Apparently, Jerry Coyne is now attacking me, re Behe’s recent paper. To judge from his blog post’s title, he has me confused with Discovery Institute.*
(Behe’s paper is available for free download here.)
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Dr. Coyne claims that Behe’s findings apply only to artificial selection in the lab. But, at the feet of the great Richard Dawkins, I learned that artificial selection like human breeding of dogs, has proved Behe both wrong and ridiculous, in Edge of Evolution. That is precisely because dog breeding is equivalent to the process that applies throughout nature:
Don’t evade the point by protesting that dog breeding is a form of intelligent design. It is (kind of), but Behe, having lost the argument over irreducible complexity, is now in his desperation making a completely different claim: that mutations are too rare to permit significant evolutionary change anyway. From Newfies to Yorkies, from Weimaraners to water spaniels, from Dalmatians to dachshunds, as I incredulously close this book I seem to hear mocking barks and deep, baying howls of derision from 500 breeds of dogs — every one descended from a timber wolf within a time frame so short as to seem, by geological standards, instantaneous.
All you have to do, it seems, is leave out intelligent design.
Dawkins said so in the Bible and all the wise nodded in assent.
Well, either artificial selection is relevant or it isn’t. Maybe Coyne and Dawkins should talk more.
*We share some initials, it’s true. My middle name is Ileen. The confusion is inevitable.