If you are going to libel someone and lionise someone else, it behoves you to get your facts right. Behe is not molecular biologist, but a biochemist. There is a huge difference between these disciplines, you know.
I was writing from memory. I knew he was a biochemist; I think it’s one of the other guys who’s a molecular biologist. You win one. I wasn’t, however, lionizing Behe (with whom I really don’t agree), but pointing out that all
Dawkins ever did, in regard to ID theory, was call names and sneer. He never tried to contradict the research because he was not qualified. He did say remarkably stupid things, though, like “But then you still have to explain the complexity of God.” Skimming the
chapter headings of Summa Theologiae (as in, ‘On the Simplicity of God’) might have made him hold his tongue.
This is the same Behe, who, under oath, admitted that in order for Intelligent Design to be a scientific theory then astrology would also have to be a scientific theory. This is the guy whose ‘theory’ has been exposed as no more than a rather sophisticated version of the argument from personal incredulity. The same guy who has been disowned by his own university department and has become a laughing stock in scientific circles. That Behe.
Being disowned by those with an ideological interest in disowning you means not a damn thing–ask Copernicus. I’d like to see that testimony, though; that whole Pensylvania issue seemed pretty sordid and stupid on both sides. It seemed to involve Young-Earth Creationists prostituting ID theory to their own ends, from what I could see.
*You *don’t know very much at all, do you? We have already established the fact that Behe is a biochemist, and not a biologist at all. Whereas Dawkins graduated as a zoologist at one of the world’s leading universities where he became a lecturer in zoology while he did his ground-breaking work in evolutionary theory. Your argument by libel and falsehood is quite disgraceful.
I do not libel. I insult. Dawkins is also, by the way, not a stupid zoologist but a stupid ethologist–he studies animal behavior, specifically. He’s also a philosophically illiterate evolutionary biologist and a fascistic science writer. Most
atheists are ashamed to associate with him. Have you heard about how he wants teaching children a religion to be declared child abuse? He’s insane.
That’s fine, except that ‘irreducible complexity’ is a busted flush as no-one, not Behe, not anyone, is able to show that any biochemical pathway is necessarily irreducibly complex - co-option of pathways and scaffolding provide a perfectly adequate explanation for apparently irreducible processes - Behe’s work, while interesting for a year or two, is now, justifiably, regarded as fundamentally flawed.
I do not know what you’re talking about; I would like to know what this research is. I really don’t care one way or another about evolution (evolution
ists are, in Dawkins’ case at least, fascists and bad philosophers, but science is science), but I had thought irreducible complexity seemed a very good challenge to it. How was it disproven?
If ID has been disproven, why wasn’t it touted to the rooftops? Answer: because nobody thought it was necessary, because they “just knew” it was false. That’s not science.
The fact remains that Dawkins is not philosophically versed enough to make the claims he does. Dawkins self-appoints himself an authority on all the sciences–and gets them wrong.
PS, Cosmic rays are particle bombardment, mostly composed of protons and atomic nuclei. Gamma rays are high frequency electromagnetic radiation, made of photons.
PPS. Exponential or geometric growth is growth at a rate equal to a power of the current value, meaning that larger values grow more quickly than smaller ones. “Growth as a power function” is probably just a bad paraphrase of exponential.
I admit I was a little arrogant when I posted the first time, and should have double-checked a few references. But my main points remain valid–Dawkins is scum and those with an ideological commitment evolution are generally, amazingly, even more arrogant than I am (!), and also dangerously fascistic. I don’t know many religious people who want teacing atheism do be declared child abuse.
Apparently irreducible complexity has been disproven. I will concede the point, if and when I see the research.
