For Darwin Day: Michael Behe on the secrets of the cell

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February 12, 2020

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design

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Today, for the birthday of Charles Darwin, celebrated around the world as Darwin Day, Discovery Institute is proud to launch a new, five-part video series. It’s Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe. You can see Episode 1 here

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And now, let's celebrate this day with some laughs thanks to our darwinian friends: Observation : "Babies are shaped like footballs and have more bendable bones than adults". Darwinian "explanation": 1."This is because primitive man would have wanted to spread his genes as far as possible". 2. "We believe this was accomplised by punting the child from village to village until it arrived in a different population". 3."This also explains why babies have ample fat, which protected their organs during punting. It explains why babies must be burped often, because in nature that gas would been expelled by the dropkick". "AND it explains their smooth skin and hairlesness, which made for good aerodinamics". Now the story-teller receives his/her prize. Credit where credit is due: https://www.google.com/amp/s/scienceoveracuppa.com/2016/05/22/the-absurdity-of-just-so-stories-in-explaining-evolution/amp/Truthfreedom_{February 13, 2020
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This darw's day, let's celebrate: How Science is Killing Darwinism
...darwin saw slight, incremental and accumulating variation as the essential prerequisite without which ‘my theory would absolutely break down.’
Enter Gerd B. Müller (no, he is not an ID proponent):
“The theory largely avoids the question of how the complex organizations of organismal structure, physiology, development or behavior – whose variation it describes - actually arise in evolution”. "What Müller points out is that natural selection is great at explaining why small changes occur in organisms. What natural selection cannot account for is complex changes, like how a single-celled organism could evolve into a jellyfish, or monkey, or anything other than a single-celled organism. "
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.christianpost.com/amp/fingerprints-in-the-cell-how-science-is-killing-darwinism.htmlTruthfreedom_{February 13, 2020
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Dr. Behe is fine example of the Christian virtue of turning the other cheek. Over the years, I have seen Dr. Behe slandered time and time again by Darwinists. But I have never seen him respond in kind. The angriest that I've ever seen Dr. Behe get to this relentless slander by Darwinists is when he suggested Abbie Smith "can go soak her head" after she sent him a particularly hostile 'open letter'.
"if a complete stranger sends me a message with a sneering tone like that, she can go soak her head." http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2007/11/response-to-ian-musgraves-open-letter-to-dr-michael-behe-part-1/
Compared to the level of vitriol that Abby Smith has spewed towards Dr. Behe, that was an extremely mild mannered response on his part:
* Michael Behe appears to have been written out of this seasons script. He was last seen giving Creationists $6.99 blowjobs in the Amazon.com bargain bin. https://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/07/01/green-buttocks
Admittedly, most of the slander by Darwinists has not been as hateful as Abby Smith's slander, but has been along the lines, as wikipedia does, of calling him an "advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design".
Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID) - wikipedia
Rather than respond in kind to the slander by Darwinists, Dr. Behe has steadfastly focused on the science at hand. And Dr. Behe has been vindicated time and time again by the science at hand. Particularly, in his 2008 book, "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism", Dr. Behe, after analysis of several lines of evidence, particularly analysis of evidence from HIV and malaria, Dr. Behe noted that the ability of the malaria parasite to develop resistance to chloroquine is a two mutation event with a probability of occurring of 1 in 10^20. He then notes that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (or 10^15, 1 quadrillion years)
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless “using their model” gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461
Michael Behe then put what he has dubbed 'the edge of evolution' to be at 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. ,,, Behe puts the edge of evolution at 10^40 since, as he states, 'there have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the world in the last 4 billion years,'.
“The immediate, most important implication is that complexes with more than two different binding sites-ones that require three or more proteins-are beyond the edge of evolution, past what is biologically reasonable to expect Darwinian evolution to have accomplished in all of life in all of the billion-year history of the world. The reasoning is straightforward. The odds of getting two independent things right are the multiple of the odds of getting each right by itself. So, other things being equal, the likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of the probability for getting one: a double CCC (chloroquine complexity cluster), 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the world in the last 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable.” – Michael Behe – The Edge of Evolution – page 146
And Dr. Behe's 10^20 figure was "derived from public health statistical data,",,,
Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth Shies Away from Intelligent Design but Unwittingly Vindicates Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: The rarity of chloroquine resistance is not in question. In fact, Behe’s statistic that it occurs only once in every 10^20 cases was derived from public health statistical data, published by an authority in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The extreme rareness of chloroquine resistance is not a negotiable data point; it is an observed fact. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/richard_dawkins_the_greatest_s.html
Of course, Darwinists never did accept this empirical evidence, and, as mentioned previously, have in large part responded by slandering Dr. Behe. Regardless of the disingenuous nature in which Darwinists responded to Dr. Behe, Dr. Behe's 10^20 figure has now, as of 2014, achieved empirical confirmation in the laboratory.
Michael Behe - Observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution - video - Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines 25:56 minute quote - "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svV8wNUqvA How Many Ways Are There to Win at Sandwalk? - Michael Behe - August 15, 2014 Excerpt: ,, with chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum. The best current statistical estimate of the frequency of de novo resistance is Nicholas White's value of 1 in 10^20 parasites. That number is now essentially fixed -- no pathway to resistance will be found that is substantially more probable than that. Although with more data the value may be refined up or down by even as much as one or two orders of magnitude (to between 1 in 10^18-10^22), it's not going very far on a log scale. Not nearly far enough to lift the shadow from Darwinism. What's more, we can also conclude that the mutations that have already been found are the most effective available of any combination of mutations whose joint probability is greater than 1 in 10^20, since more effective alternatives would already have occurred and been selected if they were available.,,, The bottom line for all of them is that the acquisition of chloroquine resistance is an event of statistical probability 1 in 10^20.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/how_many_ways_a088981.html Guide of the Perplexed: A Quick Reprise of The Edge of Evolution - Michael Behe - August 20, 2014 Excerpt: *Any particular adaptive biochemical feature requiring the same mutational complexity as that needed for chloroquine resistance in malaria is forbiddingly unlikely to have arisen by Darwinian processes and fixed in the population of any class of large animals (such as, say, mammals), because of the much lower population sizes and longer generation times compared to that of malaria. (By "the same mutational complexity" I mean requiring 2-3 point mutations where at least one step consists of intermediates that are deleterious, plus a modest selection coefficient of, say, 1 in 10^3 to 1 in10^4. Those factors will get you in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^20.) *Any adaptive biological feature requiring a mutational pathway of twice that complexity (that is, 4-6 mutations with the intermediate steps being deleterious) is unlikely to have arisen by Darwinian processes during the history of life on Earth.,,, What's more, Nicholas White's factor of 1 in 10^20 already has built into it all the ways to evolve chloroquine resistance in P. falciparum. In the many malarial cells exposed to chloroquine there have surely occurred all possible single mutations and probably all possible double mutations -- in every malarial gene -- yet only a few mutational combinations in pfcrt are effective. In other words, mutation and selection have already searched all possible solutions of the entire genome whose probability is greater than 1 in 10^20, including mutations to other genes. The observational evidence demonstrates that only a handful are effective. There is no justification for arbitrarily inflating probabilistic resources by citing imaginary alternative evolutionary routes. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/guide_of_the_pe089161.html
Moreover, as hard as it is for Darwinian processes to account for chloroquine resistance in the malaria parasite, (and to add insult to injury), the supposedly beneficial adaptation came at a loss of function for the parasite, not a gain.
Metabolic QTL Analysis Links Chloroquine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to Impaired Hemoglobin Catabolism - January, 2014 Summary: Chloroquine was formerly a front line drug in the treatment of malaria. However, drug resistant strains of the malaria parasite have made this drug ineffective in many malaria endemic regions. Surprisingly, the discontinuation of chloroquine therapy has led to the reappearance of drug-sensitive parasites. In this study, we use metabolite quantitative trait locus analysis, parasite genetics, and peptidomics to demonstrate that chloroquine resistance is inherently linked to a defect in the parasite's ability to digest hemoglobin, which is an essential metabolic activity for malaria parasites. This metabolic impairment makes it harder for the drug-resistant parasites to reproduce than genetically-equivalent drug-sensitive parasites, and thus favors selection for drug-sensitive lines when parasites are in direct competition. Given these results, we attribute the re-emergence of chloroquine sensitive parasites in the wild to more efficient hemoglobin digestion. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004085
In fact, the vast majority of 'beneficial' adaptations come about because of loss of function mutations. This is an issue that clearly is at odds with the claims of Darwinists, and is an issue that Dr. Behe has explored in much greater detail in his latest book "Darwin Devolves". Here is a recent video by Dr. Behe on the topic
Michael Behe - Less is More: How Darwinian Evolution Helps Species Adapt by Breaking Genes - video (November 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKmXMlsQ5sg&list=PLS591mpvSTo3vP8g1BNfIMh3wUyrrWzQA&index=9
Thus in conclusion, although Darwinists have, over the years, slandered Dr. Behe time and time again, Dr. Behe never responded in kind and has instead chosen to let the evidence speak for itself. And the empirical evidence itself has vindicated Dr. Behe. Dr. Behe is a shining example of what science is suppose to be about. i.e. following the evidence where it leads in an unbiased, non-personal, manner. Darwinists, as well as everyone else who considers themselves to be a scientist, would do very well to follow Dr. Behe's example!
1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test everything; hold fast what is good.
bornagain77_{February 13, 2020
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Enjoyed the introductory episode. Well done for a general audience. That's a very difficult task. Looking forward to watching the next episodes.jawa_{February 12, 2020
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