Intelligent design gets even dumber

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/intelligent-design-gets-even-dumber/2019/03/08/7a8e72dc-289e-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.60bff94debfa

The notion of “intelligent design” arose after opponents of evolution repeatedly failed on First Amendment grounds to get Bible-based creationism taught in the public schools. Their solution: Take God out of the mix and replace him with an unspecified “intelligent designer.” They added some irrelevant mathematics and fancy biochemical jargon, and lo: intelligent design, which scientists have dubbed “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”

But the tuxedo is fraying, for intelligent design has been rejected not just by biologists but also by judges who recognize it as poorly disguised religion. Nevertheless, its advocates persist. Among the most vocal is Michael J. Behe, a biology professor at Lehigh University whose previous books, despite withering criticism from scientists, have sold well in a country where 76 percent of us think God had some role in human evolution.

Behe does not rely on the Bible as a science textbook. Rather, he admits that evolution occurs by natural selection sifting new mutations and that all species are related via common ancestors. Where he parts company with other biologists is in his claim that the important mutations producing new types of organisms are not random accidents but are deliberately installed by a designer with a plan. A pious Catholic, Behe sees the designer as the Christian God but concedes that there could be other mutation-makers. These designed mutations solve what he sees as a problem for natural selection: the origin of some complex biochemical features. Such features appear to defy Darwinian explanation because, claims Behe, they can’t function until all the parts are in place. (Unguided natural selection requires that every step in the evolution of a complex feature must enhance an organism’s fitness.) Ergo, these “irreducibly complex” systems must have been forged by a designer who made simultaneous changes in several genes.

Scientists, however, were quick to spot the obvious errors in this argument. First, they pointed out numerous scenarios in which a system fitting Behe’s definition of “irreducible complexity” could evolve in a step-by-step manner (one is the hormone pathway studied by my Chicago colleague Joe Thornton). They then adduced clear evidence from many complex biochemical systems that these scenarios had actually occurred. Indeed, the uniform experience of scientists who work on these systems is that they embody an absurd, Rube Goldberg-like complexity that makes no sense as the handiwork of an engineer but makes perfect sense as a product of a long and unguided historical process.


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[Brother Buzz]

1. This is what Mother Nature thinks of intelligent design

She sure has a wicked cool sense of humor:

Fallen Louis Agassiz statue, Leland Stanford Junior University, 1906

[Poiuyt]

2. I'll admit that I had to look up Louis Agassiz

Funny

[mbusby]

3. From wikipedia....

Stanford President David Starr Jordan wrote that "Somebody?—?Dr. Angell, perhaps?—?remarked that 'Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.'"

[VOX]

5. HAH!

Thanks for the well-needed laugh!

[Brother Buzz]

7. Does Wikipedia mention the rift between Agassiz and Darwin?

Agassiz had a brilliant mind, but could not wrap his head around a concept outside of his comfort zone.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. .

[Solly Mack]

6. lolololol