Michael Behe
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[edit] Definition
Michael Behe is a biochemist and advocate of Intelligent Design.
[edit] Behe versus creationism
Michael Behe has many views which are anathema to the common-or-garden variety of creationist. For example, he finds the Big Bang perfectly acceptable, so much so that he used it repeatedly in his testimony at the Dover Panda Trial as an example of a valid scientific theory produced and supported by good scientific reasoning[1][2][3].
Nor does he object to the fact of evolution and of common descent. He writes:
- I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that the evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box)
Besides stating his "great respect" for evolutionary biologists, he also explicitly repudiates one of the favorite lies of creationists, their claim that evolution is an atheist theory:
- Ken Miller [...] makes the point in public talks that belief in evolution is quite compatible with his religious views. I agree with him that they are compatible.
Moreover, Behe has stated, on oath, that his arguments for Intelligent Design are not necessarily arguments for a supernatural designer, and that they allow the existence of multiple designers and even competing designers[4].
In short, Behe has said quite enough that in ordinary circumstances creationists would denounce him as an Evil Atheist Liar Who Hates God. The reason that they embrace him as an authority is that he is the first person in decades to come up with an original argument against the theory of evolution.
[edit] Behe versus the theory of evolution
Behe argues that although evolution has occurred, the theory of evolution is not able to account for all of it. Instead he suggests that the natural processes that we know of, such as random mutation and natural selection are insufficient to explain certain features of the natural world, and must therefore be supplemented now and then by the intervention of an Intelligent Designer.
There are a couple of difficulties with this approach.
Firstly, in order to support his thesis, it is necessary for him to demonstrate the existence of something that cannot have evolved by purely natural processes. It is not sufficient for him to point to things the evolution of which is merely poorly understood in terms of natural processes, for many things, not just in biology, are poorly understood in terms of the laws of nature. What is required is a proof that some feature of some organism can, in principle, never be so explained. Behe claims to have found just such a feature in the form of "irreducible complexity": for reasons why he is wrong, see our main article on irreducible complexity.
The second problem with this line of argument is that, if he could discover a feature inexplicable in terms of nature as we understand it, that is no reason to suppose that this feature might not be understood in terms of some aspect of nature that we do not yet understand. History is full of explanations of the inexplicable in terms of intelligence that turned out not to require such an explanation: disease was not really caused by demons; "fairy rings" of mushrooms were not really caused by fairies; lightning was not really caused by Thor wielding his magic hammer. And if we discovered that our present knowledge of meteorology was not adequate to explain thunderstorms, we should not resurrect the "Thor's hammer" hypothesis as the only remaining explanation.
[edit] Creationists for Behe?
As we have mentioned above, many of Behe's views are anathema to your run-of-the-mill creationist. So too, in fact, is Behe's notion of "slow design", since most creationists believe in fiat creation as described in the Book of Genesis.
The use they make of his ideas is, therefore, not the use that he himself makes of them. Behe argues that evolution has happened, that the products of evolution are inexplicable unless an Intelligent Designer was part of the process, and hence that there was an intelligent designer. Whereas the standard creationist borrows his ideas about irreducible complexity, uses this to argue that evolution can't have happened by natural processes, and concludes that therefore evolution didn't happen.
This is a strange line of reasoning for a bunch of people who believe in an omnipotent God who can do whatever he likes. Even if evolution transgressed a dozen laws of nature, then, given the existence of God, this would not make it more impossible then the events described in Genesis. As Jesus pointed out: "With God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). Assuming that Behe, or anyone else, could demonstrate the impossibility of evolution by natural processes, the question of which particular impossible process is responsible for the variety of life on Earth would have to be resolved by inspection of the available evidence.
