![A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics by [Michael J. Behe]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41QdReSgsLL.jpg)
Eric Anderson offers response to biochemist Larry Moran, who has argued that Michael Behe has misunderstood and misinterpreted the evidence re chloroquine resistance in A Mousetrap for Darwin:
In 2007, biochemist Michael Behe had the temerity to ask a question — a question that should have been asked with repeated and urgent sincerity by all biologists since the ink from Darwin’s quill first dried on his manuscript: What can evolution actually accomplish?
The question is at once reasonable and utterly crucial to the evolutionary story. Yet, for the most part it has been ignored in the history of evolutionary thought. The deeply held assumption of nearly all evolutionists is that evolution can do everything. After all, we’re here aren’t we! So there is little point in even asking the question. To be sure, occasional lip service has been paid to this inquiry over the decades, but such efforts typically descend into a question-begging exercise that simply assumes evolution must have this great creative power. Again, we’re here, and so even if we don’t understand the precise mechanisms of evolution, even if we’re still trying to fill in the details, even if there is some as-yet-undiscovered evolutionary mechanism, evolution simply must have this great creative power.
Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould famously used this tactic, arguing that even if we don’t understand exactly how evolution works, we must still regard evolution as a fact, because, well, things have evolved. Phillip Johnson rightly called out Gould for this self-serving circular attempt to prop up evolution, with Johnson’s careful analysis revealing that Gould’s “fact” of evolution turned out to mean nothing more than the theory.
Eric Anderson, “How Much Can Evolution Really Accomplish?” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 25, 2022)
Actually, in religious circles, if anyone treated their sect’s creed the way Darwinians have treated evolution, they would be regarded as a cult.
Here are all the responses from Dr. Behe to his critics, after the 2014 Summers’ results came out. Empirical results that verified Dr. Behe’s claim that, (at least), two coordinated mutations are required to achieve the 1 in 10^20 chloroquine resistance.
Moreover, to top it all off, and to add insult to injury, the I in 10^20 chloroquine resistance in the malaria parasite came at a loss of fitness for the parasite, not a gain. (Which is exactly the opposite type of experimental evidence that Darwinists need in order to give their theory even a tiny semblance of being remotely feasible, as far as experimental science itself is concerned).
As to Eric Anderson’s astute observation that Behe’s, very basic, question of, “what can evolution really accomplish?”, is “a question that should have been asked with repeated and urgent sincerity by all biologists since the ink from Darwin’s quill first dried on his manuscript”,,,
This, ahem, ’empirical oversight’ on the part of Darwinists to ask this most basic question of “what can evolution really accomplish?” is simply completely inexcusable for any theory of science that claims to be a true and testable science.
As I’ve said years ago, “I don’t know what Darwinists are doing, but they sure in blue blazes are not doing science!”
Moreover, Dr. Behe’s 1 in 10^20 observation is not a stand alone, and/or an anomalous, observation. But Dr. Behe’s 1 in 10^20 observation is in general agreement with several other lines of empirical and mathematical evidence.
For instance, Doug Axe and Ann Gauger found that, “The waiting time required to achieve four mutations is 10^15 years. That’s longer than the age of the universe.”
And in the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
Moreover, to drive this point even further home, this follow up 2018 article stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
etc.. etc..
And Behe’s 1 in 10^20 observation is also in general agreement with the mathematics of population genetics.
As Ann Gauger observed, “You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect.”
And Dr. John Sanford, (who’s credentials in genetics are impeccable, i.e. he invented the ‘gene gun’ and taught at Cornell for 20 years), found, via the mathematics of population genetics, (and computer simulation), that, “the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer),, the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years,,, Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect),,, When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years.”
Thus, it is not as if Dr. Behe is harping on some anomalous piece of evidence with his 1 in 10^20 observation, just so to try to unfairly criticize Darwinian evolution, but Dr. Behe is, in fact, in general argreement with several other lines of mathematical and empirical evidence that also find Darwin’s theory to be severely wanting.
All in all, Dr. Behe is practicing good, old fashioned, empirical science. Whereas, on the other hand, his Darwinian critics are found to be providing, basically, ‘my dog ate my homework’ lame excuses for why Darwinian processes are found to be grossly inadequate in explaining the, (fairly astonishing), integrated molecular complexity of life found at the protein level.
As the following article found, “Untangling the protein web,, is like comparing different degrees of infinity,,, The simple pathway models, (of Darwinists), are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening.”
So again, and in conclusion, “I don’t know what Darwinists are doing, but they sure in blue blazes are not doing science!”
It’s enough to say that all books of Dawkins are cancelled by new discoveries in epigenetics. Now imagine the state of mind of Dawkins and his followers. First stage is to accept you were WRONG , not a little wrong but dead wrong. It’s not easy to admit you were stupid so you double triple down .
It’s not about science it’s about fallen human nature that scientists think they are exempted. Little dictators that don’t accept anymore new evidences because they know the truth 😆
Resistance to a chemical is a form of immunity. Immunity is variable among individuals, and natural selection DOES cull out the more susceptible individuals in each situation and each threat.
But natural selection couldn’t have created immunity itself. A complex system of sensors sending out warrior cells or warrior chemicals would have been a total drain on the cell’s resources unless and until it worked (almost) perfectly, complete with variation to fit different situations. Each sensor would be useless on its own, and each warrior cell would be useless without the sensors and the systematic intelligence that sends it to the appropriate location.
Recently a Darwinist claimed that Dr. Behe was not using probability properly in his calculations.
But then, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that Darwinists are the ones who are flagrantly misusing probability.
Specifically, when Darwinists say something happened randomly, or that it happened by chance, they are not referring to some realistically defined mathematical probability of something happening in the universe, but are instead claiming that random chance is a cause unto itself.
This is ‘very irrational’.
As Wolfgang (not even wrong) Pauli himself noted, “While they (Darwinists) pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational,’ they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
Moreover Charles Darwin himself honestly admitted that this is a wholly inadequate way to treat ‘chance’.
Specifically, Darwin stated, “”I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations—so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree in those in a state of nature—had been due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation.”
Yet this “wholly incorrect expression” of “chance”, which “serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation”, has, in the minds of Darwinists, become a cause unto itself. As Nobel laureate Jacques Monod himself stated, “It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution”,,,
Yet, as biophysicist Donald M. MacKay pointed out, to speak of chance as a cause unto itself, without it being anchored to any realistically defined mathematical probability, “is to make an illegitimate switch from a scientific to a quasi-religious mythological concept.”
In short, and as Wolfgang Pauli observed, speaking of “chance” as a cause unto itself, without any anchor to any realistically defined mathematical probability, is make chance, for all intents and purposes, synonymous with the word “miracle”.
I think Stephen Talbott’s following illustration, which plays off the old joke “and then a miracle occurs’, gets this “chance is synonymous with the word miracle” point across very clearly.
Moreover, As Dr. Egnor pointed out, there simply can be no realistic mathematical definition for ‘chance’ unless it is defined against a backdrop of purposeful, i.e. teleogical, events. As Egnor succinctly put it, “Chance presupposes design.”, (at least if ‘chance’ is to be anchored to a realistically defined mathematical probability in order to make it scientifically useful).
Thus in conclusion, although the Darwinists who criticize Dr. Behe often try to claim that he is not using mathematical probability properly, it turns out that Darwinists themselves, when you look at the foundation of their theory, are the ones who are flagrantly, and blatantly, ignoring the proper use of mathematical probability, i.e. ‘chance’, in science, and who are ‘very irrationally’, (as Pauli pout it), using the word “chance” in such a way as to make virtually synonymous with the word “miracle”.
Moreover, since ‘chance’ does not even exist as a known cause for anything, but ‘chance’ is actually ‘our ignorance’, (C. Darwin), of a known cause, then Darwinist Atheists actually believe in magic minus any magician to perform their magic.
A magic show without any magician to actually perform the magic? Now that is certainly one hell of a magic show for Darwinists to believe in.
Verse:
There are two things The author gets wrong and and |they give the game away when they do.
First, failure to emphasize the fallacy by name that pro natural mechanism advocates constantly use. Namely, begging the question. He does use this term but in passing. By emphasizing the fallacy the advocates will be forced to admit they are using fallacious reasoning. It will be impossible to deny it.
Second, using the term “evolution” to describe their mechanism when they mean Darwinian processes. Now Darwin’s process is indeed extremely good science, but it has nothing to do with Evolution.
Darwin’s processes are part of genetics and indeed some significant changes are possible within genetics but these significant changes have nothing to do with Evolution debate.
Richard Dawkins admitted the best explanation for life as we see it is an intelligence. It was acceptable as an explanation as long as the intelligence was not God. Again the begging the question fallacy.
This article is almost there.
🙂 Egnor is a genius.
🙂 Atheists don’t need a magician to tell them what to do so they cut the magician from the scheme. It’s like a cartoon where somebody sitting on a branch and cutting it from the tree will make the tree falling down while the branch (they sit on) stays frozen in the air 😆 This is the atheism.