Behe on organismal evolution

Ken Miller is a Catholic, Catholics are Christians and Christianity is about as theistic as you can get. Am I missing something? Besides the fact I doubt Miller's Christianity?

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"...the most habitable place in the solar system yields the best view of solar eclipses just when observers can best appreciate them." from "The Privileged Planet"

How well is ID and Irreducible Complexity accepted amoung Islamic academics?Personally, I think it would be of great benefit to have academics from non-Christian backgrounds and even agnostic or atheistic backgrounds, if it were possible, supporting ID and IC. Then it would make it harder for the theory's detractors to write it off as creationism is disguise.BTW, I ALSO think it would be of great benefit if it turned out Behe wasn't a religious man, for the reason I listed above. But, even though looking back on it now I can't remember him ever expressing precise religious affiliation, I've never even questioned Behe's theistic beliefs. He seems to make it very clear from context that he believes in God.

Ken Miller is a Catholic, Catholics are Christians>>Supposedly.....

You are completely correct. His argument is the same, we don't know therefore God (ie Designer) did it. Behe jumps into the same creationist pool by inserting God into a gap in our knowledge. One of Behe's catch phrases is "one fell swoop" which describes how IC systems arise in organisms. This sounds VERY VERY similar to "species appear in the fossil record fully formed". Same argument, same camp.>>His argument isn't that we don't know, therefore God did it......his argument is that we CAN'T know, therefore God did it. Does it take any more faith to say "we don't know, it is unknowable" than it does to say "we don't know, therefore we will certainly find out later"?

well,"one fell swoop" might mean historically-
some of the first discussion of Newton as to if a rock fell in China and West isnt Newton still correct..to any number of these metaphors recently.
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"species appear fully clothed" might express a former DARWINIST cover-up that Aggasiz noticed but reformed with sophisticated philosophy of chance removing by incidence (which needed to have been congruence)the lack that THEY ARE NOT FULLY FORMED (obviously)!A record is not a fact. SOOO a hypothesis of the affect of gravity (rather the inertia of change) in theory creates a record (in the accounting sense) but need not horizon the few facts that support the economics driving the changability or rather the previous change but if one did not see modern forms as temporal entities but simply more diversifications then where the split occurs can not be yet recorded even if the fact is there. Gould did not.

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His argument isn't that we don't know, therefore God did it......his argument is that we CAN'T know, therefore God did it. Does it take any more faith to say "we don't know, it is unknowable" than it does to say "we don't know, therefore we will certainly find out later"?

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This is not what Behe is saying. He is saying that he DOES know, he is saying that these IC systems DID come about in one fell swoop.It is an argument from ignorance. He is claiming that he is right until someone has evidence otherwise, and at the same time having no evidence himself. It is a God of the Gaps argument, plain and simple.I have addressed this problem in another thread (started by myself). No one has posted anything, hopefully you can be the first: Stonehenge and Irreducible Complexity. I am kind of proud of my argument, but don't be afraid to tear it apart.

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"species appear fully clothed" might express a former DARWINIST cover-up that Aggasiz noticed but reformed with sophisticated philosophy of chance removing by incidence (which needed to have been congruence)the lack that THEY ARE NOT FULLY FORMED (obviously)!

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Just a quick diversion, and then we'll get back to the topic. I like Darwin's assessment of the fossil record. He said that we can trust the positive evidence but not the negative evidence. That is, in reference to transitional forms we can trust the fossils we do find but we can not trust the lack of fossils to inform us of anything.

This is not what Behe is saying. He is saying that he DOES know, he is saying that these IC systems DID come about in one fell swoop.It is an argument from ignorance.>>IMO, arguing that everything will be discovered to have a naturalistic cause eventually is more of an argument from ignorance than asserting that something couldn't have had a naturalistic cause.In order to disprove Behe's assertion that a system is irreducibly complex, all an Evolutionist has to do is come up with a detailed, step by step theory of how it could have evolved. On the other hand, the assertion of the Evolutionist of "we just don't know yet" is impossible to disprove.........which is exactly why the Evolutionists use it.

Lets be clear that the ID crowd also have wayts that they could deny that ID has been falsified:1) The ID crowd can always demand more detail. This is precisely the tack taken by Dembski on the flagellum. But why is DETAIL needed ? It is not as if ID offers any detail. Surely all we need to do is refute objections to the possibility of the evolution of a flagellum.2) The ID crowd can always pick out another system. ID can't be falsified unless and until we have fully explained the evolution of practically everything.Irreducibly complex systems can evolve. Behe says so. He admitted as much in Darwin's Black Box. The only ARGUMENT from IC is that in Behe's opinion it is very unlikely that IC systems would evolve. Perhaps one day we'll see a rigourous argument to that effect. But right now any argument from IC rests on Behe's intuition which is far from an adequate basis.

2) The ID crowd can always pick out another system. ID can't be falsified unless and until we have fully explained the evolution of practically everything.>>This is true. However, I think most fair-minded people would be satisfied if the evolutionary processes of just a few of the more complex system were theoretically demonstrated in detail. And this hasn't been done.Irreducibly complex systems can evolve. Behe says so. He admitted as much in Darwin's Black Box. The only ARGUMENT from IC is that in Behe's opinion it is very unlikely that IC systems would evolve. Perhaps one day we'll see a rigourous argument to that effect. But right now any argument from IC rests on Behe's intuition which is far from an adequate basis.>>I've heard Behe reference teams of mathematicians who have done studies which show that IC systems evolving would be mathematically highly improbable.........however, these references are obviously very vague. I would also like to hear more specific math done of these IC systems (and if anyone has any specific examples of of the numbers being broken down, I'd be very interested).However, I think ANY fair-minded person's intuition would tell you that IC systems evolving would be extremely unlikely.<<1) The ID crowd can always demand more detail. This is precisely the tack taken by Dembski on the flagellum. But why is DETAIL needed ? It is not as if ID offers any detail. Surely all we need to do is refute objections to the possibility of the evolution of a flagellum.>>When proposing metaphysics as a cause, supplying more detail would not only be superfluous, but absurd. However, when proposing naturalistic function as a cause.......This message has been edited by JasonChin, 10-08-2004 10:05 AM

How do you know that we don't have evolutionary explanations for just a few complex systems ? Wouldn't the Krebs cycle count, for instance ?I've heard nothing about these supposed teams of mathematicians and I take any such claim with a large dose of salt. It would be very unusual for the ID movement to be so quiet about a major piece of work that supposedly supports their case.And I think that any fair-minded person who understood what evolution CAN do would expect it to produce IC systems. Behe's argument relies on an assumption of piece-by-piece assembly and that's just wrong.As to your final point ID supposedly allows natural designers - and even a supernatural designer has to implement its designs somehow. There is nothing in principle that keeps ID from producing more detailed explanations than it does. Nor is there any good reason for demanding more and more detail. Not unless there is a strong argument that we should be able to do so if evolution were the explanation.

How do you know that we don't have evolutionary explanations for just a few complex systems ? Wouldn't the Krebs cycle count, for instance ?>>The vast majority of IC systems haven't been explained in detail. Explain just a substantial minority or them, and you'll have won the argument.<>

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It hasn't been proven that evolution can do anything on a large scale.

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Even if you assume that the seperate mechanisms for an IC system just HAPPEN to also serve another, independant selection function and just HAPPEN to evolve side by side, you still can't explain how they come to work together like they should. For instance, if you stuck the engine of one kind of car in the body of another, would you expect to have a functioning automobile. No, because, even though they have the POTENTIAL to be an automobile, they weren't DESIGNED to work together.......therefore, without modification, they won't.

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Crap, how are you supposed to explain "God did it"?

In your last message you said that we onlyy had to explain a few complex systems. Now you've moved the goal posts quite considerably.
So :1) how many IC systems are there (I'll accept an order-of-magnitude estimate)2) How many have been explained - and I'll need some explanation of why you think it is that number and no more.3) How many have to be explained, and why fewer will not do.Then you can start explaining what you mean by a "large scael" and why you think it hasn't been proven that evolution is capable of acting on it.As for your argument that systems can't come together - well we've got an example where the evidence says it did happen (the Krebs cycle again). And modification of parts is the name of the game in evolution. That's just one of the flaws in relying on Behe's mousetrap analogy as any sort of guide.For the last sentence, if ID's explanation is "God did it" with no further explanation then ID is not science - it's theology and not very good theology at that. And since the ID mvoement won't even admit that ID *is* "God did it" - they're more likely to issue angry denails at the very suggestion - it really isn't a valid defence.

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The vast majority of IC systems haven't been explained in detail. Explain just a substantial minority or them, and you'll have won the argument.

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Blood clotting:NCBIBacterial Flagella:http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html, and a quick quote from this site: Is this good enough, or do you need more?

Needless to say, that was a bit much to read, but this particular pre-suppostion leaps out at me:"(4) The transition between each stage is bridgeable by the evolution of a single new binding site, coupling two pre-existing subsystems, followed by coevolutionary optimization of components."So, in order to believe that the flagellum evolved, you have to believe that each of its components just happened to evolve independantly and side by side, AND that every time one component of the system combined with another component it coincidentally created yet another subsystem with selection effects all its own.Seems alot to assume.