Michael Behe On Falsification

_{Gil Dodgen

December 26, 2006

Intelligent Design}

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In the DVD Case For A Creator, in the Q&A section, Michael Behe was asked, How would you respond to the claim that intelligent design theory is not falsifiable?

Behe responded:

The National Academy of Sciences has objected that intelligent design is not falsifiable, and I think that’s just the opposite of the truth. Intelligent design is very open to falsification. I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.

Now let’s turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis.

I think the very opposite is true. I think intelligent design is easily testable, easily falsifiable, although it has not been falsified, and Darwinism is very resistant to being falsified. They can always claim something was not right.

Comments

avocationist:
Jack, You said, [blockquote]Deceive us into what? Into thinking that perhaps the designer works by creating Ã¢â‚¬Å“step-by-tiny-step incremental changes with successive generations each functional in its own right.Ã¢â‚¬Â? How do we know that this is not in fact precisely the way that the Designer implements his design?[/blockquote] The reason Rude said it would be a deception is that it is mighty unlikely that the designer, just because we tinker with some few bacteria in a lab somewhere and knock out some of their genetics, is going to ride in and fix the situation, while we watch. I do understand the point of your question, but this scenario is just silly.
Thanks, avocationist. This gets at the intentions of the designer. How can you know them?Daniel King_{December 28, 2006
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JB: How would you guys respond to this? As I attempted to read the article JB linked to it became obvious that the author had preconceived anti-ID biases. I would tell him that the best and perhaps the only way to refute ID is by substantiating the claims of the materialistic anti-ID position. And that his ID ignorance should not be mistaken as a refutation.Joseph_{December 28, 2006
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Jack Krebs: Likewise, we have seen time and time again that things that people once thought were the product of an intelligent agent turned out to not be, from the winds blowing to the causes of disease. Any legitimate examples of scientists making these mistakes? Jack Krebs: Therefore, I think history tells us that assuming design is the best causal explanation for things that look designed is not a very reliable assumption. As I have stated before- If something looks designed we should be allowed to check into that to see if it was intentionally designed. Jack Krebs: If one wishes to establish that design is a possible explanation, one has to have some sense of what evidence one might find, and how one might find that evidence. What cave have you been living in? Drs Behe, Dembski and Meyer have given us just that- what to look for. And btw, design is a mechanism (that is if you use the standard and accepted definitions of each). And it is just as valid a mechanism as RM&NS or any other vague "evolutionary" mechanism. (vague because no one can tell us, for example, what mutations account for what differences in allegedly closely related populations as chimps & humans). Jack Krebs: I guess this is one of the points IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m looking for clarification on: when and how often is ID hypothesized to happen. At least once in the past. Jack Krebs: Is there any reason why it couldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t happen in a lab experiment? No and I gave a possible ID lab scenario above.Joseph_{December 28, 2006
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From the hostile article I just linked to, it says:
He also, as noted, runs into trouble when asked about testability. He suggests that both good and bad designs are compatible with ID, so that discoveries regarding extinctions and inefficiencies are perfectly okay as far as ID is concerned, raising questions about what aspects of ID are testable. Behe stated that the only testable aspects of IDÃ¢â‚¬â€the only ways it could be falsifiedÃ¢â‚¬â€would come by via examinations of evolutionary processes. In his view, if evolution fails, we can accept ID. Design, in short, should be viewed as a default explanation until proven wrong, despite its lack of experimental support. This violates the scientific principle that unexplained or unexamined phenomena are considered just that: unexplained. In this regard, Behe's talk is perhaps the most blatant admission that ID is a "God of the Gaps" argument.
How would you guys respond to this? (I myself know very little about biology, so it's hard for me to discern who's really telling the truth: thus my curiosity as to how those more knowledgeable would respond).jb_{December 28, 2006
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Robo posted this over on the "Cross-pollination with Telic Thoughts" thread, but it seems appropriate to mention here. It is a reference to an article at what appears to be an ID-hostile site and is entitled "Intelligent Design tries to rally its base." Most of the article is a critique of Dr. Behe's ideas and recent presentations: http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/12/27/6407 (Thanks for the tips on the html formatting, BTW).jb_{December 28, 2006
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One reason is that throughout the history of mankindÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s search for knowledge, we have seen time and time again that what appears to us to be the case turns out to be only just that - an appearance, but not the actual case. Likewise, we have seen time and time again that things that people once thought were the product of an intelligent agent turned out to not be, from the winds blowing to the causes of disease.
This is true, I think the classic example is the rotation of the planets. However, it gives rise to the invalid philosophical argument that all phenomena must have a natural cause. Just because many phenomena have a natural cause, it does not follow that all phenomena have a natural cause. In fact, I would posit that one phenomenon in particular, the existance of matter cannot have a natural cause because it is impossible for matter to be its own first cause. Therefore the existence of matter requires a supernatural cause. I suppose the same could be said to be true of time, space, gravity, and the universe. So the issue is not whether some phenomena do not have a natural cause, because some clearly do not, the issue is which phenomena can be explained by natural causes and which cannot.Jehu_{December 27, 2006
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This Atom guy is a sharp dude.GilDodgen_{December 27, 2006
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In light of what we now know from modern biochemistry and computational technology -- not to mention the mathematics of combinatorics and the inadequacies of appeals to deep time -- traditional Darwinian mechanisms are simply dead in their explanatory power, and can only be propped up by appeals to authority and lawsuits. This is pathetic, and represents the antithesis of genuine scientific inquiry. There is a simple explanation for this devotion to a scientifically and mathematically bankrupt proposition: It promotes a religion of nihilism, especially to other people's children.GilDodgen_{December 27, 2006
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Your code should look like this: <blockquote>Some text you want indented as a blockquote</blockquote> ...not like this: [Blockquote]This will never work on UD. Only on BBCode enabled forums...[/Blockquote]Atom_{December 27, 2006
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*Use <>Atom_{December 27, 2006
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Avocationist, you need to use HTML style, not BBCode styel. This means no [] brackets. Use brackets instead.Atom_{December 27, 2006
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So the last time I tried to use italics it didn't work, and now I tried to use blockquote, and it didn't work.avocationist_{December 27, 2006
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Jack, Jack, You said, [blockquote]Deceive us into what? Into thinking that perhaps the designer works by creating Ã¢â‚¬Å“step-by-tiny-step incremental changes with successive generations each functional in its own right.Ã¢â‚¬Â? How do we know that this is not in fact precisely the way that the Designer implements his design?[/blockquote] The reason Rude said it would be a deception is that it is mighty unlikely that the designer, just because we tinker with some few bacteria in a lab somewhere and knock out some of their genetics, is going to ride in and fix the situation, while we watch. I do understand the point of your question, but this scenario is just silly.avocationist_{December 27, 2006
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Crandaddy also writes,
What we ask is, Ã¢â‚¬Å“It looks designed, so why should we think that design is not the best causal explanation?Ã¢â‚¬Â
One reason is that throughout the history of mankind's search for knowledge, we have seen time and time again that what appears to us to be the case turns out to be only just that - an appearance, but not the actual case. Likewise, we have seen time and time again that things that people once thought were the product of an intelligent agent turned out to not be, from the winds blowing to the causes of disease. Therefore, I think history tells us that assuming design is the best causal explanation for things that look designed is not a very reliable assumption. If one wishes to establish that design is a possible explanation, one has to have some sense of what evidence one might find, and how one might find that evidence.Jack Krebs_{December 27, 2006
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Thanks for the response, Crandaddy First, you say,
It seems to me that you misunderstand the difference between ontological design and epistemic design, Jack. We IDists donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t concern ourselves with ontological design; weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re not in the business of proving anything with this stuff. A personÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s epistemic economy includes three physical causal types: necessity, chance, and agency.
I have no idea what difference you think I misunderstand here - and I know the difference between ontology and epistomology. Can you explain more what point you're making here. Next, you write,
Any epistemic defense of the presence of agency would have to show that known chance and necessity hypotheses are insufficient causal accounts for a given phenomenon. Ideally, this would include a rigorous probabilistic elimination of chance hypotheses such as is the focus of DembskiÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s work. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not enough to simply say, Ã¢â‚¬Å“It looks designed; therefore, it is.Ã¢â‚¬Â Rather, what we ask is, Ã¢â‚¬Å“It looks designed, so why should we think that design is not the best causal explanation?Ã¢â‚¬Â If a BacFlag ever evolved in a lab we would have to see whether or not the process could be sufficiently chalked up to naturalistic mechanisms.
As I said much earlier in this thread, I fight it hard to imagine how one could gather and process the relevant data needed to "include a rigorous probabilistic elimination of chance hypotheses such as is the focus of DembskiÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s work." I teach probability and calculus, for what that's worth, so I have some idea of the complexity of the math that would be needed to model billions of bacteria and multiple billions of genetic events per generation for thousands or millions of generations. Do you, or anyone, have ideas about how to do that?Jack Krebs_{December 27, 2006
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Hey, my post was cute. It worked perfectly in the "you said" line below this edit window. Let me try again using different encoding. I'll use square brackets where you need to use greater than and less than signs. [blockquote]blockquote[/blockquote] [i]italics[/i] [u]underline[/u] [s]strike-through.[/s]bFast_{December 27, 2006
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I misspoke when I said "eliminative" because I temporarily got distracted by thoughts of agency, itself. What we're talking about here is a reduction of the effect produced by agency (e.g. the BacFlag) which is essentially preserved after the reduction. (Our understanding of the phenomenon is reformed but the phenomenon is not eliminated altogether.) The reduction would be diachronic because our concern is with the causal history of the phenomenon. It seems to me that you misunderstand the difference between ontological design and epistemic design, Jack. We IDists don't concern ourselves with ontological design; we're not in the business of proving anything with this stuff. A person's epistemic economy includes three physical causal types: necessity, chance, and agency. Any epistemic defense of the presence of agency would have to show that known chance and necessity hypotheses are insufficient causal accounts for a given phenomenon. Ideally, this would include a rigorous probabilistic elimination of chance hypotheses such as is the focus of Dembski's work. It's not enough to simply say, "It looks designed; therefore, it is." Rather, what we ask is, "It looks designed, so why should we think that design is not the best causal explanation?" If a BacFlag ever evolved in a lab we would have to see whether or not the process could be sufficiently chalked up to naturalistic mechanisms.crandaddy_{December 27, 2006
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This board uses regular HTML. So just do a normal HTML blockquote or underline.Atom_{December 27, 2006
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Ok, in the syntax below, conver > to blockquote/blockquotei/ib/bu/us/sbFast_{December 27, 2006
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Hmmm. I appreciate those comments, but I find them at odds with what Crandaddy said. (Not that there is anything with people having different opinions.) Crandaddy says ID has no hypotheses about mechanism, or about why, when and how ID occurred, but you are saying that you think there would be relevant evidence about when and how ID occurred, and that various hypotheses about how ID happened are possible and testable. So what would Crandaddy say about the flagellum appearing in the hypothetical lab situation we are discussing? In the absence of a "diachronic reforming reduction", Crandaddy would appear to hold that we could infer that design had happened right there in the lab, because the product (the flagellum) looks designed. I guess this is one of the points I'm looking for clarification on: when and how often is ID hypothesized to happen. Is there any reason why it couldn't happen in a lab experiment?Jack Krebs_{December 27, 2006
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"P.S. Could someone tell me what syntax is used here to show blockquotes? Do I type html, or bbcode, or what? Thanks" Ok, I give up. I've been trying to figure this out, too. Can someone point newcomers to a syntax guide for doing blockquotes, italics, underline, etc.? On a test post, I tried bbcode, but it didn't work.jb_{December 27, 2006
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[Off-topic. Sorry for interrupting.] Video footage of mass NDE indoctrination: "Intelligent Design Creationism" UC San Diego (apparently mandatory) 11/14/06 convocation address by philosopher Robert T. Pennock will be broadcast on UCTV (U of Cal TV) at 11:00 PM EST / 8:00 PM PST tonight. Rebroadcasting at 9:00 AM EST / 6:00 AM PST tomorrow (12/28), and 6:00 AM EST / 3:00 AM PST Friday (12/29), too. Rated D (Darwinist) - contains n@ked propaganda, violent rhetoric, abuse of language Among other things, Pennock: - looked like he couldn't believe what he was saying - played the Dover trial for all it's worth - shamelessly misrepresented ID and Dembski's stance on the Dover trial - quote-mined Uncommon Descent - didn't engage any of Dembski's actual arguments - dishonestly took Dembski's "Logos" quote out of context - falsely implied that ID is opposed to evolution and means a "tinkering God" - misrepresented Pope John Paul II's statement about evolution - introduced Behe's concept of IC only in the last 10 minutes - falsely said that "natural selection can evolve complex traits" based on Avida research - apparently does not understand that if the fitness function is provided by an intelligence, then its not natural selection - gave a very effective presentation (if you don't care about the truth)j_{December 27, 2006
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blockquote Jack Krebs: If ID offers nothing but Ã¢â‚¬Å“The phenomenon is as it appearsÃ¢â‚¬â€œdesignedÃ¢â‚¬Â without offering anything at all in the form of hypotheses about mechanism, then why should the Ã¢â‚¬Å“naturalistÃ¢â‚¬Â bother with Ã¢â‚¬Å“shouldering the burdenÃ¢â‚¬Â of attempting to argue against this hypotheses. If I said it once... The ONLY way that any determination can be made about the designer or the specific process used, in the absence of direct observation or designer input, is by studying the design in question. And the reason the 'naturalist' "shoulders the burden", is we have never observed nature, operating freely, do the things 'naturalists' claim that is has. Also, as reality demonstrates, it matters to an investigation whether or not what we are trying to figure out was the result of intention or blind forces. We exist- that is regardless of whether or not one is from Kansas. There are only a few options as to the reality behind that existence. If science has any interest at all in reality...Joseph_{December 27, 2006
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Jack, I think that ID is different than "ops, design happened". Consider, for instance, the most extreme design hypothesis -- YEC. If YEC, then there should be all sorts of "young earth" evidence. If agency happened, then the scope of that agency should become clear. For instance, we see the apparent agency in the HAR1F gene. It involves 18 basepairs. With time, we should be able to determine just what the granularity of agency is. Is there agency but still common ancestry? Then every act of agency should lead to a viable organism. If there was one or two grand front-loading events, then there is likely to be chunks of the super-genonome that started it all floating around. If all design was laid out before the big bang happened -- the "law hypothesis", then a very precise pathway through the maze of nature should be findable, a pathway that has the hallmarks of being intentionally laid. In each case, as a specific ID hypothesis arises, there should be a specific pattern of evidence that supports that position. Though there may be a point when we must simply say, "the designer did that", we should be able to flesh out details around those specific points of agency. For instance, did the flagellum, with all of its parts, suddenly appear complete in a bacterium somewhere? Maybe. Maybe it was engineered in through a process of multiple generations. We may be able to make that determination with sufficient study. Ie, "the designer did this bit" may be the best answer we can get for some portions of nature, but for vast vistas of other portions, we will be able to flesh out a whole lot of detail.bFast_{December 27, 2006
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Crandaddy writes, "The ID proponent dosenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to provide whereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s, whenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s, and howÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s of design implementation because ID is not fundamentally a mechanistic reductionist causal account. His position is simple: The phenomenon is as it appearsÃ¢â‚¬â€œdesigned. The burden lies squarely on the natralistÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s shoulders to offer a diachronic eliminative reduction of the phenomenon in question to show that design is illusory." If ID offers nothing but "The phenomenon is as it appearsÃ¢â‚¬â€œdesigned" without offering anything at all in the form of hypotheses about mechanism, then why should the "naturalist" bother with "shouldering the burden" of attempting to argue against this hypotheses. Perhaps, as I have been attempting to point out, the implementation of the design is done through everyday means (natural causes), and perhaps all the time. Perhaps when we study the world through empirical observation and then attempt to explain how things work in respect to other things, we are merely investigating the manifestations of the way that the designer works? If this ID hypothesis is as good as any other ID hypothesis - that is, if merely saying some things appear designed without any attempt to discuss how design happens is acceptable, then why not accept as a valid ID theory that the designers works through the natural processes mainstream scientists observe, and that the processes described by evolutionary science are the best we can do in understanding the means by which design is implemented. P.S. Could someone tell me what syntax is used here to show blockquotes? Do I type html, or bbcode, or what? ThanksJack Krebs_{December 27, 2006
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Arnhart, The ID proponent dosen't have to provide where's, when's, and how's of design implementation because ID is not fundamentally a mechanistic reductionist causal account. His position is simple: The phenomenon is as it appears--designed. The burden lies squarely on the natralist's shoulders to offer a diachronic reforming reduction of the phenomenon in question to show that design is illusory. Sucks to be you. I'm sorry.crandaddy_{December 27, 2006
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Arnhart, If someone went into a lab and designed a self-replicating organism with a 40 some odd protein ion-driven flagellum, would ID then be "proven"* true? *science is not in the proving business.Joseph_{December 27, 2006
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GilDodgen: ID is a theory of design detection, not process. I humbly submit that ID is about the detection and understanding:
Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence. -- William A. Dembski
(bold added) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Krebs: Suppose something interesting like the development of a flagellum arises in a population of flagellum-less bacteria in a laboratory setting Could this have happened by ID?, and if so, how would we know? How would we distinguish the hypothesis that exclusively natural processes were involved in the development of that flagellum from the hypothesis that ID was involved. What evidence would bear on answering this question? (from comment #30): To Jack Krebs, I would say ID would be a reasonable inference in Dr BeheÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s scenario if and only if every (or almost every) subsequent generation contained a mutation/ mutations that were required to re-construct the bac flag that was originally messed with. And I will say it again- with the bac flag as with all appengages, systems and subsystems, just their existence is not enough. They all still require some sort of command and control in order to be any use to the organism. Without C&C they are a waste of materials and energy. And yes, something tells the bac flag to rotate CW, CCW and at what speed. Then it also has Ã¢â‚¬â„¢stopÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, so it wonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t burn out and wonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t just swim by the food. Did I mention it can by rotating CW, and in a 1/4 turn, stop and rotate CCW? Command & ControlJoseph_{December 27, 2006
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When I wrote, Ã¢â‚¬Å“How would we know that this was not in fact intelligent design at work, and that what we were observing were the steps in the implementation of the design?Ã¢â‚¬Â, Rude answered, "The answer is that we wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t know absolutelyÃ¢â‚¬â€œthere is the possibility that the designer wanted to deceive us." Deceive us into what? Into thinking that perhaps the designer works by creating "step-by-tiny-step incremental changes with successive generations each functional in its own right."? How do we know that this is not in fact precisely the way that the Designer implements his design? If one hypothesizes that design is implemented at the genetic level, or even at the sub-molecular level within the genome, then one might expect the implementation of the design of the flagellum in this hypothetical situation to appear to us as "step-by-tiny-step incremental changes with successive generations each functional in its own right." There would be nothing deceptive about this - it would just be the way the designer works.Jack Krebs_{December 27, 2006
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Arnhart:
...you have just pointed to the effective rhetorical strategy of ID... they must exploit the willingness of Darwinian theorists to propose a specific process by which evolution works. In this way, the Darwinians assume a heavy burden of proof that they can never satisfy, and the ID proponents win the debate when the Darwinians fail to satisfy that burden of proof.
It's not a rhetorical strategy; it's just a demand that extraordinary claims be accompanied by commensurately extraordinary evidence. Darwinism proposes a mechanism, a process, whereby a bacterium turned into Mozart in 10^17 seconds through purely materialistic means. This is an extraordinary claim that seems to fly in the face of everything we know about complex, tightly functionally integrated information processing systems. I could make a convincing case that Stonehenge was designed without offering the details of its design and construction. If I were to propose a specific process -- where the stones came from, how they were transported, how they were hewn, how they were assembled -- I would be expected to provide suitable evidence for these specific claims.GilDodgen_{December 27, 2006
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