Today's New York Times has an
Op-Ed contribution from Michael J. Behe, well-known shill for 'Intelligent Design' (ID), practicing pseudo-scientist, and spinmaster. He snuck in so many assumptions with his plain 'arguments', that I had to respond. Of course for LTEs, the 3 keys are brevity, focus, and brevity. I find focus the hardest, (as indicated by the polio comment).
First a few quotes to spare you all the surfing:
IN the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design.
That one really did it for me, but the fun is just beginning:
The contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.
YO! I guess it depends on what the meaning of uncontroversial is. Recognizing the effects of design in nature is anything but uncontroversial. Recognizing a designer and observing his design is simple, determining that some pattern must be designed with no other evidence of a designer is pure inference, and the essential claim of ID. In this sense Design for Behe is like pornography for Justic Potter Stewart, he can't define it, but he knows it when he sees it.
Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time.
First, saying "Darwinists" in 2005 is like calling physicists "Newtonians". Next, he puts a straw-man argument into the mouths of these darwinists that makes them concede his premise. Modern science does not "explain the appearance of design in life", it says nothing about the design, because design is simply not a scientifically definable, quantifiable, observable quantity.
His closing paragraph is just too rich to ignore:
Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.
Here he shrugs off reality, decides to let polls decide scientific questions, and conflates research into the unknown with ignoring actual knowledge of a designer of Mt. Rushmore. I'm sure by 'many scientists' he means his fellow hacks at whichever right-wing christianist front he spends his day. I can just see his research methodology: find a tough problem, throw up his hands and say, "nope can't figger this one out either, must be a The Designer, praise be!. Time for a break"
And finally, here is the letter that can only say so much, because at the NYT after all, they only print the news that fits:
Michael Behe spreads some unfortunate misconceptions in "Design For Living". He states that Intelligent Design (ID) is a "rival theory" to "Darwinian Evolution". A theory is an explanation of some observations. ID is not a theory, because it does not actually explain observations, but rather, posits that some observations simply cannot be explained. Invoking invisible entities has a track record of failure in science, not least because because 'Occam's Razor' makes an inferred alien intelligence a poor substitute for any natural mechanism that is later discovered, for example, to explain observations of heat, electromagnetic forces, infection, etc.
While ID can be made to sound reasonable, it cannot be confused with a scientific theory, because it can never be tested or falsified. In any specific case where an ID believer proposes that no naturalistic explanation for an observation can exist, the lack of said explanation will never prove that one cannot exist. When a natural explanation is discovered, even if far-fetched, it is immediately on more solid footing than the ID claim. The new theory disproves the specific ID claim, but can never prove that an invisible designer does not exist. There is thus no way to test ID, and no way to prove it (short of an affadavit from the designer herself). ID adherents make a living asking tough questions of evolutionary theory, but let themselves off the hook for any explanations with a pat promotion of willful ignorance.
This is why ID is basically a scientific fraud; instead of finding explanations, it invents fairy tales, instead of offering answers, it gives excuses.
Where would we be if ID had been accepted before the polio vaccine was discovered?