A Texas Flashback to a Debate on Nanomachine Infestations
[Gianttexas shaped vortex opens. Usual flashback harpsichord music replaced with steel geee-tar.]
The year is 1999. (Yes folks, as you must be wondering somehow I manage to have the same haircut I've had for the past 20 years, just look twenty times nerdier with glasses.) I'm at a speaking event at the University of Texas at Arlington sponsored by a Christian group on campus, hosting Michael Behe, biochemist and author of "Darwin's Black Box." Behe is a populizer of the intelligent design movement that this year has been proclaimed a scientific theory meriting equal time in the science classroom according to the current Señor Presidente.
One of the planks of Behe's design hypothesis is irreducible complexity, for which he cites the example of a mouse trap, which if lacking any one part has no partial function that he can see that would allow a stepwise evolutionary progression. Note that Behe does not deny that evolution happened, he just thinks it's insufficient to account for the biological world we see today (and in some sense there is still the separate question of biogenesis, the transition from non-life to primitive life).
In "Darwin's Black Box" he cites examples of biological machines at the cellular level as being evidence for irreducibly complex features in nature. In particular, he mentioned the "motors" of bacteria as being irreducibly complex.
When I had an opportunity to ask a question to Behe, my (leading?) question was something like as follows: "You mention that bacteria have signs of intelligent design, but in the case of a bacterium like the organism that causes leprosy, what do you think the purpose of the design is?" Since it was more a comment then a question because it makes me nervous to speak in public unless I get fired up and in no mood to listen (which I was at that point), hopefully I'm not being unfair to say that the gist of his response was that he didn't know and that it was a philosophical question.
Hmmm....I've heard of philosophical questions before. It’s funny how much those philosophical questions have to an unbelievable extent also become part of the purview of science. Democritus may have speculated about the fabric of the universe while chowing down on a gyro and reading the latest tablet edition of "Air, Fire, Water, Earth Digest", but these days the most productive speculations come from those having an atom-smashing good time.
In his book, Behe mentions that space aliens could be the intelligent designers, and that his theory was agnostic about the designer(s), and yet he wasn't speaking amongst a group of UFO enthusiasts as far as I could tell (perhaps on another occasion). This cordoning off the identity of a designer or designers seems a bit artificial. Forensic science is dedicated to discovering and proving unknown actors, why wouldn't Intelligent Design, if it was capable of progressing also start to investigate the identity of the intelligence behind the design? The only reason I can see is if they are trying to solve the mystery backwards.
Is it so far fetched to try to divine the purpose something was created for, from the design? I mean imagine the parallel Care Bear universe, where all is sunshine and rainbows, and everything about it is oh-so huggable. Aww shucks. We can't try to intuit the purpose in the design? That it was designed by a ten-year old girl?
The beauty of nature is cited as evidence of providence by any number of religions. Yep, sure is. But when you've watched enough NatGeo specials, I personally want to see if there's any cosmic humane society I can call. And when I heard about that fish in the Amazon that usually burrows in the gills of other fish, but sometimes mis-navigates into the human urethra...well, there must be something to that evolutionary struggle to pass on the genes, because my first instinct was to immediately take the family jewels' defensive position, in case one of those Bobbit-monsters managed to migrate six thousand miles to Colorado.
Folks, I could be wrong, so the debate in my head and out of it continues, but what I see right now is a four-billion year old arms race. This isn't Gaia, species get vanquished and are no more, unless all dinosaurs go to heaven.
The year is 1999. (Yes folks, as you must be wondering somehow I manage to have the same haircut I've had for the past 20 years, just look twenty times nerdier with glasses.) I'm at a speaking event at the University of Texas at Arlington sponsored by a Christian group on campus, hosting Michael Behe, biochemist and author of "Darwin's Black Box." Behe is a populizer of the intelligent design movement that this year has been proclaimed a scientific theory meriting equal time in the science classroom according to the current Señor Presidente.
One of the planks of Behe's design hypothesis is irreducible complexity, for which he cites the example of a mouse trap, which if lacking any one part has no partial function that he can see that would allow a stepwise evolutionary progression. Note that Behe does not deny that evolution happened, he just thinks it's insufficient to account for the biological world we see today (and in some sense there is still the separate question of biogenesis, the transition from non-life to primitive life).
In "Darwin's Black Box" he cites examples of biological machines at the cellular level as being evidence for irreducibly complex features in nature. In particular, he mentioned the "motors" of bacteria as being irreducibly complex.
When I had an opportunity to ask a question to Behe, my (leading?) question was something like as follows: "You mention that bacteria have signs of intelligent design, but in the case of a bacterium like the organism that causes leprosy, what do you think the purpose of the design is?" Since it was more a comment then a question because it makes me nervous to speak in public unless I get fired up and in no mood to listen (which I was at that point), hopefully I'm not being unfair to say that the gist of his response was that he didn't know and that it was a philosophical question.
Hmmm....I've heard of philosophical questions before. It’s funny how much those philosophical questions have to an unbelievable extent also become part of the purview of science. Democritus may have speculated about the fabric of the universe while chowing down on a gyro and reading the latest tablet edition of "Air, Fire, Water, Earth Digest", but these days the most productive speculations come from those having an atom-smashing good time.
In his book, Behe mentions that space aliens could be the intelligent designers, and that his theory was agnostic about the designer(s), and yet he wasn't speaking amongst a group of UFO enthusiasts as far as I could tell (perhaps on another occasion). This cordoning off the identity of a designer or designers seems a bit artificial. Forensic science is dedicated to discovering and proving unknown actors, why wouldn't Intelligent Design, if it was capable of progressing also start to investigate the identity of the intelligence behind the design? The only reason I can see is if they are trying to solve the mystery backwards.
Is it so far fetched to try to divine the purpose something was created for, from the design? I mean imagine the parallel Care Bear universe, where all is sunshine and rainbows, and everything about it is oh-so huggable. Aww shucks. We can't try to intuit the purpose in the design? That it was designed by a ten-year old girl?
The beauty of nature is cited as evidence of providence by any number of religions. Yep, sure is. But when you've watched enough NatGeo specials, I personally want to see if there's any cosmic humane society I can call. And when I heard about that fish in the Amazon that usually burrows in the gills of other fish, but sometimes mis-navigates into the human urethra...well, there must be something to that evolutionary struggle to pass on the genes, because my first instinct was to immediately take the family jewels' defensive position, in case one of those Bobbit-monsters managed to migrate six thousand miles to Colorado.
Folks, I could be wrong, so the debate in my head and out of it continues, but what I see right now is a four-billion year old arms race. This isn't Gaia, species get vanquished and are no more, unless all dinosaurs go to heaven.
brainfart by Daniel at
11:02 PM
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