Well, my own personal copy of Michael Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution arrived via amazon.com today, so I suppose it is fair game. I have linked to a few early blog comments (see more from ERV), and Michael Ruse has a short newspaper comment out today. And several other reviews are coming out in the near future in Science, Discover, etc. None of them positive at all, but it's amazing how much attention someone can get by sacrificing scientific rigour and inserting divine intervention instead.
I don't have a full review of the book and I won't for a bit since I am working on other things. But I want to get dibs on one peripheral but particularly shocking and egregious error that Behe makes in The Edge of Evolution. The error is simple but it points to what I have become convinced is the true core of the mishmash known as "intelligent design": sloppiness and wishful thinking.
Most of The Edge of Evolution is engaged in trying to prove that protein-protein binding sites can't evolve without intelligent guidance, using humans vs. malaria and humans vs. HIV as his primary examples. (Yes, at the end, on p. 237, Behe writes, "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." Well, at least he's consistent. More on this in future posts I imagine.). Behe mostly doesn't even address the criticisms of his previous arguments, doesn't update his case, acknowledge previous errors, etc. He doesn't explain why anyone should take him seriously when he claimed in Darwin's Black Box that scientists had "no answers" on the evolutionary origin of the immune system and was then shown up in court and in print via a massive amount of research published in top journals that showed he was wrong (see PT and NCSE and especially Nature Immunology).
However, Behe does devote one chapter, chapter 5, to an update of one of his examples from Darwin's Black Box. Chapter 5, "What Darwinism Can't Do," (pp. 84-102) is devoted to the eukaryotic flagellum/cilium. (Because this apparently still confuses many, please note that the eukaryotic cilium or flagellum is entirely different from the bacterial flagellum, which is entirely different from the archaeal flagellum. They are no more similar than insect wings and bird wings. See here for a summary of the differences.)
In chapter 5, Behe reviews the cilium as known from a standard lab organism, the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas, aka Chlammy to her friends. Starting on page 87, Behe introduces a new twist to the cilium argument, which is that since the mid-1990s scientists have discovered some fascinating new details about how cilia are assembled in the cell. Essentially, a multiprotein system known as intraflagellar transport, or IFT, attaches to the cilium axonome (the 9+2 structure made of microtubules, which are made of tubulin), grabs the necessary protein subunits (like tubulin) from inside the cell, and "walks" them along the axoneme of the cilium out to the tip, where the subunits are deposited. The IFT complex then "walks" back to the bottom of the cilium to pick up more subunits.
It is more complex than this, of course...it is much easier to just look at a diagram to get a sense of what is going on. For example, from an online textbook on the lab nematode C. elegans:
In the next paragraph Behe briefly dismisses a recent paper on the evolutionary origin of cilium in endnote 13 (Jekely and Arendt (2006), "Evolution of intraflagellar transport from coated vesicles and autogenous origin of the eukaryotic cilium." Bioessays 28:191-198) and pretends that other work doesn't exist. [See note 2] And never mind the minor point that dynein (for example) has cytoplasmic versions with diverse transport functions in the cell apart from intraflagellar transport, including involvement in mitosis, and the fact that dynein itself is the primary motor protein of cilial motility, and that dynein has widespread homologs in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. I mean, really, who could possibly care about discussing data that would be fundamental to any thorough discussion of the origins of the cilium? But the problems I mention above are details. Expecting Behe to deal seriously with homology data is like expecting young-earth creationists to deal with 11,000 continuous years of tree rings: totally ridiculous. But I haven't even gotten to the big problems yet. The huge problem with Behe's invocation of intraflagellar transport in his "IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY SQUARED" section of chapter 5 is that he is completely wrong when he says that intraflagellar transport is universally required for cilium construction! Anyone can see this by reading this 2004 paper by Briggs et al. in Current Biology, which they cleverly entitled "More than one way to build a flagellum," presumably so that people would find out that there is...wait for it...more than one way to build a flagellum. It turns out that when you look at a number of recently-sequenced genomes, a pattern emerges: organisms with cilia have IFT genes, and organisms without cilia don't. So far this is Behe's expected pattern. However, as with most things in biology, there is an exception to the rule. Check out Figure 1 of Briggs et al.:IFT exponetially increases the difficulty of explaining the irreducibly complex cilium. It is clear from careful experimental work with all ciliated cells that have been examined, from alga to mice, that a functioning cilium requires a working IFT.12 The problem of the origin of the cilium is now intimately connected to the problem of the origin of IFT. Before its discovery we could be forgiven for overlooking the problem of how a cilium was built. Biologists could vaguely wave off the problem, knowing that some proteins fold by themselves and associate in the cell without help. Just as a century ago Haeckel thought it would be easy for life to originate, a few decades ago one could have been excused for thinking it was probably easy to put a cilium together; the piece could probably just glom together on their own. But now that the elegant complexity of IFT has been uncovered, we can ignore the question no longer. [...endnote 12 is on p. 285, and is quoted at the bottom of this post in footnote 1 for completeness]
You will note that the third column in the Apicomplexans section shows that one of the parasitic apicomplexans completely lacks the IFT genes...yet makes a cilium anyway! This reminds me of something another critic of Behe once said, in a different context:
Apparently what is going on is that this particular apicomplexan assembles its cilia in the cytoplasm, and therefore has ditched the elaborate IFT complex that would otherwise be needed to transport building materials out to the far-removed end of the cilium. Not only does this one parasitic protozoan get away with this trick, apparently it also happens with Drosophila sperm. Behe would have known all this if he had only carefully read the Jekely and Arendt (2006) cilium evolution paper that he dismissed with a hand wave. As they write on page 193,Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed. Music and harmony can arise from a smaller orchestra. (Note: fans of Behe's reply to Doolittle should read the PT post "Clotted rot for rotten clots")
Now, Jekely and Arendt (2006) note just before this that "IFT is ancestrally and almost universally associated with cilia," so apparently the last common ancestor of modern cilia had an IFT complex (and Jekely and Arendt base their paper on comparing IFT to homologous intracellular transport systems in eukaryotic cells). But it really doesn't help the "irreducible complexity" argument much if Behe's favorite system, the eukaryotic cilium, and the extra-favorite "irreducible complexity squared" system, intraflagellar transport, on which he bases a whole chapter, is in fact entirely reducible. Surely, someone -- Behe himself, or one of the "peer-reviewers" that the IDers will probably allege the book had, should have caught this. But if they had, Behe would have had to completely scrap chapter 5. In real peer-review, that's the shakes, but in creationism/ID-land this sort of thing is unfortunately par for the course. In creationism/ID, one guy's personal knowledge about a topic, usually a personal knowledge based at most on textbooks and not a thorough survey of the literature, is regularly taken to be the sum total of biological knowledge, and via this processes a whole bogus folk-creationist biology is built up about field after field. For example with fossils, thousands of creationists/IDers think there are no transitional fossils based on a few bogus misquotes of Stephen Jay Gould about punctuated equilibria, which they almost universally mistakenly think was about something other than small transitions between closely-related species; or bacterial flagella (see here -- no IDer has yet acknowledged this mistake, which they are still perpetuating in print). This gets me back to my original point: a great deal of creationism/ID boils down to sloppy claims made on insufficient information, plus wishful thinking that blocks the impulse to double-check one's claims against previous research. Once you become alerted to this feature of ID you will see it everywhere. Oh, I almost forgot the best part: Which apicomplexan critter is it that builds cilia despite Behe's declaration that "a functioning cilium requires a working IFT"? Why, it's Plasmodium falciparum, aka malaria, aka Behe's own biggest running example used throughout The Edge of Evolution. Yes, it's the very critter about which Behe wrote on page 237,The [IFT] complex is only lacking from species that have secondarily lost their cilia, as Dictyostelium, yeasts and flowering plants, or from species with cilia that do not rely on IFT (in the parasite Plasmodium cilia assemble in the cytoplasm(48)). Cytoplasmic assembly of cilia is a derived feature that has independently evolved in Drosophila sperm.(49)
But not, apparently, the parts which Behe thought were required for cilium construction. If there is an Intelligent Designer up there, I suspect He's having a bit of a chuckle right now. Footnotes Note 1. Behe's endnote 12 for chapter 5:"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."
Note 2. Work like:12. Berriman and coworkers write of trypanosomes: "The proteins of the flagellar axoneme appeared to be extremely well conserved. With the exception of tektin, there are homologs in the three genomes for all previously identified structure components as well as a full complement of flagellar motoros and both complex A and complex B of the intraflagellar transport system.... Thus, the 9+2 axoneme, which arose very early in eukaryotic evolution, appears to be constructed around a core set of proteins that are conserved in organisms possessing flagella and cilia" (Berriman, M., et al. 2005. The genome of the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei. Science 309: 416-22).
For Cavalier-Smith (1987), I particularly like Figure 5 and the caption on pp. 38-39. Although it needs an update since it is 20 years old, it still provides a good big-picture view of how cilium evolution is just a piece of the evolutionary origin of mitosis. Download jpgs of part 1, part 2, part 3. You've never heard of this paper from the ID guys? Not surprising, they've never cited it. Cavalier-Smith pointed this out way back in his 1997 review of Darwin's Black Box in TREE (see Cavalier-Smith, 1997, "The Blind Biochemist," Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(4), 162-163, April 1997), and I've never seen any IDer acknowledge the oversight. Stumbling on this review while looking up this other book review is literally what got me into this whole ID thing in the first place. I had originally thought, "Hmm, Behe might have a point about the lack of literature on the evolution of complex systems." Then I read Cavalier-Smith's review and realized I'd been snookered. The rest is history. Note 3. This doesn't go with anything, but for the record, Mike Gene, perhaps the ID guru who is most respected for usually having a clue about the biology he is talking about unlike virtually all of the rest of them, made the same mistake Behe made about IFT. See Mike Gene's "ASSEMBLING THE EUKARYOTIC FLAGELLUM: Another example of IC?" and "THE NEGLECTED FLAGELLUM." Note 4. This is also not referenced in the main text, but the wikipedia intraflagellar tranport page also contains the "always required" mistake.* David R. Mitchell (2004). "Speculations on the evolution of 9+2 organelles and the role of central pair microtubules." Biology of the Cell. 96, 691--696. * David R. Mitchell (2006). "The Evolution of Eukaryotic Cilia and Flagella as Motile and Sensory Organelles." In: Origins and Evolution of Eukaryotic Endomembranes and Cytoskeleton, edited by Gáspár Jékely. * Thomas Cavalier-Smith (1987). "The Origin of Eukaryote and Archaebacterial Cells." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 503, 17-54.
46 Comments
PvM · 5 June 2007
Well done
Tara · 5 June 2007
Oh, man. That is classic....
Nick (Matzke) · 5 June 2007
Forgot to add...the asterisks in the Briggs et al. Figure 1 indicate incomplete genome sequences as of 2004. Thus they put "nf" (not found) for those genomes where they couldn't find a protein. Only complete genomes could get an unambiguous negative ("-", minus sign).
Frank J · 5 June 2007
Joel · 5 June 2007
Another excellent fisking of Behe!
Blake Stacey, OM · 5 June 2007
Edit: "something other [than] small transitions between closely-related species"
This post has been duly added to the ever-growing list.
TomS · 5 June 2007
Re your Note 4, some anonymous person has updated Wikipedia to say "most" not "all".
wamba · 5 June 2007
raven · 5 June 2007
Frank J · 5 June 2007
David Stanton · 5 June 2007
Raven wrote:
"As scientists, it is to be hoped and expected that someone will point out the lies and misinformation. We owe a big thanks to Nick Matzke and others for doing so."
Absolutely agree. It would be nice to just ignore this nonsense, but look where that has gotten us. I appreciate the careful manner in which Nick presents his case. In fact, I would call this the "best Behe takedown ever" (all due respect to ERV).
If Behe actually had any real point to make he would publish in scientific journals. Oh course we have one example of what happens when he tries that. No wonder he doesn't want to do it. I guess you can hope to get away without doing a literature search if you just publish popular books, but of course someone might notice anyway.
minimalist · 5 June 2007
Pete Dunkelberg · 5 June 2007
Extreeeeme case of Morton's Demon.
Larry Gilman · 5 June 2007
harold · 5 June 2007
I want to thank Behe, too, for shooting himself in the foot so often and so extremely.
It helps that in addition to being a crackpot, he's a bad salesman.
That malaria comment is unreal. His focus on the likes of bacteria and malaria parasites implies a "God directly designed pathogenic microorganisms to punish sinners by killing people at random" mentality. There is little other way to interpret the comment.
You can peddle snake oil about human origins to some degree. Telling someone "you are so special and magical that you must have been 'designed'" has a certain appeal.
The argument that "Even though silly scientists say the bacterial flagellum evolved, what really happened is that The Designer pinned it on so that bacteria could really stick it to those saps who were unlucky enough to eat the spinach salad" has a lot less appeal.
harold · 5 June 2007
I want to thank Behe, too, for shooting himself in the foot so often and so extremely.
It helps that in addition to being a crackpot, he's a bad salesman.
That malaria comment is unreal. His focus on the likes of bacteria and malaria parasites implies a "God directly designed pathogenic microorganisms to punish sinners by killing people at random" mentality. There is little other way to interpret the comment.
You can peddle snake oil about human origins to some degree. Telling someone "you are so special and magical that you must have been 'designed'" has a certain appeal.
The argument that "Even though silly scientists say the bacterial flagellum evolved, what really happened is that The Designer pinned it on so that bacteria could really stick it to those saps who were unlucky enough to eat the spinach salad" has a lot less appeal.
Tm G · 5 June 2007
Unfortunately, people like Nick must waste time on this nonsense so we will all be informed of the particulars of what we know intuitively is BS. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our voting constituency WANTS to believe mountebanks like Behe and they WANT to have justification to re-inject religion into schools - Behe and his ilk know this, so let us not delude ourselves - Behe knows exactly what he is doing - he knows he is not writing something which can withstand scientific scrutiny - he knows that his work will be subject to withering and irrefutable criticism.
HE DOESN'T CARE. He is not writing for us. He is writing for ONE purpose - to delude voters and gullible public officials and to give them what they want - a credible-sounding bit of non-answer which is just good enough for them, with a loud collective voice, to shout down dissent from their views. This, my scientific colleagues, is proaganda - pure and simple. It is being implemented by a masterful prpaganda machine and it is acieving the dual purpose of feeding the popular belief WHILE also keeping good scientists occupied responding in arcane venues rather than churning out more great works like COSMOS which really fired the public's imagination about science a generation ago.
Nick, you are an insightful, eloquent and frank writer and, much as I love your exposes, I would like to see the NSCE focus on disseminating some real entertaining, readable science. Instead, the DI has our side on the defensive - they are calling the shots because they continue to publish distortions which we then must react to rather than pushing forward with good original work of our own. Science in the public view is now no longer telling the public about the world - scientists are now in the unenviable position of telling the world what it has been told by the DI, and what the world wants to believe, is not true. We, somehow, have been backed into a corner. THAT is the triumph of the DI as I see it. They don't need to be correct. They only need to put us in the defender's position - and they know it. That is why Behe is willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged scientists - this latest book is the sacrificial lamb to keep us busy while adding more christian soldiers to the march.
Tom
Glen Davidson · 5 June 2007
raven · 5 June 2007
raven · 5 June 2007
jasonmitchell · 5 June 2007
re Comment #182376 Satan designed parasites
It is also possible (although I am NOT accusing Behe of this as I don't have enough information) that his comment is based in (or to justify) bigotry
(is he pandering to a segment of his target audience? or does HE hold these beliefs? )
- Malaria is DEVINELY designed to punish the "wicked" lesser races (in Africa - where malaria kills many not everyone is a xian)
Similar arguments were used to JUSTIFY BIGOTRY against Africans (they are the "Sons of Cain") or JUSTFY BIGOTRY against homosexuals (AIDS is GODS PUNISHMENT)
this is a particularly dangerous belief, and the foundation/support of some hate groups' philosophies (KKK) - correlation between fundies/hate groups/bigotry/global warming denial/lower education levels/evolution denial/republican "base" all adds up to some pretty scary stuff
Larry A · 5 June 2007
I've been reading this blog since the Dover trial and have never commented before. But this is just too much. Can someone explain to me how Behe and his cohorts can wake up in the morning and look at himself in the mirror. He seems to be a smart man that must know that he is lying through his teeth. The only people in history that I can think of that can lie like he does with a straight face are evil and/or seriously sick. You know people like Hitler and other obvious sickos.
Gary Hurd · 5 June 2007
So if malaria is designed, who (should that be Who?) designed it? And, since the sickel cell trait provided some protection to malaria, who designed that? And since there are three known variants of sickel cell, where they designed by a team, or a committee? Maybe subcontractors?
Great job Nick! Nail his ass to the wall.
Nick (Matzke) · 5 June 2007
Come now, don't get carried away. Remember Godwin's Law.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 5 June 2007
Dyticas · 5 June 2007
When Behe looks in the mirror he sees a book author and ID celebrity, which must look better to him than an underacheiving biochemist. He may not be evil, but his manipulation of facts for vanity and profit are beneath contempt. I would rather be an underachieving biochemist with some regard for the truth. As I am.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 5 June 2007
Uups. As everyone can see there is a glaring error in my proof by induction. I got lost in all the 0's:
1. n = 1: 0 = 0.
There, that will do it.
Fred · 5 June 2007
Great post; I can't wait until Behe is on the stand again (in Virginia, maybe?) and has all this pointed out to him with his response on the record.
steve s · 5 June 2007
I hope the phrase "...wait for it..." is on the way out.
David B. Benson · 5 June 2007
raven --- It was Her Noodliness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Aagcobb · 5 June 2007
Dyticas: "I would rather be an underachieving biochemist with some regard for the truth. As I am."
But think what you could be. With the very small effort of recycling bad arguments creationists have made for decades, you could write a bestseller which would fly off the shelves of christian bookstores nationwide, appear on national television and bask in the glow of praise from Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson, Go on a national speaking tour of fundamentalist churches and get your wallet stuffed with love offerings, and sell audiotapes and DVDs out the whazoo! Telling people what they want to hear is a VERY lucrative business.
Paul Burnett · 7 June 2007
Larry Gilman commented: "...what (Behe's) almost certainly implying is that malaria is Satanically designed... ...it smacks of Manicheism and has no scriptural basis. But the IDers, whose theology is as twisted as their pseudoscience, are forced by their assumptions to cross the line." (Sorry for the long quote, which I don't know how to put in a box.)
Larry' right. For those who care to go to the effort, fighting creationists by citing examples of their heresy (Manichaean and others) may be valid. Creationists sometimes cite an almost Zoroastrian duality of a good god opposed by a bad god, which is essentially the Manichaean heresy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism). Some creationist writings cite a "creator god" who can be seen as separate from the primary Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, who got his start in the godding business as a storm god. (Solomon's Temple actually had a separate room reserved for YHWH to appear in in his aspect of a thundercloud.)
Intelligent design, with its public silence on creationism's god, sometimes refers to more than one intelligent designer, and of course cannot answer the question of who or what designed the intelligent designer. Pointing out that this looks a lot like heresy might be a good way to drive a wedge (heh heh) between the IDers and the creationists.
anomalous4 · 7 June 2007
Corey Powell did a pretty good job of shredding Behe's latest piece of ¢®@p for the lay audience in Discover magazine this month, too. YA-A-A-A-A-A-AAAY!!!!!
TomS · 8 June 2007
David Stanton · 8 June 2007
Don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Talkorigins also has a post of the month that calls Behe's argument silly. Enjoy.
Mark Farmer · 8 June 2007
Nick that was truly terrific. As one who works on the origins of protists and flagella I can authoritatively say that this dressing down of Behe is complete and accurate in every way.
It reminds me of the famous quote from Tom Cavalier-Smith's original review of "Darwin's Black Box" that you referenced. Cavalier-Smith wrote:
"[Behe] states that
'if a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon but does not even generate an attempt at an explanation it should be banished' and 'without details, discussion is doomed to be unscientific and fruitless'.
If he had applied these strictures to his panacea of 'intelligent design' we would have been spared this worthless book."
Well said, both Tom and Nick!
Pierce R. Butler · 9 June 2007
Behe claims new insights into malaria, attained by the use of ID theory. Good - we could save thousands of lives by better understanding of this organism.
As an "ethical" "scientist", doesn't he owe it to humanity and his god to do everything he can to follow up on this breakthrough?
Mere blog commenters may opine that providing Behe with a malaria lab would affect the fight against disease only slightly less than bulldozing an existing lab, but shouldn't Behe be giving this his best shot regardless of such heckling from the rabble?
If he's right, he could be the next Walter Reed or Jonas Salk. Or, he could be known as the man who found the key to malaria - and walked away leaving a later generation to stumble across it.
Should Behe have, ahem, other priorities, this presents an opportunity (arguably an obligation) for his colleagues at the Diss Institute to pursue malaria research with all available resources.
To do less implies a heartlessness which might not merit invocations of the almighty Godwin, but would still occupy a point in genocide space. Unless, of course, ID's own partisans don't take Behe's analysis very seriously themselves. Their inaction implicitly concedes that ID has nothing to contribute medically, and belongs only in the crowded dimensions of quackspace.
Glen D wants "predictions", but he's burdened with low expectations. The human race needs medical breakthroughs - if Behe & friends can deliver, the world will cheer as they pick up their Nobels. (It might be, ah, premature to bring them to the attention of the Committees quite yet, thanks for asking...)
If ID proponents assert they have a better model for a major affliction of humankind, but fail to develop it, they should be challenged for this ethical lapse at every public venue, and twice on Sundays.
zilch · 14 June 2007
"Is this clown really implying that god wants to randomly kill off a few million kids per year for some reason?"
Not randomly, raven. These are the kids He loves most of all, and He has thus gathered them to Himself so they won't have to suffer on Earth.
It's non-falsifiable all the way down.
Henry J · 27 June 2007
I thought it was turtles all the way down...
Jonadab The Drunk · 14 July 2007
I just started reading Darwin's Black Box and its great to know the criticism before I continue. It would be right to point out new discoveries, but one can hardly account for malice on Behe's part for pointing out the existing evidence at the time of publication. Maybe I'm just really really ridiculously good looking but didn't Nick start out promising to solve the Irreducibly Complex design of the cilium, and end up disproving that "a functioning cilium requires a working IFT".
I'm not trying to convince anyone but how could an organism benefit from becoming conscious of its own inevitable death? Taking into account that the fear of death permeates through most psychological disorders, and dominates ones lifestyle although proving vain despite which one is chosen? Also taking into account that every beast known to man is governed by instinct and whose mental capabilities are limited to its basic functions, while it is said that with whatever information you take to the grave, the human mind is capable of storing 10 Billion times that amount, despite living a meager 70 years of age.
There are other things like how in the vision of Ezekiel Jehovah is surrounded by a rainbow, and since scripture says that there is no darkness is relation to him at all, it would indicate that he knows what the spectrum of light is.
Also I notice critics exposing the malice behind IDers arguments. But what about Piltdown man which is hard evidence toward wishful thinking on the part of Evolutionist.
Just a friendly IDer reminder, and yes I do have time to kill its Saturday...
"This is what Jehovah has said, the King of Israel and the Repurchaser of him, Jehovah of armies, 'I am the first and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. And who is there like me? Let him call out, that he may tell it and present it to me. From when I appointed the people of long ago, both the things coming and the things that will enter in let them tell on their part. Do not be in dread, you people, and do not become stupefied. Have I not from that time on caused you individually to hear and told it out? And you are my witnesses. Does there exist a God besides me? No, there is no Rock. I have recognized none.'" Isaiah 44:6-8
Science Avenger · 14 July 2007
dora · 28 July 2007
even the wart adds something to the body
Jeff · 5 October 2007
And I thought the 5 page, overdrawn metaphors were the worst part of the book. Thanks for setting me straight.
kbfdghgdsh · 29 November 2007
this page sucks
papper Shredders · 12 July 2008
Wow. That’s the only thing I have to say.
http://shredderwarehouse.com/
Richard Dodge · 18 March 2009
Sorry to be making a comment to this article in so late a manner. My primary interest is epistemology, and have been working on a series of essays, including critique of ID. In doing so, have just recently been going through Behe, and Googled some of his subjects. Having been painfully overexposed to the arguments of Christian ideology, I am very convinced that their institutionalized propaganda must be directly addressed, and have been distressed that science has not seemed to be aware of their threat. It is my suspicion that many scientists take the epistemology upon which their work is based for granted; clarifying and making our conceptual foundations a subject of explicit and ongoing concern will help undercut such unfortunate human excursions as ID.