NOVA: Judgement Day.

Comment by: Karen

This ought to be good! I wonder if they’ll have some of the kookier school board members represented by re-enactors? There were some really bad “oops!” moments during their testimony that would be very dramatic to see on camera.

Comment by: Mike O

I’ve got my DVR set to record it. This could make for an interesting topic because I probably won’t see things the same way as y’all. I’m looking forward to it!

I peed a little.

Stop it! I almost blew hot coffee through my nose when I read that.

Comment by: cautious

I was VERY impressed with the NOVA program last night. The NOVA personnel tried to present a clearly laid out and unbiased view of both sides of the argument. Having done this, it is clear that the logical, empirical, and scientific evidence supporting evolution as something far more than “just a theory” is overwhelming. I was encouraged to hear all the lawyers and journalists stating how amazing the transitional fossils, genetic, and biochemical evidence supporting evolution was. However, I was disheartened by comments such as, “How come we haven’t seen this before?” This needs to be taken to heart for two reasons. First, the general public is simply unaware of the vast array of evidence in support of evolution (indeed, there is probably more evidence directly tangible and comprehensible to the general public supporting the theory of evolution that there is for the theory of gravity). Second, once this evidence is laid out in an organized, understandable fashion, the creationists simply don’t have a leg to stand on, especially in a a court of law where logic and reason SHOULD determine decisions.

That being said, although the Dover case is a landmark victory for science, the war is far from over. The creationists will continue with their barrage of pseudoscience and negative evidence. If last night’s episode taught me anything new, it is that we face a determined and unscrupulous adversary. Alan Bonsell and Bill Buckingham were willing to perjure themselves in court in order to advance their agenda. This is an underlying theme with fundamentalists. Kent Hovind refused to pay over $800k in taxes, and the list goes on. “God’s laws” seem to occupy a higher priority than the secular laws that govern our daily lives. It appears as though the creationist types will literally lie, cheat, and steal in order to advance their cause. Underestimating these folks would be a huge mistake.

Comment by: Siamang

Did anyone else really respond emotionally with terrible sadness when science teacher and school board candidate Bryan Rehm and his wife were called f-ing a-hole atheists?

And then they show the Rehms in their church, singing with the children, and they mentor at the church bible camp.

I just can’t make sense of all the emotions I feel for them. It just is such a terrible thing to be called something in hate that you aren’t… but it’s not a bad thing to be. You feel the hatred that these people endured. It’s like someone calling you a fag or the n-word or the epithet from years past an “n-lover”. It’s just so damned ugly.

Anyway, in solidarity with the Rehms I’m wearing my “Atheists” T-shirt. I’m proud to be an atheist, if the word atheist means you’re one tenth as brave as the Rehms. If there’s anything about the Rehms that these closed-minded, angry bullies hate, I’m glad to be exactly that.

I like how they showed the stupid actions of the school board and the damage it had, be it within families, withing the Dover community, etc. I like that they showed the Rehms and the other science teachers treated with hatred. I like how they showed Tammy Kitzmiller’s death threat letters. I like how they talked about how Judge Jones’ family had to come under the protection of federal marshals because of threats from people who claim they speak for God.

People need to know that it’s more than just about a little one minute statement that the kids will probably forget by recess.

“What harm could it do?” You know? I want people to see this episode and see the ugliness and see.. THIS is the harm it does. When you start having the school board decide to push one subset of one religion’s creation story in science class. This is what happens… you become unmoored from the science, and then it’s open season. Start teaching any BS you want. Bill Buckingham is a retired cop. He doesn’t know cellular mitosis from a cellular PHONE. But here he was going absolutely against state standards, against adjudicated federal law, against his own science teacher’s expertise and, frankly against the Ninth Commandment to commit perjury under oath to push his narrow theology into the public school.

Comment by: Keith

I was able to watch it last night … like you, Karen, I had read most of the transcripts and felt like they did a tremendous job of telling the story of the trial.

In my mind, the issue is less between truth and falsehood or science and religion, and more between work ethic and laziness. The Intelligent Design movement has a long way to go before it is complete enough for public consumption. The ID shortcuts were exposed in the court case, and rightly so. Whether it was the search-and-replace evidence regarding Pandas or the lying of the Christian school board or Behe’s failure under cross-examination, the ID side simply had not done enough work.

I am disappointed in the ID movement … in this court case they were a proverbial boy meeting a man in a fight. The loss does not mean the boy might not become a man one day, but that day is most certainly not this day.

For those interested in more, the Kansas University Hall Center for the Humanities had a number of the key people from this case speak and those lectures on available online. The interviews with Ken Miller and Judge Jones are both especially good.

Comment by: Mike O

I’ve only seen about the first 15 minutes so far but I have a question - what if, rather than teaching evolution as “fact” (there’s obviously plenty of debate on the subject), what if it was taught as theory, and all the pros/cons/gaps/data were presented? What if evolution were presented exactly as it is … a theory with detractors? That way, the science would be science, the questions could be scientificly asked, gaps could be acknowledged, proofs could be acknowledged, etc.

I’ve still got a lot to watch from the Nova special, but that’s just a thought that I had on it.

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

I’ve only seen about the first 15 minutes so far but I have a question - what if, rather than teaching evolution as “fact” (there’s obviously plenty of debate on the subject), what if it was taught as theory, and all the pros/cons/gaps/data were presented?

Yes there’s plenty of debate about evolution …. among lay people who are not that well informed about the subject. There is virtually no debate about the fact of evolution among people doing research in the biological sciences (the people that know this area well). There’s plenty of debate about various finer points but almost none about the basic theory.

Regarding gaps - yes there are plenty but that is the case with any science. These gaps and unanswered questions are what attracts people to scientific research in this field. If there were no gaps and all questions were answered, people would go and work in another discipline. So, it isn’t any big deal that there are gaps in the theory of evolution - as I said before, this is true of all sciences. The important thing is that none of the gaps in evolution are of the nature that would call into question the foundations of the theory.

The objection to evolution is coming mostly from religious people who are interpreting their religion in a very literal manner. These people have yet to come up with a cogent scientific argument against evolution at all. If they had one, what they would be doing is getting it published in scientific journals and winning people to their side using evidence - and in time, this evidence would make its way into the high school curriculum.

Raghu

Comment by: Siamang

Remember, this is about the Biology book referred to as “The Dragonfly Book.” It has 12 mentions of “Darwin” in its hundreds of pages.

Comment by: Mike O

There is virtually no debate about the fact of evolution among people doing research in the biological sciences (the people that know this area well). There’s plenty of debate about various finer points but almost none about the basic theory.

Sorry, but that’s not a true statement. My son is a biology student, and there are plenty of learned people who don’t see it this way. I think it’s all a matter of a) how are you predisposed to seeing “the facts” and b) do you believe in God.

I realize that God and evolution are not mutually exclusive - I understand that. But, it seems that there are scientists/biologists/whatever who also believe in God who don’t put the facts together the same way non-theists do.

And please don’t misunderstand - I’m not drawing a line between theology and evolution - science shows what science shows and theology doesn’t override that - theology is a whole different topic. But what I am saying is that scientists who also believe in God also look at the “facts” scientifically yet draw a completely different conclusion - which would be ID.

I wish I knew more about it myself, but I don’t yet. I’m just going by what my son is learning in college. Yes, it’s a Christian college, but his professors are still well-versed in their field and you can’t just throw out their conclusions because they also happen to believe in God.

The statement “There is virtually no debate about the fact of evolution among people doing research in the biological sciences” is akin to saying smart people believe in evolution and dumb people don’t.

I’m not even arguing for or against evolution - I’m just saying there are a lot of smart people who have done the research and found it lacking.

Comment by: Siamang

My son is a biology student, and there are plenty of learned people who don’t see it this way

WOW… that really shocked and surpised me. I haven’t heard that at all from the scientists and biologists I converse with on the internet.

Yes, it’s a Christian college

DING DING DING DING

Listen…. not to disparage the educational institution that your son’s at… but let’s look at the broader picture here… your sample of what young biologists think is happening is SELF SELECTED by the fact that it’s a Christian college.

Maybe I should poll people at the Heratage foundation, or Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and then say ‘generally, a whole lot of people support the war’?

Comment by: cautious

Ok that wasn’t at all broken, so, I don’t understand why the preview section broke. Anywho,

The statement “There is virtually no debate about the fact of evolution among people doing research in the biological sciences” is akin to saying smart people believe in evolution and dumb people don’t.

I do not think that these statements are akin to one another. In the (relatively small) subset of Homo sapiens who are doing biological research, the vast (at least 99%) majority of them accept three main scientific statements

1) The Earth and the Universe are billions of years old
2) All forms of life on this planet are descended from a common ancestor
3) Natural processes explain this common descent

It has nothing to do with belief, it has to do with acceptance. People either accept these statements or they don’t. Intelligence doesn’t enter into it.

Comment by: Siamang

you can’t just throw out their conclusions because they also happen to believe in God.

And yet you throw out the conclusions of scientists and Christians Ken Miller, Francis Collins, and the thousands or tens of thousands of other Christian biologists who say ID is a crock, DESPITE the fact that they happen to believe in God.

What a complete straw man complaint, that we toss out ID because a Christian came up with it. We don’t toss out the human genome project because a Christian, Francis Collins, headed up the team that decoded it.

Rather it is you who tosses out the conclusions of the overwhelming consensus of scientists worldwide, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and more…

Not because they’re Christians, Jews Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or atheists, and not because you have endeavored to understand the science involved, but because those scientific conclusions conflict with what some nice lady once taught you in Sunday School.

Why do you insist on painting US as the ones who are closed minded on this subject?? I sent you a book. Did you read it? I gave you a link to the Nova special. Did you watch it?

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

Sorry, but that’s not a true statement. My son is a biology student, and there are plenty of learned people who don’t see it this way. I think it’s all a matter of a) how are you predisposed to seeing “the facts” and b) do you believe in God.

…

Yes, it’s a Christian college,

…

Basically you are proving my point for me. With a few exceptions, the only people who do not accept evolution are the ones who take a too-literal interpretation of their religion. Christian colleges are notorious for having large pockets of anti-evolution sentiment - for the above stated reason (in all probability).

Look at pretty much all the top universities and research labs all over the world and you’ll find that the acceptance of evolution is pretty much universal. People like Michael Behe are the extremely rare exception.

And you have not answered my other question. There is a legitimate way of getting these so called ‘weaknesses’ of evolution into school and college curricula - publish any research that casts doubt on evolution in scientific journals. It is amazing that for all that these people talk, they have no publication record in this area to speak of. Behe has a lot of publications in other areas but for all his ID advocacy, he has not been able to get a single scientific publication on the subject.

The theory of evolution did not get taught in schools because people forced it in by taking over school boards. What Darwin and those who followed him did was to present the necessary evidence and convince the scientific community that their theory was right. It is a pity that the ID advocates cannot do the same.

…

but his professors are still well-versed in their field and you can’t just throw out their conclusions because they also happen to believe in God.

In a scientific matter, belief or lack thereof in God should be immaterial. What does it tell you that pretty much every ID advocate is religious (actually David Berlinksi is the only exception I can think of) while there are a ton of religious as well as non-religious scientists who accept evolution?

My basic problem with ID is that it consists of nothing but attempts to poke holes in the theory of evolution and assuming that ID automatically becomes true if evolution if proved false. I have yet to see anyone present any positive evidence for ID at all. Take an ID book and remove all references to evolution from it and all that will be left will be three words - ‘God did it’. What’s there to teach? By contrast I can find a huge number of evolution books that do not mention ID at all.

Raghu

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

I haven’t had a chance to read all of this yet … but all I was saying is, there are smart people on the ID side, too. It’s not true to say all scientists accept this or that, because they don’t.

No one said ‘all scientists accept evolution’. I said ‘virtually all’ biologists. If you look outside a few religious colleges, you’ll find that my statement was true.

I’m not even trying to equate Christian vs secular education … my point is that it’s not universally accepted, that’s all. And the difference among scientists seems to be whether they believe in God.

That’s not true. I can name you plenty of religious evolutionists. There are plenty of God believing people in the evolution camp. You would be hard pressed to find any significant ID proponent who is not religious (the only one I can think of is David Berlinski).

Unless somehow, being a Christian makes you unable to do science, which I don’t think is the case.

No one was implying that. In fact Siamang mentioned the names of a couple of Christian biologists who we regard very highly - Ken Miller and Francis Collins. Here are a few others - Simon Conway-Morris, Francisco Ayala and Joan Roughgarden. All of these are Christians, all staunch defenders of evolution and all have written books about how they reconciled the two. Check them out on Amazon.

However, it is possible that even very bright people may be strongly biased against evolution because of their religious beliefs to the point where they ignore or belittle the evidence for it. Here are a couple of quotes from Kurt Wise, now a biology professor at a Christian college.

I am a young-age creationist because the Bible indicates the universe is young. Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young for scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant.

Here is another gem.

if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.

Kurt Wise is certainly no fool - quite the contrary, in fact. He got his PhD in biology at Harvard. One of his professors was Stephen Jay Gould. Say what you will about Harvard but you don’t graduate with a PhD from there unless you are smart. He is just an extreme example of what a too-literal interpretation of religion can do to a person’s thinking.

Raghu

Comment by: cautious

Teach both theories, let the kids decide

But, to say something constructive, maybe, it is very interesting to see that a scientific field (which is the most inclusive way of saying that evolution is fact, and theory, and research, and even some potentially unprovable conjecture) would be so resistantly attacked, doubted, and denied.

It’s not at all strange that some people attack, doubt, or deny a scientific field and embrace a pseudoscientific replacement. And usually these people have an extra-scientific reason for doing so: there is no scientific reason for thinking astrology works, people just take whatever fake explanation they like the most and run with it.

The only thing that separates out creationism/evolution denial from…say, flat earthers, or germy theory deniers, is the large number of said creationists in the world’s only remaining superpower.

Comment by: Mike O

Siamang, yes, I’m reading your book and watching the special.

Karen, no I didn’t watch the video you sent me and I must have lost it.

I was commenting to some friends this weekend that one of the things that is so interesting here is that I am starting to understand what it feels like to be in the minority! It doesn’t feel very good, but at the same time it does feel good because I’m seeing how Christians treat people when we assume everyone should just jump on board with everything we say.

You think I somehow don’t want to see the truth - that’s what Christians think about you!

You think it should be easy, if I would just open my mind (heart?) to the evidence - that’s what Christians think about you.

You think your answer is the obvious answer and that non-believers like myself have to go to some effort to construct a defense against it - that’s what Christians think about you, too.

Interesting, huh?

What’s interesting to me is that I see now how it feels to be the unbeliever, and how it feels when people who “believe” treat you like you just don’t want to see the truth! I’m the unbeliever when it comes to evolution. I’m the guy on the outside now, looking in, and I’m not so sure I want to come in. Not because you’re bad people - I just don’t need the hassle. It’s easier to just change the subject.

I’m not saying that because I don’t feel welcome here, because I do. I’m not going anywhere - I like the company and I’m learning too much! But holy cow, I sure am getting a good dose of what it feels like to be you when you talk to Christians who want you to convert.

Comment by: Siamang

Thanks, Keith.

Wow, that post just made my day!

Mike, I’m really glad we’re having this dialogue. And I love Raghu’s contribution. I agree… it’s ID that I can’t stand! I’m really bugged by the Discovery Institute’s patent dishonesty… and it’s amazing to me that people cannot see that stuff as plainly as I can, because they really really WANT the Discovery Institute to be right about being able to look through a microscope and discover scientific proof of God by looking at a bacteria.

Comment by: Karen

Mike O, it seems like you feel a little “piled on” right now, and I just want to say if I contributed to that feeling, I apologize.

I definitely do understand why you are struggling with this issue, and I absolutely admire your courage in continuing the discussion.

Comment by: Mike O

Mike O, it seems like you feel a little “piled on” right now, and I just want to say if I contributed to that feeling, I apologize.

Don’t apologize - I’ve never been in the minority before. I’m learning some valuable lessons, like how you have to be more sure of what you believe when you don’t have the general tide of opinion on your side.

Please don’t apologize for teaching me to think. :)

Comment by: Siamang

Mike,

Sorry, I didn’t mean to speak for you when talking about people “wanting” ID to be true.

When I wrote that, I was thinking of the people in the Nova special. And some of the school board in Dover who voted for the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the curriculum , at least one of whom later testified under oath that she never read the textbook in question, and really couldn’t tell you what ID did and didn’t say.

For Dover Board-member Heather Geesey, who didn’t read the material, but voted on it anyway… that to me means that she wanted it to be true so much that it was immaterial what evidence or arguments or indeed specific claims the “Of Pandas and People” book actually made.

Here’s some of her cross-examination in the Dover Trial:

Q Is it fair to say that you didn’t know much about intelligent design in October of 2004?

A Yes.

Q And you didn’t know much about the book Of Pandas and People either, did you?

A Correct.

Q So you had never participated in any discussions of the book?

A No.

Q And you made no effort independently to find out about the book?

A No.

Q And the administration had made copies of the book available to board members.

A Yes.

Q But you never read the book.

A No.

Q And no one ever explained to you what intelligent design was about.

A No.

Q And you never got any instructional materials or tapes about intelligent design.

A No.

Q And you never viewed any or read any books about intelligent design.

A No.

Q And you didn’t study it independently.

A No.

Q You didn’t go on the Internet and look it up.

A No.

Q So you didn’t really think too much about intelligent design.

A No.

Q You just knew it was something else that the kids were going to learn?

A Yes.

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

I don’t know. I just think God is somehow behind all of it.

I’d say people like Ken Miller and Francis Collins would agree with you that God is behind all of it and they’d support evolution as well. In the minds of a lot of people, belief in one does not preclude belief in the other.

Raghu

Comment by: Mike O

This is a very well-one special! I’ve learned a lot!

My questions here are not meant to push back on evolution, but rather to push back on the idea that intelligent design has been in any way “refuted.” I still see tons of it. All my questions are rhetorical, but if you’d like to anwer them, that would be OK.

In the online link you provided at the top, chapter 8 at the 5 minute mark starts talking about irreducible complexity and the flagellum and the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague (the “syringe”).

This is from the transcript:

DAVID DEROSIER (Brandeis University): What I wrote was that this is a machine that looks like it was designed by a human. But that doesn’t mean that it was designed, that is the product of Intelligent Design. Indeed, this, more, has all the earmarks of something that arose by evolution.

NARRATOR: Using an electron microscope, DeRosier produces these ghostly pictures—that reveal the inner workings of what’s been called the world’s most efficient motor.

DAVID DEROSIER: This is the drive shaft. This transmits this torque generated by the motor. That would then turn the propeller, which would push the— the bacterial cell through the fluid.

NARRATOR: Michael Behe has argued that the flagellum could not have evolved—since its parts could have no function for natural selection to act on until they are fully assembled.

But evidence that refutes Behe’s claim of irreducible complexity comes from a tiny syringe that injects poison—found in some of the nastiest of all bacteria.

DAVID DEROSIER: This is a structure found, for example, in Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the Bubonic Plague. Look at the similarities. This structure doesn’t rotate, but it still has to extend this structure, which is equivalent to the rod, the drive shaft here. It has to extend that, because it needs this little channel. It’s like— sort of like a syringe. So the— the— virulence factors that are made inside the cell, which is down here, can be exported, pushed up into this hole and exported out through this long kind of needle, perhaps into a— a cell in your body or mine. And thereby create misery.

NARRATOR: And it turns out the two structures look similar for a reason.

The syringe on the right is made of a subset of the very same protein types found in the base of the flagellum on the left.

Though the syringe is missing proteins found in the motor—and therefore can’t produce rotary motion—it functions perfectly as an apparatus for transmitting disease.

DAVID DEROSIER: So, if we think about— what it means to be irreducibly complex, the argument is that if you take away even one of these proteins, that the structure— cannot function. And yet here is a structure that functions, that is missing several of the proteins one finds here, and yet here it is a working, viable organelle of the bacterium. So, indeed, the structure is not, in that sense, irreducibly complex.

NARRATOR: To emphasize DeRosier’s point, Miller arrived at court making an unusual fashion statement.

KENNETH MILLER: As an example of what irreducible complexity means, advocates of intelligent design like to point to a very common machine: the mouse trap. And the mouse trap is composed of five parts. It has a base plate, the catch, a spring, a little hammer that actually does the dirty work, and a bait holder.

The mouse trap will not work if any one of these five parts are taken away. That’s absolutely true. But remember the key notion of irreducible complexity, and that is that this whole machine is completely useless until all the parts are in place. Well, that, that turns out not to be true.

And I’ll give you an example. What I have right here is a mouse trap from which I’ve removed two of the five parts. I still have the base plate, the spring and the hammer. Now you can’t catch any mice with this, so it’s not a very good mouse trap. But it turns out that, despite the missing parts, it makes a perfectly good, if somewhat inelegant, tie clip. And when we look at the favorite examples for irreducible complexity, and the bacterial flagellum is a perfect example, we find the molecular equivalent of my tie clip, which is we see parts of the machine missing two, three, four, maybe even 20 parts, but still fulfilling a perfectly good purpose that could be favored by evolution. And that’s why the irreducible complexity argument falls apart.

The conclusion that is being drawn is that since the two are similar in structure, and one is less complex than the other, that “refutes” the idea of irreducible complexity.

Really??

What we have here are two functioning things. Sure, one is simpler than the other, but even the simpler one is quite complex according to this. Even if the more complex evolved from the lesser, we still have the less-complex organism to deal with.

And one of the first questions I had was this - if one can be reduced to the other, scientists should be able to take a flagellum and turn it into this syringe-type thingy.

Have they?

And that would be easy compared to going the other way - taking a syringe-type thingy and turning it into a flagellum. And we even know how to do it - imagine the complexity of accomplishing that by chance!

I’ve got about a zillion questions now -

Where did the protiens come from?
where did the poison in the bubonic cell come from, and why? And if it never had a syringe to let it out, what did it do before that? A perfectly good poison that did what?

And the thing that it poisoned - where did that come from? Sure was unlucky that this other fully developed poison had this fully developed syringe with fully developed extenders and tubes and holes to cause it mysery!

And if one evolved from teh other, did the flagellum also have bubonic poison inside of it’s cell? Could it?

And my last question for here is this - why did the random proteins that came together to make “the motor” and “the syringe” and “the propeller” and “the drive shaft” come together at all? How did they come together? When did they come together?

I could go on and on. I’m not saying one didn’t evolve from teh other - I’m just saying I still see design here. Too many moving parts.

In an earlier chapter, ID was determined to be non-science because it is based on negative assumptions. I get that, but if the furthest reduction we can get with evolution is something that, by the author’s own words, at least appeared to be designed, why wouldn’t we want kids to know that???

Comment by: Siamang

Hi Mike. Glad you enjoyed the special.

My questions here are not meant to push back on evolution, but rather to push back on the idea that intelligent design has been in any way “refuted.” I still see tons of it.

If you could, could you please get in the habit of speaking clearly about whether you see Intelligent Design as defined by the Discovery Institute, or if you see the “hand of God” in nature. These are two distinct notions.

As we said before, Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Stephen Matheson and a large number of people who are believers see the hand of God in the natural world. But they utterly dismiss as false the claims of the Discovery Institute.

So when we say “Intelligent Design has been refuted” we mean specifically the falsifiable claims of Michael Behe, William Dembski, Casey Luskin and the authors of “Of Pandas and People”.

The idea that God had a hand in creation is an unfalsifiable idea, so let’s for now call the claims in “Pandas” Intelligent Design, and leave the majesty of God in all things for another discussion.

Now, if we’re specifically talking about the claims made by Michael Behe… claims that he made in his book “Darwin’s Black Box” and are repeated in “Pandas”…

Specifically, Michael Behe makes the testable claim based on a concept called “irreducible complexity” which he defines as:
as one “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”

This is a specific claim. And the claim is this: If you remove a part from the flagellum, it is a useless machine. Since evolution by natural selection requires that each step along the pathway be selectable, there has to be a step by step progression from one structure to the next.

The conclusion that is being drawn is that since the two are similar in structure, and one is less complex than the other, that “refutes” the idea of irreducible complexity.

Not exactly. Remember, these are Behe’s own words defining IC: “…wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”

The syringe IS the flagellum with a number of parts removed, therefore Behe’s assertion is falsified.

In science, you have to make specific, falsifiable claims. You, Mike O, cannot come in and make apologies and find wiggle-room after the fact. The specific claimed assertion is proven false. Therefore Behe’s claim to have found God in the bacterial flagellum has not made its case.

You or Behe or anyone else is free to make a new, specific testable assertion, and we’ll run some experiments and see if that one is falsified as well. But it has to be specific and testable, not airy and hand-wavey.

And one of the first questions I had was this - if one can be reduced to the other, scientists should be able to take a flagellum and turn it into this syringe-type thingy.

This assumes you can run evolution in reverse. You can’t. You also can’t run a sausage factory in reverse and manufacture pigs.

But what Behe was saying was that sausages didn’t come from any animal on earth, and all David Derosier did was show Behe the pig.

Whew. Enough typing for now.

Comment by: Mike O

If you could, could you please get in the habit of speaking clearly about whether you see Intelligent Design as defined by the Discovery Institute, or if you see the “hand of God” in nature.

I see the hand of God in nature.

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

We’re assuming you can run it forward (and maybe you can). If it has to go forward, than can we turn the syringe into a flagellum?

Well, with modern day ability to sequence DNA, yes we probably will soon be able to do it (if we cannot do it right now) by just altering the DNA where we need to. To get it to evolve in the lab is not so easy. You are talking about something that evolved over millions of years. No you can’t do it in any reasonable time frame.

What we can demonstrate in the lab and by observing nature is evolution on a smaller scale. However, even in this relatively short time frame, we can see some remarkable changes - both at the physical as well as the molecular level.

Raghu

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Just a short follow-up to what Siamang just said.

Science has to often study things that are ‘remote’ in one way or another. In the case of evolution we are examining the remote past. In the case of astrophysics we are examining things that are remote in distance. In the case of particle physics we are examining things that are so small that it isn’t possible to detect them by any direct means. You could call that ‘remote’ in terms of size.

In all these cases, direct evidence is impossible to get. What we have to do is to try and get indirect evidence. You study things by some effect they left behind - in much the same way as a detective studies a criminal case when there are no witnesses to what happened. The ‘fingerprints’ and other markers left behind are, in the end, as convincing as direct eyewitness evidence.

And it isn’t any one piece of evidence that will seal the deal. Any one thing can be easily explained away. However, when you have a humongous amount of evidence, all pointing in the same direction, it isn’t nearly as easy to explain it all away. That’s what scientists try to do in the above-mentioned disciplines - try and pile up as much evidence as possible. You cannot look at one piece and say ‘this does not convince me.’ You have to look at the entire picture. If you do, you will find it is like a jigsaw puzzle - with many pieces still not in place but enough of it is in place for us to figure out what the final image looks like.

OK - enough with the bad analogies ;-)

Raghu

Comment by: Mike O

Sorry, I’m at work so this is a bit disjointed (I’m being distracted by the day-to-day cares of earning a living!) But here’s a few thoughts on the past few posts …

Irreducible means ‘cannot be reduced’. Well, it just was reduced. So what do you do at that point?

The specific example of irreducible complexity has been shown to be invalid, but the concept of irreducible complexity still needs to be dealt with. The things we’re dealing with are still complex.

Let me try it this way —

We stand here today reasoning, “We have the syringe, and we have the similar, more complex flagellum, therefore the syringe evolved into the flagellum.”

But let’s go back a billion (or whatever) years to a point in time where we have the syringe, but we do not have the flagellum. There is no need for a flagellum, there is no purpose for a flagellum, the flagellum is not missing, per se, because there is no such thing as a flagellum - Life as we know it (no flagella) has existed for millions, even a billion years already.

Forget the question of how the proteins came together to make the syringe - let’s assume we have that. And let’s also assume that the 40 or so missing proteins needed to make the flagellum exist in near-enough proximity to bond with the syringe.

a) What made the proein(s) bond to the syringe?

b) Why did only 40 (or so) proteins bond?

c) Why/how did they bond the way the did to make the motor?

d) What kept them from bonding before that?

e) What keeps more from bonding now?

You see, somehow, even if it’s random, it has to somehow be controlled or everything would just bond to everything. But it doesn’t.

The other explanation I can think of is that the proteins didn’t bond with the syringe, they some how came from the syringe - if that’s the case, then we have proteins being sponaneously generated - can that happen? (Serious question)

The point is that you are not going to be satisfied until you have every link in the chain. That is infeasible.

Why? If evolution can happen by chance, then we should be able to make it happen on purpose, and I don’t think we have, have we? For example, can we make one organism become something else? The exchange Siamang included above still involved chance and thus millions of years. But what if we replaced chance with intelligence - which we do have now, by the way? If it could happen by chance before, adding intelligence now shouldn’t make the process stop working, it should make it work better - especially given how well we understand it.

Forget about whether there was intelligent design at the beginning or anywhere in history - we have intelligence now. Why can’t we manipulate nature on purpose if it can be manipulated by chance.

Why can’t we make a flagellum that can go in reverse with a back-up beeper? Evolution could.

Can you turn a syringe into a flagellum? Perhaps you can. But you know, it might take a few million years. Behe would like to see the entire history of bacterial evolution happen right before his eyes in real time before he agrees that it happened. It’s like the science teacher in that Nova episode said. It’s like denying the Civil War ever happened just because you can’t see it with your own eyes.

It’s not - it’s easy to imagine how a war was fought. it’s not easy to imagine how the syringe actually evolved into a flagellum. We see a flagellum, so we say that it’s simple. But if we had never seen one before, how could we imagine it “just happening” without seeing it? That’s quite different from a war.

What’s the next thing people will evolve into? Maybe when we destroy our planet, we’ll evolve into creatures that can survive in outer space, or that actually thrive on the destroyed earth. Isn’t that the whole point of evolution? And if it is, why do we care about global warming - we’ll be fine. Maybe not as people, but we’ll evolve into something that likes it that way.

I think you saw a version of this exchange in the video. Behe suggested an experiment that if run would take two years according to him, and had the potential to disprove his hypothesis.

It’s been ten years since he wrote Darwin’s Black Box. The Discovery Institute has had a multi-million dollar budget for years. And yet, that money goes to lawyers and press-releases and writing up school textbooks and making very slick videos with lots of expensive computer animation.

But not ONE experiment.

I haven’t got that far yet, but let me turn that around on you - with the intelligence we have now, we should be able to reproduce evolution in some meaningful way that would prove the theory.

And I don’t mean changing the colors of a moth’s wings, I mean turning a banana into a cat, or even a syringe into a flagellum.

Better yet, let’s create something new! Any ideas??

But not ONE expiriment (I don’t think).

Comment by: Mike O

Mike… .way WAY too many very technical questions all at once.

Ask ONE or TWO. The answers may help you understand in a way that make the other questions moot.

Sorry!

After all that rambling, here’s my one main question …

If evolution is true (and it may be - I don’t know), it seems that we should be able to add intelligence and design something new or recreate something old now that we know how the process works when left to chance. Something more significant than changing the color of a wing - something like building a flagellum from a syringe and 40 proteins.

If syringe + 40 proteins + chance + time –> flagellum, then syringe + 40 proteins + intelligence (+ time??) should be able to –> flagellum. This should be a true statement

Comment by: Raghu Mani

Comment by: Mike O

The specific example of irreducible complexity has been shown to be invalid, but the concept of irreducible complexity still needs to be dealt with. The things we’re dealing with are still complex.

….

I’m afraid you are not getting my point. Let me try again. How do you determine something is irreducible? Right now the technique used by the ID folk seems to be along the lines of ‘I cannot figure out how it could have evolved - so it is irreducibly complex’. I’m sorry but that isn’t acceptable. They should first come up with a foolproof methodology that can be tested.

Why? If evolution can happen by chance, then we should be able to make it happen on purpose, and I don’t think we have, have we? For example, can we make one organism become something else? The exchange Siamang included above still involved chance and thus millions of years.

I haven’t got that far yet, but let me turn that around on you - with the intelligence we have now, we should be able to reproduce evolution in some meaningful way that would prove the theory.

What are you talking about here?

If it is just a question of constructing these things in the lab, that is not particularly hard. We do not fully understand the genetic code yet but we are getting there. Pretty soon, with our ever improving ability to manipulate DNA, we will be able to do pretty much all of what you asked for in the lab in minutes by just constructing the appropriate DNA sequence. Even right now, we can perform some pretty impressive feats of genetic engineering.

However, if you want to try and get things to evolve in the lab that have evolved in nature over millions and in some cases billions of years - I’m sorry but that request is beyond unreasonable. All that we can do in the lab is to apply consistent selective pressure which might speed up the rate of evolution by a couple of orders of magnitude at the most - this means we probably can bring a million year process down to ten thousand years but that is still way too long for a lab experiment.

Let me recap what has been done in lab studies and field observations over the past 100 years or so.

1. We have seen new proteins and enzymes arise in nature - that never existed before.

2. We have seen ‘irreducibly complex’ pathways evolve. This does not involve 40+ proteins like the bacterial flagellum - the ones we have seen are just 3 proteins long. However, taking away any one renders the whole mechanism non-functional - so it fits Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity.

3. We have seen many instances of speciation. One species becoming another. The new species is not radically different from the parent species but it has diverged to the point where the two are no longer inter-fertile.

It’s not - it’s easy to imagine how a war was fought. it’s not easy to imagine how the syringe actually evolved into a flagellum.

It is not easy for you to imagine this. Scientists have constructed several plausible scenarios for the evolution of the flagellum, of the blood clotting cascade and of the vertebrate immune system (Behe’s favorite examples). These have yet to be tested. Research takes time but progress is being made.

What’s the next thing people will evolve into? Maybe when we destroy our planet, we’ll evolve into creatures that can survive in outer space, or that actually thrive on the destroyed earth. Isn’t that the whole point of evolution? And if it is, why do we care about global warming - we’ll be fine. Maybe not as people, but we’ll evolve into something that likes it that way.

No, that isn’t the point of evolution. Evolution isn’t some all-powerful process capable of producing anything imaginable. It is slow, clumsy and riddled with compromises. And it is constrained by the laws of physics and chemistry. And it is working with an extremely limited set of building blocks (4 types of bases in DNA, a total of 23 different amino acids). Each time you add the ability to do something, you give something else up. There’s no free lunch here. We are destroying the planet at a crazily rapid rate. If we go past the tipping point, we will die in huge numbers. Evolution will not save us. It is an extremely slow process - and even more so for large species like us - and cannot keep up with the rate of change we are inflicting on our planet.

Raghu

Comment by: Mike O

Thanks, you guys! It will take a bit for me to process this, but this has been great! At least for me.

Comment by: Mike O

It’s answers like this that make me doubt that “these things just happen from time to time.”

It happened billions of years ago by chance, yet we can’t get it to happen now? And this is just one example of billions of successful mutations that have happened over the eons.

Can you understand why I struggle with it?

Comment by: Karen

Can you understand why I struggle with it?

Just following along with this thread, and greatly admiring the Herculean patience shown here, it seems to me like you’re struggling to understand primarily because you really don’t have a good fundamental understanding of what evolution is and how it works.

I think you’d have much less trouble if you took the time to acquaint yourself with the basic information about natural selection and how change occurs gradually over time (we’re talking about a long, long, long time here) prompted by random mutations that provide the organism with some benefit. It’s not hard to understand, really. I’m no scientist and I grasped the basic details pretty quickly.

If you knew the basics, then you wouldn’t be expecting scientists to somehow replicate evolution as a directed process artificially in a lab. The fact that that’s not going to happen is completely predictable - it doesn’t cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

Comment by: cautious

Well, we can make one organism become something else. It’s called “genetic engineering”. But it’s not evolution… it’s genetic engineering.

Well if we’re looking for an example of intelligent design, then genetic engineering is probably the closest thing to what Mike is looking for… It is a way for lateral gene transfer to occur without nature intending it to…

To sound like a broken record, I think three main aspects of evolutionary science disagree with Biblical literalism:

1) The Earth and the Universe are billions of years old
2) All forms of life on this planet are descended from a common ancestor
3) Natural processes explain this common descent

The ID movement, as promoted by the Discovery Institute, has no problem with the first two of these statements, it just thinks that sometimes an extra bonus “helping hand” is needed for the third proposition to come true. And on the grand scale of things, that’s ok, they can do such a thing. Where it gets bothersome is when they insist that things had to happen that way.

On this whole flagellum/syringe concept, Behe essentially painted himself into a corner. To say that a complicated biological system could not work with 1 element removed is basically asking for someone to do research and show you you’re wrong.

Furthermore, as a guy who works on macroscopic fossil organisms, I have no idea what the f!*@ happens in bacterial flagella/syringes. Seeing the SEM/CGI versions of those two organelles, it seems more likely that both organelles had a “common ancestor” than that a bacteria species had a syringe, and then its descendents started to evolve a flagellum, so that the syringe “became” a flagellum.