Well, Godel proved ID through logic decades ago. Though most of the readers here I presume have some sort of empirical sciences background and would be unfamiliar with it.

but behe wouldn't know godel either. at last more than cursorily.

Why does Behe think his arguments are not being refuted over and over?

He has a schtick. Why do people selling inferior, overpriced products not realize that their products are inferior and overpriced? As long as they can keep selling them, they will. (Sometimes there's more royalties in worse products, just as the lawyer who can get the guilty off makes the most money).

As long as Behe can find new audiences, he'll keep saying those things. In the same way, traveling salesmen move from town to town.

I call it success positivism. Most people have no intellectual commitment, whether or not they are smart, and are only in it for career success reasons. The measure of success is the dollar. People really believe that if they're making a good living, they're right. Property-ownership and success create a feeling of entitlement.

At the beginning Behe probably had some kind of deep belief, and maybe he still does, but he's not going to give up his schtick if he stops believing in it himself. (He also is probably a contrarian who wanted to beat the intellectuals at their own game, sort of like CS Lewis.)

All this can be generalized far beyond Behe, of course. Public spokemen are doing a job of persuasion. Caring about whether they were right would make their job harder.

I think if look at it from the molecular view, the non-scalability of the small mutation mechanism seems pretty convincing. Malaria resistance is straightforward, but then when you need a combination of mutations to overcome a local fitness maxima, your climb up mount improbable becomes stuck. When you think of all the specific proteins and sequences of processes involved in creating a flagellum, it seems improbable that this happened incrementally. The proof against Behe on this: some parts have analogues in other cells! Neither argument is a strict proof, and one should be able to appreciate why neither side convinces the other.

Many argue, we have billions of years, organisms, even Universes (the multiverse). But a billion is not infinity. Monkeys can type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but only in more time than the Universe has existed by many fold. The same argument of incredulity people apply to Behe applies to many Darwinists, in that they are incredulous that with billions of years and organisms, the microevolution we see all around us has to have been the mechanism behind macroeovolution. But many processes do not scale, they work in small groups, not large, and 4.5 billion is < inf.

Clearly, ID has no alternative that's within the bounds, but I'm sympathetic to the standard evolutionary mechanisms do not seem to scale, the permutations involved in mutation space blow up, with almost all bad. Creating new tissue, new species, is highly improbable, as fruit fly scientists have figured out (legs on eyes is not very compelling). A clear example of macro evolution, without handwaving (eg, this looks like a proto-whale!--err, so does a seal, a manatee, a hippo, etc.)

I'm aware there is a lot of other evidence for evolution, homologies, vestige organs or functions like goosebumps, all sorts of microevolution like skin color and finch beaks. I'm not saying Behe's closed the case, I just think it's a reasonable criticism.

george, no need to use apologetic tone. i'm not going to argue with you. i'm really trying to understand behe's (and i guess your) psychology in a position where you don't need to be defensive and worry that i'll insult you :-)

I have Godel's Collected Papers. I also have a book on Godel by Hao Wang. I don't see anything in these where Godel even claims to have proved ID. Could Kitcher provide a reference?

Godel did believe (wrongly) that he had proved the existence of God by a version of the so-called 'ontological proof'. (Unpublished papers in Vol. 3 of the Collected Papers.)

He also believed that his incompleteness theorems implied that the human mind cannot be a machine, a view shared by John Lucas and Roger Penrose. The Godel/Lucas/Penrose argument is not generally accepted, because it assumes that we know the truth of mathematical theorems that cannot be proved by a machine. But all we know is that these theorems are true if mathematics (or to be more precise, a certain formal system of mathematics) is consistent.

In any case, neither of these points has much to do with ID. I vaguely recall from somewhere that Godel hoped that something like ID could be proved, but hoping is not the same as doing, or I would be in bed with Cameron Diaz.

but hoping is not the same as doing, or I would be in bed with Cameron Diaz.

zing!

Setting aside all the ID/Creationist nonsense, Behe has posited a really sweet scientific problem: viz., How did flagella evolve?

I'm not competent to provide a solution, but I bet that when someone does it will open up some nice biology.

I guess what bothers me about some of the responses to ID are that they are based on what COULD happen in theory and not on what is likely to happen. This is related to what Gorge was saying. It is certainly possible that monkeys could write Shakespeare given billions of years, but it still isn't likely. Likewise, while scientists have provided possible explanations for the mechanisms behind the evolution of complicated features, I'm not aware of of any good model for evaluating the likelihood that such an occurrence (or series of occurrences) did happen. Since we can't observe macroevolution in practice, we're stuck. This doesn't mean that ID is right, but it does explain why so many people aren't exactly compelled by the anti-id responses.

It is certainly possible that monkeys could write Shakespeare given billions of years, but it still isn't likely.

this is a very bad analogy, and there's plenty of stuff on the internet which explain why it is a bad analogy. as i said, i'm not here to debate evolution, i'm not interested in convincing people who aren't aware of x, y and z. but since this analogy was repeated, i do want to add that into the record.

in any case, i'm getting repetition of the stuff behe always says which is always rebutted. i can see why people repeat these arguments if they don't dive into the evolution literature (or, even aren't talkorigins junkies). but behe has been directly rebutted for 15 years, so that is why i'm asking for some deeper axiom or assumption which serves to anchor is views.

One can sense Behe's onto something reading Thorton's response. It has several independent ponts, and uses a lot of analogies, which is a sign of an argument that is not very compelling to the other side. Most importantly, he gets into arguments about whether improbable things can happen, are unlikely, or are impossible. This is the crux of the debate, and all interesting science is about probabilities, not possibilities.

For me, until someone can say, within a factor of 1 million, the odds of a cow turning into a whale over, say, 100MM years on Earth, I have no idea whether the mechanism of incremental molecular mutation, drift, and selection makes sense as an explanation. Lots of things (like monkey playwrights!) can happen, but what are the odds? 1 in 1E30? 1E50? 1E500? The fact no one can estimate these things makes questions about whether a small probability event is likely or unlikely, reasonable debates.

Again, I'm not saying Behe has proved Charleton Heston designed us in some Celestial SimCity, just, the standard Dawkins or even Gouldian, view, has a lot of hand waving. I'm comfortable saying I don't know the essential mechanism behind macroevolution, even though I'm an atheist.

I would agree that the typewriter analogy is bad, but that's not really my point.

I'm kinda getting the impression that pro and anti ID just don't get each other. Whenever I read pro and and anti ID exchanges it just sounds like ppl operating under fundamentally different philosophical outlooks on life using scientific assumptions that they're more confident about than they should be. It reminds me a biology professor of mine saying how the stubbornness of ppl defending their pet hypothesis is inversely proportional to the evidence to support the hypothesis.

On another note, I think it's interesting how intelligent design is presented as if it's in opposition to evolution. I would argue that it isn't. It challenges the mechanism behind evolution, but not evolution itself. ID is NOT the same as young earth creationism, which does indeed contradict evolution.

To add to my earlier comment, I have tracked down the reference to Godel that I vaguely recalled. It is in Hao Wang's book 'From Mathematics to Philosophy', 1974, p.326. (BTW this is not the book I mentioned earlier, which is Wang's 'Reflections on Kurt Godel'.)

In FMTP Wang says that 'More generally, Godel believes that mechanism in biology is a prejudice of our time which will be disproved. In this case, one disproval [sic], in Godel's opinion, will consist in a mathematical theorem to the effect that the formation within geological times of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other law of a similar nature) starting from a random distribution of the elementary particles and the field, is about as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components'.

So far as I know, Godel never claimed to have proved such a theorem, and he certainly didn't publish one.

Sykes: IIRC, Lynn Margolis proposed that flagella, like mitochondria, were originally symbiotes (perhaps even parasitic).

Because alliegance, group identification and morality trumps the facts any day?

I constantly see people spouting falsehoods or deceptions, on topics that are far less abstract than evolution. Usually, they are mouthing some platitude or untruth in support of egalitarianism. And they believe in what they say completely and utterly.

Of course, that makes sense. Especially from an evolutionary perspective. What matters most in the end is who is with you and who is against you. Not who makes the most cogent point.

After all, if your enemy makes a logically coherent case for why he should be able to kill you, or steal your woman or your food, is it a good idea to hear him out on the merits? Nah.

"but hoping is not the same as doing, or I would be in bed with Cameron Diaz." Depending on what Miss Diaz was hoping for, presumably?

Is it possible that non-Darwinist theories are so dominated by people desperate to find room for God that Evolutionary Biology as a science has been retarded in those areas?

Kind of like how the study of intelligence and genetics is retarded by the history of Eugenics?

That would leave a significant 'truth gap' where both sides have good points and neither has incentive to close it.

but behe has been directly rebutted for 15 years, so that is why i'm asking for some deeper axiom or assumption which serves to anchor is views.

Basic human psychology: we start with the conclusion we want to reach, and seek out arguments that lead to it. When we've established a path between the conclusion and things we're willing to accept as premises, we stop - and don't explore what else is implied by those premises, including contradictions.

There's no screw loose. This is how humans naturally function.

Religious belief is very important, critically important, to many people. My father is an orthodox Catholic. He went to Catholic grade school, Jesuit high school, and a Jesuit college. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry and an M.S. in computer science. He has taken courses in molecular biology. He has the Behe book and I believe he puts creedence in it.

Not a fan of ID myself, but I think I've seen something similar in philosophy. Many times when philosophers disagree, it turns out that the two groups differ on some basic intuition. Each group thinks that their arguments against the other position are conclusive while thinking that the other group's arguments against their own position are weak and unconvincing.

One move that young earth creationists are very fond of making is claiming that they're just looking at the same evidence but coming at it with different assumptions. And, to some extent, they're right, though of course it doesn't follow that all sets of assumptions are equally valid. Proponents of ID are trying to present their ideas as serious science, so they don't present themselves (or think of themselves) as having assumptions drastically different than those of most biologists, but the general lack of atheist IDers says different, and I'd be surprised if you could find an ID proponent whose belief that God had an active role in shaping humans predated his belief in ID specifically.

But if God had an active role in shaping living things, then of course unguided evolution is wrong, and of course (so the thinking goes) there must be some set of sound arguments which demonstrate that it's wrong. This means that Behe and friends are going to assign a very high prior probability to the truth of their best arguments and are going to require a higher standard of evidence than scientists would to consider them discredited (and they're going to have a lower standard for refutations of the refutations). Contra Dawkins (or whoever it was), evolution didn't make it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist - weakening of the belief in an active God made it possible to be an (unguided) evolutionist.

Shorter: I think your question reduces to "why do some people still believe in an active God?" for the vast majority of IDers.

It has several independent ponts, and uses a lot of analogies, which is a sign of an argument that is not very compelling to the other side.

read his paper, which is more concise and precise. he's trying to explain to a mainstream audience, so of course he'll make recourse to analogies (that is what you are taught to do). as for macroevolution, you do know that the majority opinion is that it is scale independent, right? IOW, there's no qualitative difference between macro and micro evolution (as there is between a liquid and a gas).

I'm kinda getting the impression that pro and anti ID just don't get each other. Whenever I read pro and and anti ID exchanges it just sounds like ppl operating under fundamentally different philosophical outlooks on life using scientific assumptions that they're more confident about than they should be. It reminds me a biology professor of mine saying how the stubbornness of ppl defending their pet hypothesis is inversely proportional to the evidence to support the hypothesis.

yes, but the asymmetry is that ID people are trying to inject their philosophy into the concrete enterprise of scientists. this means that as you say the ID argument is generally negative, and non-ID people become very frustrated with misrepresentations which regularly occur in that negative case. science is filled with politics & misrepresentations, but there are actually *results* to engage.

also, several ID people ARE young earth creationists. paul nelson for example. and apparently some in the "support staff" at the discovery institute.

just a note, behe was a religious catholic most of his life and had conventional views on evolution. fwiw.

Shorter: I think your question reduces to "why do some people still believe in an active God?" for the vast majority of IDers.

right, but the number of religious scientists who believe in an active god outnumbers IDers (naive creationism is different, and like more numerous among applied scientists than ID by orders of magnitude).

If you think a field is worthless, you won't read the arguments that have been in its literature for decades or centuries.

If you think a field is worthless, you won't read the arguments that have been in its literature for decades or centuries.

ah, ok. yeah, this is the sort of specific explanation i was looking for.

a) behe *knows* that his paradigm is *correct*

b) so there's no point in "buying into" the regular reciprocal back & forth

e.g., this post basically accuses joe thornton of false consciousness.

I realize this is off-topic from what Razib wants, but I don't think we should completely dismiss what George / Godel are saying on this issue -- there is a lot of hand-waving in the claim that evolution produced everything around us (with no divine nudging, perhaps at the molecular level) in 5 billion years.

No one can give any kind of quantitative estimate of how long it should have taken given the known laws of physics.

We have evidence that evolution (or something like it) occurred, but the only argument against intervention is really Occam's razor, and this depends on some crucial priors.

Personally I believe in evolution (at reasonably high confidence), but I think there are a lot of biologists out there who don't realize how much of their case depends on priors (no deceptive activist God, etc.).

My confidence in the accuracy of Newtonian mechanics or classical electromagnetism or special relativity or QED is much higher than my confidence that evolution produced us.

While no one is going to prove the theorem Godel proposed any time soon, also no one is going to prove that known physical processes have a reasonably high probability of producing humans in 5 billion years.

Godel: "... a mathematical theorem to the effect that the formation within geological times of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other law of a similar nature) starting from a random distribution of the elementary particles and the field, is about as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components'."

you do know that the majority opinion is that it is scale independent, right?

Any good refs?

try this. also, if you are interested in the topic of speciation, try this book.

It seems to me that not believing in God isn't exactly a prior. There's no real evidence for God's existence but widespread belief and claims of direct intuition, nor do we have much of a concept of what he is like or much detail about how he works or which actions are specifically his, hers, or its.

Most of what's said about God is unimaginables, superlatives, and declarations of mysteriousness. Explanation by an unknown and basically undescribable God is about the same as a confession of failure to explain, explaining one unknown by a different unknown.

The philosopher Saul Kripke is also a theist and anti-naturalist, and is quite pleased with himself for that.

> there are a lot of biologists out there who don't realize how much of their case depends on priors (no deceptive activist God, etc.)

No deceptive activist god? That's an indispensable prior for belief in any proposition whatsoever. Such a god is none other than Descartes' evil genius.

We know from fossils that multicellular organisms can change very radically over X years, and can show that it has happened dozens of times. So I don't think there's that much hand-waving there. Now, it might take a little waving to say, "oh sure, multicellular life should be able to evolve in Y years" - because we only have one example. And the most waving of all obviously has to do with the origin of life and of cellular life (if that is indeed a separate thing).

Hell, where'd the universe come from anyway? That's part of why I'm an agnostic and not an atheist.

We know from fossils that multicellular organisms can change very radically over X years, and can show that it has happened dozens of times. So I don't think there's that much hand-waving there.

Uh, how do you know? That's assuming there was no "help".

IF there was help along the way, you don't know anything -- you've got exactly one record of a history of assisted evolution. What does that tell you about how evolution would work (e.g., rate of progress) in the absence of help?

Let's try it this way: suppose we live in a multiverse, and suppose that only in 10^{- googleplex} of those universes could humans manage to evolve in 5 Gy. In all the other universes organisms get trapped at certain local maxima, at certain bottlenecks. We, of course, happen to live in one of the lucky universes. But perhaps our evolutionary history is so improbable that it hides the reality that such traps exist: i.e., the *typical* time required to evolve humans is 10^{+ googleplex} years, or something like that.

If such traps exist, then people like Godel (and, gulp, Behe) are, in a sense, right. Can you prove he is wrong? Or is it an act of faith on your part? How do you know that our evolutionary history is *typical* in the multiverse?

Godel and Co. (I am avoiding the mention of Behe) would like to make some general theoretical analysis of evolution using physical laws like ours. At the moment this is beyond anyone's powers. You say you have a specific history that renders their arguments incorrect. How can you be sure? Maybe we are lucky (anthropic principle), or maybe we had help! :-)

My confidence in the accuracy of Newtonian mechanics or classical electromagnetism or special relativity or QED is much higher than my confidence that evolution produced us.

putting evolution to the side yet, all those theories in physics should elicit such an incredibly high degree of confidence that it is almost meaningless to compare any biological theory of even modest generality next to them. those theories blow every other scholarly construct out of water in terms of the incredible confidence we should have in them (aside from perhaps pure mathematics which is, or isn't).

There have to be presuppositions which allow for his arguments to seem rock-solid and irrefutable in his own cognitive universe.

Why can't it be as simple as Behe not believing that he's capable of overlooking elementary errors in reasoning made on a particular topic?

I know plenty of smart people who internalized the property of "being smart" enough that they can't acknowledge when they've been dumb. Their intelligence is a given - thus, any conclusion which contradicts their assessment of their intelligence must be wrong. So they do dumb things and don't correct them.

Sorry, Kitcher: Godel proved nothing of the kind, since it is far from clear that the Universe is a formal system (and even if it were, it is unclear that Godel's incopleteness would provide any obstacle to the algorithmic generation of information). In fact, Godel's own disbelief in evolution seems to have been motivated by his deeply ingrained Platonic predilections which, as you inadvertently note, have nothing to do with empirical reality.

George: "Monkeys can type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but only in more time than the Universe has existed by many fold"

Incorrect understanding of probability. The duration you talk about is necessary only to have a 100% certainty that the works of Shakespeare are typed by said monkeys. The actual event may happen the first time around, since each outcome is equally probable, and post-facto, each event has a 100% probability of having happened.

But evolution does not proceed by random "monkey-typing" alone but is constrained by the fitness landscape as well as purely physical/chemical considerations.

But perhaps our evolutionary history is so improbable that it hides the reality that such traps exist: i.e., the *typical* time required to evolve humans is 10^{+ googleplex} years, or something like that.

Are you assuming that the emergence of humans is a fixed point of evolutionary processes? What if there is no *typical* time to evolve humans given that humans are the outcome of specific evolutionary processes that happened here and are unlikely to be repeated in any potential universe? You can repeat the question with *any* organism on the planet.

For example, let's say your neighbor Bob wins the lottery which would be a highly improbable event for Bob. The fact that this was improbable doesn't mean that the somehow Bob had help, but rather that someone was likely to win and it happened to be Bob. It's only remarkable because you know Bob. Similarly humans are just one possible outcome of 5 billion years of evolution, remarkable only because we are humans and capable of understanding the universe.

As someone who didn't major in biology and found out all he knew about evolution on his own I think the biggest problem I see with way evolution is presented is that most people (even people who are very knowledgable in evolutionary theory) don't really present good facts or even theories. To really understand evolution you have to be able to have some grasp molecular markers,rates of genetic change and even viruses and evolution in general.

These sorts of topics just aren't covered well by many evolutionary texts. Think about if you can explain molecular markers and how intrinsic rates of genetic change can be correlated with phenotype changes you can explain speciation right there to anybody. It's hard to argue that genes don't change by themselves and that after a while you're going naturally get speciation between two different population groups, assuming isolation and enough time.

The material on viruses is even crazier. Read Luis Villareal's book:

http://www.amazon.com/Viruses-Ev...56178732&sr=8- 6

There is so much great material out there but some of it so obscure and abstract that I think even specialists aren't aware of it. Most people in the general public will NEVER take the time to delve into evolution in such a detailed way. That's why creationism exists, people are lazy and want easy answers.

There is so much great material out there but some of it so obscure and abstract that I think even specialists aren't aware of it. Most people in the general public will NEVER take the time to delve into evolution in such a detailed way. That's why creationism exists, people are lazy and want easy answers.

yeah. there's so much good stuff out there, that's why i don't really engage with creationists in any direct manner (though they're interesting anthropologically to me). just a waste of time. that's why i'm not addressing george and muffy's concerns directly. they're not creationists, so if they're curious enough they'll dig into the literature themselves and find it wanting or not (i think that to a great extent creationist vs. anti-creationist debates on the internet kind of give a weird and warped view of what evolution is since it is on the creationist's terms because they're the ones on the offensive). i have no energy to "defend" evolution when i understand and know it with far too much superficiality for my own good.

but laziness and easy answers are perhaps just necessary conditions, they're not sufficient. we're not arguing about quantum theories here, and that stuff is WAY MORE abstruse. but quantum mechanics is detached enough from human intuitions that generally people don't find it objectionable, though there are weird fundamentalist christian groups that have created an alternative physics.

p.s. one of the peculiar things that sometimes occurs on this blog is that people will mention how evolution really isn't that interesting, and they are much more interested in physics. at which point i ask, why aren't they reading physics blogs then? in fact, i decided to check out the blog of one these critics, who had a physics background, and bingo, most of the science he talked about was actually related to evolution.

"p.s. one of the weird things that sometimes occurs on this blog is that people will mention how evolution really isn't that interesting, and they are much more interested in physics"

razib: perhaps because such a statement would be a lie...:) Or they are going through birth pangs of emerging into the world of biology. (I am a classic example: my educational path took me from theoretical physics to astrophysics to planetary science, to, perhaps inevitably, astrobiology and evolutioanry theory...)

jorg, well physics is awesome. in an applied sense it is many orders of magnitude more important than evolution for our civilization (though vaccination and ag science is not trivial, but that's biology more generally).it's obviously the "gold standard" in science. but because of its rigor and technical hurdles i think it's less amenable to a weblog format. i check out cosmic variance, but i think the fact that it is leavened with non-physics is really critical to it keeping an audience.

Jorg
But evolution does not proceed by random "monkey-typing" alone but is constrained by the fitness landscape as well as purely physical/chemical considerations.

Exactly, all critics of "improbable randomness of evolution" are forgetting about the constraints which are imposed afterward on the raw random events.

Alex
To really understand evolution you have to be able to have some grasp molecular markers,rates of genetic change and even viruses and evolution in general.

Not at all, evolution is only a peculiar instance of Order from Chaos, it can be understood in abstracto.
I argued this before, contra demented creationists but it's tiresome and a waste of time, talking to the wall.

Kevembuangga:

"Not at all, evolution is only a peculiar instance of Order from Chaos, it can be understood in abstracto."

Which is Dennett's point: biological evolution by natural selection is just a specific case of a more general algorithmic process which can be applied to all sorts of different activities. The abstract nature of the process itself is what is often missed by the ID proponents; I suspect because they are primed for purpose and are simply unable to grasp it.

HDL: My argument is not specific to humans. You can replace humans with any kind of intelligent (or even sufficiently complex) life.

The point (which I think you appreciate) is that Godel could be right *and* life evolved on Earth in 5 Gyr. It just means that the overwhelming majority of Earth-like planets will not have evolved life and we were lucky. The outcome of 5 Gyr of evolution on a typical Earth-like planet might be some crappy simple organisms stuck at some local fitness maxima, or perhaps only a soup of molecules without even basic "replicator" capability.

But I don't think this point is well understood by most biologists.

For more, see
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/200...mi- paradox.html

The point (which I think you appreciate) is that Godel could be right *and* life evolved on Earth in 5 Gyr. It just means that the overwhelming majority of Earth-like planets will not have evolved life and we were lucky. The outcome of 5 Gyr of evolution on a typical Earth-like planet might be some crappy simple organisms stuck at some local fitness maxima, or perhaps only a soup of molecules without even basic "replicator" capability.

But I don't think this point is well understood by most biologists.

hm. i don't know about biologists, but i think most evolutionary biologists know of this issue, and that is why there are arguments between those who argue for some sort of inevitability vs. those who argue for contingency in evolutionary process. i have no who is in the majority. also, i don't think most evolutionary biologists give this much thought either, as they're focused on "smaller" questions (so by some definitions it wouldn't be "well understood," but i think most have considered it. the canonical example of opsins exposes these issues to some extent i think, though even it is much smaller picture).

this is like trying to teach cobblers to think like theoretical physicists ;-)

But if we had to be *really* (exponentially) lucky, then it would look a lot like ID or intervention to someone who didn't think in terms of 10^100 Earth-like planets + anthropism. Those improbable steps that the evil IDers (and Godel) talk about might really be there.

Steve: perhaps we are lucky, but looking at the whole fact, once our laws of physics and chemistry are taken for granted, it seems that the emergence of complex life is pretty certain.

Emregence of life and complex molecules: contrarily to what you may hear, there is no chicken and egge problem here. You can have rough replication (and therefore Darwinian evolution) among simple autocatalytic reactions within primitive containers (lipid droplets). Proteins or DNA can come later. Check out Chrisantha Fernando's work, it's worth it.

Emergence of complex life: Once a solid genetic repository exists (nucleic acids), and once proteins are formed, the sky's the limit. The amazing flexibility of proteins provides an ideal playground for evolution: mutating a protein will give you another protein, which has a high chance of doing something interesting as well.

That's why the "local fitness optimum" argument is weak in biological evolution (as opposed to artificial life simulations and evolutionary algorithms, where it is very real). In the real world, there is no local fitness optimum - there's always a way to do something else, lurking nearby in the "adjacent possible" (Stuart Kauffman's expression). Biochemistry is weird like that. When you add in the fact that living creatures define each other's fitness landscape, and that one lineage's evolutionary change may well destabilise the fitness landscape of many other lineages, you have a recipe for perpetual change.

Now you may argue that amazing power of proteins is in itself an extremely improbable event. But when you look closely, you realise that this power has a very simple cause: the ability of carbon atom to form long, flexible chains. So you need to regard the existence of carbon itself as an improbable event. That's Fred Hoyle's position. I can't really evaluate it - again, I take the laws of physics for granted.

All: you really want to read "Chance and Necessity", by J. Monod (the guy who discovered gene regulation). It's the death certificate of vitalism and creationism as a serious scientific position. It was written in no small part as a rebuke to the "leftist creationists" of the time, but it also addresses spiritual concerns about evolution and the absence of meaning or purpose in the universe (in short: "get over it"). Importantly, it's packed with actual scientific content - you learn a lot about the behaviour of proteins.

It's hard not to see virtually any ID argument, including Behe's, as anything more than variants of the God-of-the-Gaps argument.

In the paradigm God-of-the-Gaps argument, the proponents of God's existence seize on some fact for which there is, as yet, no entirely satisfactory scientific account -- the Gap. Lacking a scientific explanation, that fact is, therefore, according to the proponents, only explicable by an extra naturalistic entity. When science finally does explain this fact, then the God-of-the-Gaps people simply move on to the next as yet unsatisfactorily explained fact.

The problem is, there will always be some such fact that cannot be explained by science, so the God-of-the-Gaps people will always have an argument.

One might say that there is an act of belief here operating on both sides of the argument: the God-of-the-Gaps people never believe that every fact of the universe should have a naturalistic explanation, and those opposed believe that, to the contrary, every fact of the universe does have a naturalistic explanation. Now this doesn't mean that there's no preferred position between the two. I certainly would argue that the belief system of the latter group is the far more rational.

There is, in truth, though, a still deeper potential problem. It may very well be that there are facts of the universe which we, as human beings, will never be able adequately to explain. It is, in some larger sense, purest chance that we are smart enough to come up with Newton's theory or Einstein's; had our IQ distribution been a standard deviation lower, or maybe only half of a standard deviation lower, we as a species would not have been able to devise those theories. Think of how much of our universe would under those circumstance have remained inexplicable. Is there any reason to believe that there aren't truths from which we are permanently barred because that IQ distribution isn't a standard deviation, or two standard deviations, higher than it actually is?

Some have speculated that among the things that might be thus inexplicable is consciousness itself.

But should we find ourselves hitting the wall with regard to some facts of the universe, refuting the God-of-the-Gaps people will be a much harder row to hoe.

Sorry, Kitcher: Godel proved nothing of the kind, since it is far from clear that the Universe is a formal system

Um... no. Some aspects of the universe can be accurately described by a formal system sufficiently powerful to encompass arithmetic. Thus, Godel's Theorems apply to it.

The important point is to recognize that Godel's Theorems do NOT demonstrate that there is anything special or unusual about human cognition, nor do they show that ID is necessary or even plausible, or evolution impossible.

"Um... no. Some aspects of the universe can be accurately described by a formal system sufficiently powerful to encompass arithmetic. "

Indeed, but those parts substitute a subset of the Universe. The Universe, in toto, does not appear to be a formal system.

Arrgh! :) "substitute" => "constitute".

You are right, however, that even if the Universe as a whole (possible) or human consciousness (less probable) were formal systems it would say nothing about the possibility of information increase, or evolution in general.

The Universe, in toto, does not appear to be a formal system.

Nearly so for some people.

Indeed, but those parts substitute a subset of the Universe.

Irrelevant. The Theorems apply to any system that permits "formal structure". If part of the universe can be described formally, the Theorems apply to it as a whole. But this is increasingly tangential.

razib, your quest is futile. It is entirely possible that Behe recognizes perfectly well that his arguments have been refuted and continues them anyway to further his goals. Even if we presume that his arguments are being made in good faith, the search space of possible reasons is too large. Rationality is specific and limited, a very tiny slice of the cosmos; irrationality is barely constrained at all, representing everything incompatible with a very restrictive set of principles. It's extremely clear that Behe's arguments are incompatible with rationality - it follows that, if they're made honestly, his reasons for holding them are irrational. And there are so many possible irrational reasons for him to hold his position that it would take extensive experimentation to identify what path through the possibility space he's actually taken.

"Isn't sanity really a one-trick pony, anyway? All you get is one trick: rational thinking. But when you're good and crazy, the sky's the limit!" -- The Tick

"There is, in truth, though, a still deeper potential problem. It may very well be that there are facts of the universe which we, as human beings, will never be able adequately to explain. It is, in some larger sense, purest chance that we are smart enough to come up with Newton's theory or Einstein's; had our IQ distribution been a standard deviation lower, or maybe only half of a standard deviation lower, we as a species would not have been able to devise those theories. Think of how much of our universe would under those circumstance have remained inexplicable. Is there any reason to believe that there aren't truths from which we are permanently barred because that IQ distribution isn't a standard deviation, or two standard deviations, higher than it actually is?

Some have speculated that among the things that might be thus inexplicable is consciousness itself.

But should we find ourselves hitting the wall with regard to some facts of the universe, refuting the God-of-the-Gaps people will be a much harder row to hoe."


Careful there, ducky. I've heard that massaging one's IQ too much can cause blindness.

I'll bet there are star-hopping ETs 5 billion light years away, with IQs of 1000, who are probably thinking they don't known s#@t either.
Know what? The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. Or that's how it SHOULD be. I like reading about biodiversity and genetic research, but there's way too many fundamentalist preachers in science, calling people "dumb" and "lazy" for reminding us that the jury is still out on certain theories. btw, Thanks Steve Hsu. You make sense.

"Those improbable steps that the evil IDers (and Godel) talk about might really be there."

But Godel spoke of the odds of a human form arising directly from disassociated bits by chance. That's not what evolutionary theory addresses.

Even if very extraordinary things did have to happen for us to get here, it takes more than that to prove intelligent intervention.

I think that most scientists do not understand the extent to which religious people, even the fairly well-educated, regard much of science as an attempt to establish an arbitrary leftist "reality" of the type represented by blank slate behaviorists. I live in the "buckle of the Bible-belt" and I see a lot of this. I suppose most of the readers of this Blog regard that as an gross misunderstanding of science as they see the blank-slaters as a vanquished, shrinking, minority, but that is not how they are seen by ordinary people.

I realize that this discussion is about Behe, but I agree that one cannot understand Behe without understanding his audience, because that is who is "buying" his argument.

People who do not think much about science do not see distinctions in schools of scientific thought except as proof that scientists don't really know what they are talking about.

I've tried to explain before that is it unlikely that Behe (and others) are actually "arguing" anything at all.

Behe is a sideshow operator and carnival midway pitchman, "turning" the "marks" (or suckers).

The marks are the believers, whose contributions, donations, book purchases, etc., afford Behe a vwery fine maintenance. He's made a prominent "name" and honored place for himself in their universe

His show is what is called a "geek" show, where the marks paid to see a degenerate (alcoholic, retard, other unlovely and unsympathetic unfortunate) debase themselves with grotesqueries like eating live snakes, biting off chicken heads, eating chicken entrails, etc.

In Behe's show, you guys are the geeks whose debasement amuses the marks. It doesn't matter even a little bit that Behe's arguments are refuted repeatedly. The marks don't understand the arguments (as some of you've noticed), can't really be expected to, and it doesn't matter anyway. The ONLY way to deal with Behe is not to volunteer as geeks (and, I'd also note, the actual true geeks at least got food and drunk money from the show-and occasional coins tossed by a mark; you are the butts of ridicule). If you ignore Behe, he'll lose his "tip" (audience) and their financial support--their type only pays for action and spectacle.

I'm pretty sure that Behe is lying about what he believes. Maybe there is money to be made from doing it? He's got a ready market for his books, since they are basically creationist comfort books and there is quite a large part of the population who need that kind of thing.

Track the incentives and you'll find the reasons. I can't imagine that it is true belief, since he's been waving the same argument around for about a decade.

Why does Behe think his arguments are not being refuted over and over?

Maybe they haven't been refuted. I certainly haven't been impressed by his critics. The best ones "refute" i.d. only by postulating a mechanism that can theoretically create irreducibly complex cellular structures. And the worst ones ridicule him for being a creationist, which he isn't.

variants of the God-of-the-Gaps argument

True, but it's an important gap: than Darwinism can't explain most life on Earth. Maybe someday scientists will be able to explain how e.g. flagellum evolved, but they can't now. Maybe that's why so many get ticked off at Behe, for airing their dirty laundry.