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Donnie B.
Skeptic Friend
417 Posts |
 Posted - 02/13/2002 : 14:20:28
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Excellent "Talk Of the Nation" today on the issue of "Intelligent Design", and the attempt to modify the Ohio school cirriculum to include it.
For those who aren't familiar with it, "Talk Of the Nation" is a National Public Radio show that has guests discussing a topic, and allows some public participation via call-in. The shows are archived and may be replayed by visiting NPR.org (it takes a day or so before they're available).
This show featured Dr. Michael Behe [sp?], a cell biologist who feels that the "irreducible complexity" of some features of the living cell could not have been produced by natural selection, and indicate that some intelligent designer must have been at work.
He repeatedly used the analogy of "Mount Rushmore" - if we knew nothing about it and stumbled onto it, we would recognize immediately that it was the result of intelligence, not natural weathering.
Dr. Behe is not a raving creationist (he's Roman Catholic), and was even willing to concede that ID does not provide evidence for the existence of any particular god. The designer could have been an extraterrestrial civilization, he admitted.
The other guest (I didn't catch his name) didn't get as much air time as Dr. Behe, but did a good job of undercutting his arguments. Among other things, he pointed out that the ID hypothesis is essentially untestable. Dr. Behe tried to suggest a possible experiment, but it didn't make much sense to me.
I would have liked to call in to the show, but I was in the car. I would have made two points:
1. Dr. Behe's position is an "argument from incredulity". That is, he's saying (in effect), "I can't imagine how natural selection could have produced these features [insert list of features here]; therefore, it couldn't have, and an intelligent designer must be responsible for them."
2. I'd counter his Rushmore analogy with "The Old Man Of the Mountain", a natural feature in the White Mountains (New Hampshire) that looks remarkably like a human profile, when viewed from a certain angle. How can Behe be sure his complex cell features are Rushmores and not Old Men?
The callers had remarkably good questions - not a creationist among them. All challenged either Behe, or the appropriateness of teaching ID as science.
There was relatively little discussion of the motivations behind the Ohio state school board's initiative, and what there was tended to view it as a political agenda with Fundamentalist roots. I wonder if those fundies know that they might be introducing the possibility of aliens into the classroom?
I hope you all get a chance to visit NPR.org after 02/14 and listen to the show.
-- Donnie B.
Brian: "No, no! You have to think for yourselves!" Crowd: "Yes! We have to think for ourselves!"
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 02/13/2002 : 15:12:37 [Permalink]
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Heard it, but I didn't come away with the idea that Dr Behe wasn't a raving creationist. I only got the feeling that he was a sneak.
One caller asked him point blank if he was talking about a God or the X-Files. (same caller tried to equate the face on Mars in an echoing of your point #2, but he was cut off) Behe's reply was a verbal tap dance.
This guy is one of the main proponents of the "Philip Johnson Wedge plan" to have creationism taught in public schools.
ID my ass. He peers at a bacteria and says "Gee, looks like somebody made that too me." Not what you would call objective science.
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The brain that was stolen from my laboratory was a criminal brain. Only evil will come from it. |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
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Topic Locked
) "Darwin's Black Box".