. The claim that sometimes God's kids do alright isn't good enough. It's the most you can say if you believe in God, but that's precisely why there's mountains of evidence against the God hypothesis. If we could only get our hands on someone who could have easily stopped the Holocaust at no cost to themselves but chose not to, we'd hang them. Everyone agrees to that, and yet people like Behe presumably believe God is just that person.
"So does this make Behe a gnostic? Does he believe that the world is created by an evil deity, whose aim is human suffering? Is he actually anti-Christian?"
I think that what Behe is trying to mount a tortuous defence of the opposite: he implies that it's defensible to characterize the whole of the world as originating from benevolence while he tries to discredit, by misrepresentation and false association, the decisive arguments against that position.
No, in this book, he sounds more like one of these early Christian heretical cults that said that the Devil created this world with the specific intent of propagating misery, suffering and sin.
Well, i've always wondered why God kills small and innocent children. Now I know, he created special "bugs" just for the joy of pain and torture and killing.
Where do I send my thanks???
Thanks for ruining the joke, Scott.
Literalist.
PS. Actually, kudo is back-formation:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation
Stanton wrote:
That's what I mean by gnostic.
Bad creator! No biscuit! Bad creator!
Behe's last chapter is entitled "All the World's a Stage" (after Shakespeare). He suggests that reality might be like the movie The Truman Show. He says that if the world is like a play, then it's improv, because we have human freedom.
He doesn't say it but I suspect he is proposing a certain theological explanation for the Problem of Evil, namely that this life is just preparation for the next and in some sense not "real." I bet this view has a long theological name and history but IANAT (I am Not a Theologian).
the notion that this life is somehow not "real enough", and that there must be something "more real" somewhere behind it, i doubt is confined to theology. in fact, i would be surprised if this kind of thinking didn't have a rubric of its own in the DSM-IV somewhere.
even if it doesn't, i strongly suspect it could use one.
I think IanR and Stanton are on the right track.
I haven't read the book, but if I recall correctly, Official ID Talking Points include the ideas that we don't know who the designer is (wink, wink) and that it is possible that there are multiple designers. The quotes I've read from EoE refer to malaria, for example, as the work of an "intelligent agent." As I read PZ's comments, it occurred to me that Behe's position might be that God created the world (all that fine tuning and stuff) but that Satan is responsible for designing and propagating all the bad stuff.
For that matter, since certain branches of Christianity view the world as a battlefield between good and evil, it's conceiveable that some within the ID movement have reached the conclusion that Satan and his minions have been busy designing and propagating bad stuff (malaria, HIV, etc.) while some of the angels have been busy designing and propagating countermeasures Since angels aren't God, there's no reason to expect their work to be perfect. I wouldn't be surprised if Christian reconstructionists weren't quite comfortable with this idea.
One could imagine that the real fundamentalists would stop mentioning Behe at all, if he's going to call their God/Designer guy a Big Meanie. But that sort of presumes that they would actually read and sort of understand his stuff, doesn't it...
Of course, I meant to say, "I wouldn't be surprised if Christian reconstructionists were quite comfortable with this idea."
Behe said: Wasp larvae feeding on paralyzed caterpillars is certainly a disquieting image, to say nothing of malaria feeding on children. So did Darwin conclude that the designer was not beneficent? Maybe not omnipotent? No.
OK fine. I've always thought the only god...er, designer, that squares with the real world is a malevolent one. So let's push the Theory of Malevolent Design. The Intelligent Design crew treats the topic of the nature of the designer as something they won't talk about. Fine, let's make them talk about it, or give us the entire floor. If one is driven to hypothesize a designer, Malevolent Design is far more plausible than Benevolent Design.
I think it's also fair to say, though, that Darwin expected a personal god to be beneficent, if one existed at all. In another letter to Gray he writes:
"An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed."
This attitude need not be motivated by squeamishness. He was formerly a devout Christian, and many Christians accept logical/scriptural/anecdotal arguments for the specific hypothesis of a good God. If observation argues against the existence of a benevolent deity, they might reasonably skip over the possibility of a malevolent one and head straight to deism/agnosticism/atheism.
By analogy, if you believe in Bigfoot, and someone convinces you that a bunch of 8-foot-tall apemen couldn't live and forage in the US undetected, it would be reasonable to simply discard your belief. Behe's complaint is equivalent to saying that you should instead believe in <3>-foot-tall apemen, or possibly 1-inch-tall apemen with invisibility powers, because that modifies the original hypothesis enough to skirt around the facts.
Oh, on the contrary. I think this is intended to please the real fundamentalists. They're the only ones really comfortable at the idea that God smites us with plague and famine as a just punishment for our sins. AIDS is what we get for committing sodomy, remember?
Liberal believers, and liberal ex-believers like Darwin, are the ones who'd have a problem with Behe. They're the ones who try to explain suffering as an unavoidable consequence of free will, or as a learning experience, or as the necessary side effect of an as-good-as-possible universe, or as not real suffering at all if you just look at it from the right angle. It's the fundamentalists who relish the idea that God actually planned and executed your pain, you filthy sinner.
I think we've seen a fair amount of contraction of the Big Tent since Dover. Less talk about common descent, and now Behe gives it lip service but simultaneously endorses old-school created kinds. More talk about altruism and the other inexplicable things that make humans completely different from the beasts. ID is looking more and more like straight-up creationism.
Basically, they've given up convincing mainstream America for now. They're focusing on reentrenching and solidifying their support among the religious right. Less Berlinski, more Egnor.
Shorter Behe: "My kids don't have malaria, what do I care?"
Errmm... what does "released to carry out IT IS designed job..." mean, anyway...?
This kind of nuttery actually helped me become an atheist. Thanks, Behe!
So the omnipotent designer decided to create a universe that he (couldn't be she in this case) has to continually tweak, at all levels.
So, this is a new bloom of creationism: Imbecilic Design.
@ Anton Mates RE: mainstream vs. religious right
The frightening thing is that, at least from my vantage point, the trajectory in good old 'Murika (as plotted by the political mobilization of regressive creduloids by astutely ruthless demagogues / power-brokers) seems to lead the 'mainstream' moving average into convergence with the ascending 'religious right' line.
Or something.
It would have been nice if God had left a signature on the Malaria virus -- something simple like a cross made of atoms -- embedded in every strand of the divinely-crafted protein. Actually, it would be most helpful if God were to tag all of his masterpieces so that we dumb humans could correctly identify those creatures of divine origin and those of natural "microevolution."
Perhaps we can petition God to add this feature to the next revision of Creation?
The Michael Behe Minivan!
Actually, I'm always impressed by how well Behe writes. Obviously it's a load of hideous drek, but look at what he's trying to defend! He's got not choice but to misrepresent, waffle and vaccilate. Imagine trying to turn out reams of this stuff while never letting your readers know for sure that you don't believe a word of it. Suspect, yeah, you'd have to, but you're never quite sure.
He makes a living painting dogshit gold. That can't be easy. Sometimes I think maybe he's some kind of Tartarus, a sinning scientist who's been given an impossible, soul destroying task.
"in"
Insert this 'in' into the post above where it'll make me look less stupid re: Greek mythology.
You mean Sisyphus anyway :->
True, but I didn't think there were many Manichaeans left these days.
Like most ideas in Christianity, this isn't original to Christianity; Zoroastrianism comes to mind.
I'm not sure if you can call this *bad* theology, exactly: there's no clear standard for deciding between good and bad theology (which is precisely why the whole field is sometimes thrown out as worthless).
It is, however, bad science. One designer or more than one, it's still an unnecessary multiplication of entities. No designers are needed to explain the available evidence, and there isn't direct evidence for any nonzero number of designers. (Secondhand reports of someone's dream or hallucination do not qualify as evidence, IMO.)
Now that is interesting. Apparently Behe is a dystheist.
Must suck to be him.
You mean Sisyphus anyway :->
If only creationism/ID came from a polytheistic, rather than monotheistic, tradition, that would be no problem at all. All the evolutionary arms races could be explained away as fights between different Designers!