Behe’s Edge of Evolution, part Ia

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.

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Behe’s Edge of Evolution, part I

I peeked.

I was reading Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, and I was several chapters into it. All he seemed to be saying was that evolution has limits, limits, limits, and those limits are so restrictive that you can’t get from there to here, and he was repeating it over and over, in this tediously chipper narrative voice. Behe insisted that he accepted common descent, though, and acknowledged all this evidence that, for instance, chimpanzees and humans are related by common descent, while saying that it was impossible for them to have evolved naturally from one to the other. So I was getting awfully curious to learn how they were linked by descent while evolution was impossible, and I jumped ahead to the end of the book.

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Brain melting…

I want you all to know that I finished Michael Behe’s drecky The Edge of Evolution, and that I really will have a review up soon. Although, actually, I suppose I could put up a review right now:

Sucks.

But you probably want details, don’t you? So give me a little time to whittle this thing into shape. The book is awful throughout, and I’m more than a little embarrassed for Behe, who has just committed a whole pile of common creationist errors. Inane errors. Some errors so stupid I have to believe he’s intentionally trying to fool someone.

More reactions to recent creationism

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Michael Lemonick has an excellent reply to Sam Brownback’s recent attempt to weasel away from creationism.

What he ended up doing was demonstrating that he doesn’t really know much about science. If, writes the senator, “evolution means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence then I reject it.”

How curious. Does this mean that the senator also rejects the laws of gravity? Last I heard, they reflected that same view of the world. No scientist I’ve ever run into, nor even any senator, thinks that things fall to earth or planets orbit stars because God is there shoving on them. Yet many scientists do believe in God; they just don’t think he has to meddle with the physical universe to make things turn out right.

Which makes gods rather superfluous, yet they believe anyway…but correct, unless Brownback invokes a mysterious supernatural force intervening in every single physical process going on around him, that’s a silly statement that doesn’t reflect any rational interpretation of the world. Although I do wonder sometimes if the religious crazies aren’t living in an imaginary environment saturated with pixies and angels and devils and demons, all tugging away at every molecule around them — as if Brownian motion were named after Brownies.

Ken Ham is being sued…by his fellow creationists

What a delightful and well deserved development! The Australian sister organization to Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis is hammering him with a nasty lawsuit.

The Brisbane-based Creation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit in Queensland’s Supreme Court against Mr Ham and his Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis ministry seeking damages and accusing him of deceptive conduct in his dealings with the Australian organisation.

The suit focuses on a dispute over the Australian organisation’s production of a creationist magazine, sold in the US to more than 35,000 subscribers, and has led to revelations about the three-year battle between the two ministries.

A 40-page report, written by Mr Briese and obtained by The Australian, reveals a bitter power struggle across the Pacific that began with a challenge to the power Mr Ham allegedly wielded over the ministries.

I honestly don’t care who wins. The ideal conclusion will be that of the Kilkenny cats: mutual self-destruction.

The swooning begins

Just in case you had any doubts about how the Intelligent Design creationists would react to the denial of Gonzalez’s tenure, here’s how Uncommon Descent illustrated it:

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I like the little sign above his head: he’s being burned at the stake because he “believes in God”! I assure you that the fact that someone goes to church does not play any role in tenure decisions, nor does the penalty for failure to get tenure involve immolation, or even singeing. The reality is that Guillermo Gonzalez is being politely shown the door because he “believes in pernicious pseudoscience,” and more pragmatically, because he didn’t bring in enough grant money.

Let the caterwauling commence…errm, increase!

The president of Iowa State University has rejected Guillermo Gonzalez’s appeal for tenure, citing the fact that “he simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect.” That, alas, is the result I expected, and that everyone involved should have expected.

Now, if we expected a rational, productive response from the DI (not that I do), we should see them put down the hammers and nails and peel the poor fellow off the cross they’ve put him on. It’s time for Gonzalez to focus on the future and try to recover from the PR debacle his “friends” at the DI have put him through.

Telegraphic kookiness

Time for another edition of “I get email”! Below the fold you’ll find a comprehensive example of the kind of exhortation I get all the time—this one is a long list of assertions that god is right, science is wrong, all transmitted in short sentences that aren’t in any particular order.

No, I didn’t reply to this one. He’s got 41 numbered points that he claims refute evolution, everything from “male nipples arouse women” to claims that Jupiter couldn’t form because gasses expand, and then there’s Pascal’s wager and lots of bible quotes. It’s a very silly list, don’t strain yourself over it.

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