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In a recent post over at his Sandwalk blog, Professor Larry Moran has been attempting to set the cat among the pigeons, with a list of five issues which, he anticipates, will lead to bitter recriminations within the “big tent” of the Intelligent Design movement.
Professor Moran is shocked, shocked, that Intelligent Design advocates sometimes publicly disagree on certain issues, as illustrated by a recent series of posts (by Sal Cordova, Dr. Branko Kozulic and myself) on the neutral theory of evolution. He writes:
The reason why this is so remarkable is that it almost never happens under the creationist big tent. Different Intelligent Design Creationists have widely conflicting views ranging from Young Earth Creationism to Theistic Evolution Creationism but they always manage to cover up those conflicts and present a united front in attacking evolution….
So, here’s the situation. If the IDiots actually start understanding modern evolution then there will be consequences. Some of them realize the implications and they are not happy. Here’s a brief list of issues that are now on the table under the big tent.
1. Darwinism: If the Idiots have been misinformed about evolution, which they have, then who is responsible and why were they misled by so many of their leaders?
2. Social Darwinism: If evolutionary biologists really believe in Neutral Theory and random genetic drift then how can they be supporters of the evil consequences of nineteenth century Darwinism? What about all those posts where evolutionary biologists were compared to eugenicists, racists, and Nazis?
3. Common Descent: This is a biggy. If Sal Cordova and the evolutionary biologists are right about the sequence differences between humans and chimpanzees, then it must mean that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. There will be no room under the big tent for Young Earth Creationists.
4. Junk DNA: If Cordova is right then most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral. This must mean that most of our genome is junk. Oops! That won’t sit well with many creationists.
5. Theistic Evolution: There’s only one group that’s more evil than materialistic scientists and that’s theistic evolutionists. They are traitors. But if the IDiots actually were to accept the fundamental concepts of evolution, as Sal Cordova and Vincent Torley seem to be doing, then where does that leave Theistic Evolution Creationism? This cold be embarrassing when you look at all the posts on Uncommon Descent where theistic evolutionists have been mercilessly attacked.
Before I continue, I’d just like to point out something: the recent lively exchange of views between Intelligent Design advocates who have been blogging on Uncommon Descent on the subject of the neutral theory of evolution, has been carried out in a polite and cordial fashion, without even a trace of the name-calling, sarcasm and vulgarity that one so often finds at Websites run by outspoken atheists. That should tell you something.
I’d now like to address Professor Moran’s five questions, in turn.
1. Darwinism
1. Darwinism: If the Idiots have been misinformed about evolution, which they have, then who is responsible and why were they misled by so many of their leaders?
Professor Moran is assuming here that Intelligent Design advocates are more misinformed than most people, regarding what modern biologists believe about evolution. On this point, I think he is mistaken: nearly everyone who isn’t a biologist shares the same set of misconceptions.
A typical layperson’s view of evolution: E = NS acting on RV
In a recent post titled, Both wrong (13 February 2014), Professor PZ Myers referred to the view that “evolution is primarily a consequence of natural selection” as “a factually incorrect assertion.” Quite a few of his regular readers were sorely perplexed by this statement, and wrote in to say so:
Okay, so what am i missing? (Apart from a formal education in the biological sciences.)
I know (a little) about random mutations, the founder effect, & genetic drift. Aren’t they what natural selection acts upon? If so, it looks to me as though evolution is primarily a consequence of natural selection. (Dick the Damned)
How is evolution NOT a result of natural selection? Isn’t that exactly what Darwin taught? I am completely surprised and confused now. (dalehusband)
*Meekly raises hand*
I was under the (evidently mistaken) impression that, in nature, evolution is primarily driven by natural selection? (Sven)
I’m waiting for PZ to explain hisself here, but if he doesn’t do so soon I’m going to have to do it myself… and nobody wants that. (ChasCPeterson)
If certain lay Intelligent Design advocates such as myself, have (like most laypeople) been misinformed as to what modern biologists believe about evolution, it certainly isn’t because they were misled by leading figures in the Intelligent Design movement.
Natural selection dominates media and Internet coverage of evolution
One significant reason for the widespread confusion among laypeople is the fact that science bloggers write a lot more frequently about natural selection than about genetic drift – a point which was astutely made by commenter John Harshman, who wrote:
Well, I’m a bit surprised at the comments. Apparently Larry Moran was right, and most people have no idea about the prevalence of neutral evolution. But I can see why. Who writes popular books on the glories of drift? All the cool stuff — flight, big sharp teeth, fancy ornaments, tool use, etc. — is selection. All the science blogs are full of bizarre adaptations, but seldom a word about the boring, pointless bulk of fixations. Junk DNA just isn’t as much fun, even for many biologists, which is why so many are trying to kill it off.
The most vocal leading scientists who popularize evolution are neo-Darwinians
The other main reason why laypeople (including myself) have been misled regarding what evolutionary biologists currently believe about evolution, is that a small but vocal minority of biologists continue to espouse the neo-Darwinian view. The following quote by Richard Dawkins is typical of those scientists who fall into this camp:
There is one particular property of living things, however, that I want to single out as explicable only by Darwinian selection. This property is the one that has been the recurring topic of this book: adaptive complexity. (The Blind Watchmaker, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986, Chapter 11, “Doomed Rivals,” p. 288.)
In the book’s preface, Dawkins states that he wrote the book “to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence.”
Dawkins is not the only vocal defender of natural selection. Here’s a short passage, taken from a post titled James Shapiro goes after natural selection again (twice) on HuffPo (22 August 2012) by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, in which he roundly declares that modern evolutionary biologists regard natural selection as “the only game in town” when it comes to explaining adaptations, and criticizes biologist James Shapiro for thinking otherwise:
How on earth do cytogenetics or molecular genetics alone explain the transformation of fish into tetrapods, deerlike animals into whales, or account for cryptic coloration, mimicry, and adaptive behaviors? They can’t, for there has to be some process that winnows out the variation that arises. That process is natural selection…
I wouldn’t go after Shapiro except that he spews this anti-evolutionary nonsense at HuffPo, and naive readers might get the impression that biologists are beginning to doubt that natural selection is important. Well, as far as evolutionary biologists regard adaptations, it is: natural selection is the only game in town.
Yes, we now know of a whole host of new mechanisms to generate genetic variation, including symbiosis and the ingestion of DNA from distantly related species. But to produce adaptation, something has to winnow out the wheat from the chaff: those variants that reduce reproduction from those that enhance it. And that’s natural selection. There is no alternative, and Shapiro, despite his endless series of “blogs,” has never suggested one.
How I gradually came to realize that evolutionary biologists aren’t neo-Darwinians anymore
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Gradually, however, I came to realize that Coyne’s views were no longer typical of modern evolutionary biologists. I had previously written about the views of a few dissenting biologists back in 2012, in a post titled, Larry Morgan defends Paul Nelson! (December 11, 2012). But I still imagined them to be representing the views of a beleaguered minority of scientists in the field. It was only recently that I became aware that this “beleaguered minority” was actually a majority!
What prompted this startling realization was the publication of a couple of recent posts by prominent evolutionary biologists PZ Myers (The state of modern evolutionary theory may not be what you think it is, 14 February 2014) and Larry Moran (On the difference between Neutral Theory and random genetic drift, 15 February 2014). In his post, PZ Myers summed up the findings of science over the last few decades as follows:
First thing you have to know: the revolution is over. Neutral and nearly neutral theory won. The neutral theory states that most of the variation found in evolutionary lineages is a product of random genetic drift. Nearly neutral theory is an expansion of that idea that basically says that even slightly advantageous or deleterious mutations will escape selection — they’ll be overwhelmed by effects dependent on population size. This does not in any way imply that selection is unimportant, but only that most molecular differences will not be a product of adaptive, selective changes.
Professor Moran concurred:
What Neutral Theory tells us is that a huge number of mutations are neutral and there are far more neutral mutations fixed by random genetic drift that there are beneficial mutations fixed by natural selection. The conclusion is inescapable. Random genetic drift is, by far, the dominant mechanism of evolution.…
The revolution is over and strict Darwinism lost. We now know that random genetic drift is an important mechanism of evolution and there’s more to evolution than natural selection. Unfortunately, this blatantly obvious fact is not understood by the vast majority of people and teachers. There are even many scientists who don’t understand evolution.
There was more. Professors PZ Myers and Larry Moran also argued that a non-Darwinian mechanism could account for the origin of most complex structures in living things. In a post entitled, Complexity is not usually the product of selection (11 December 2012), PZ Myers forthrightly declared:
I think if selection were always the rule, then we’d never have evolved beyond prokaryotes — all that fancy stuff eukaryotes added just gets in the way of the one true business of evolution, reproduction…
The bottom line is that you cannot easily explain most increases in complexity with adaptationist rationales. You have to consider chance as far more important, and far more likely to produced elaborations…
Even in something as specific as the physiological function of a biochemical pathway, adaptation isn’t the complete answer, and evolution relies on neutral or nearly neutral precursor events to produce greater functional complexity.
Professor Larry Moran subsequently endorsed P.Z.Myers’ article, in a post of his own, entitled, On the Evolution of Complexity (11 December 2012), in which he wrote:
Can you go from some simple character to a more complex feature without invoking natural selection? Yes, you can. Complex features can evolve by nonadaptive means. Just think of our complex genome and read The Origins of Genome Architecture by Michael Lynch.
Want a more simple example? Read the latest post by PZ Myers: [αEP: Complexity is not usually the product of selection]1.
This is an important point. You can’t just assume, without question, that a complex trait must be an adaptation and must have arisen by natural selection. That applies to molecular complexes and also to complex behavior.
These posts, coupled with the two February 2014 posts by Professors Myers and Moran on the triumph of the neutral theory, made me decide that the time had come to stop going after neo-Darwinian evolution, as most biologists no longer accepted it anyway, and focus instead on the neutral theory of evolution. This is what I attempted to do in my first post on the neutral theory. My decision to focus on fixation rates turned out to be tactically unwise, and the factual errors that Professor Moran subsequently exposed in my post proved to be a valuable learning experience for me. But my intention – which was to shift the focus of attack away from neo-Darwinism and direct it at modern-day versions of evolution – was, I believe, quite right.
2. Social Darwinism
2. Social Darwinism: If evolutionary biologists really believe in Neutral Theory and random genetic drift then how can they be supporters of the evil consequences of nineteenth century Darwinism? What about all those posts where evolutionary biologists were compared to eugenicists, racists, and Nazis?
The Uncommon Descent posts on Social Darwinism highlighted the enormous harm wrought by three central ideas that were actively promulgated by nineteenth-century evolutionists: first, the denial of the human soul; second, the assertion that our every act (leaving aside random quantum fluctuations which cannot truly be called actions) is determined by circumstances beyond our control, which takes away our freedom of choice; and finally, the progressivist accounts of evolution that were widely propagated not only by Haeckel but also by Darwin himself, as I’ve documented in my post, Rewriting history: Can a Darwinist believe in the scala naturae? (Darwin did.) and Darwin, Kingsley, evolution and racism. (Good arguments for the existence of an immaterial human soul can be found here and here; see also here, here and here. For a refutation of arguments that the scientific evidence for determinism is so strong as to preclude the possibility of free will, see here and here; see also here, here and here.) The first two ideas debased people’s view of what it means to be human, causing many people to think of themselves as mere “meat machines” instead of individuals made in the image and likeness of God, their Creator; while the third idea lent a new legitimacy to scientific racism (which had first appeared back in the eighteenth century), as some races were thought to occupy a much higher place on the evolutionary ladder than others.
The first two ideas continue to poison people’s minds, and the neutral theory of evolution is just as imbued with them as neo-Darwinism is.
Professor Moran might point out that progressivist models of evolution are badly flawed, and that contemporary biologists unanimously reject racism. But he might do well to ponder Stephen Jay Gould’s dictum that human equality is a contingent fact of history. From a materialist standpoint, this is surely correct: were the Neandertals or Denisovans alive today, I doubt whether most evolutionary biologists would regard them as their moral equals, with the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we currently enjoy.
3. Common Descent
3. Common Descent: This is a biggy. If Sal Cordova and the evolutionary biologists are right about the sequence differences between humans and chimpanzees, then it must mean that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. There will be no room under the big tent for Young Earth Creationists.
Hold on a second, Professor Moran! First of all, lumping Sal Cordova in with “evolutionary biologists” is a bit of a joke, as Sal is a committed young-earth creationist. Second, Sal Cordova is well aware of the genetic similarities and differences between humans and chimpanzees, and some time ago, he wrote a carefully worded post (which Moran reviewed), in which he drew a distinction between physical ancestors and what he called “conceptual ancestors,” and went on to argue that extensive physical similarities between two species of organisms did not mean that they were related. Third, Sal has recently written a post titled, Larry almost got it right, but he just can’t turn the corner (17 April 2014), in which he elucidates his views on the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees, and on the neutral theory of evolution.
For my part, I have made no secret of my belief in the common descent of organisms. But if someone in the Intelligent Design movement thinks they can explain the genetic similarities and differences between humans and chimps without postulating a common ancestor for these two primates, then all I can say is: good luck to them. Why is that? Because in the ultimate scheme of things, I don’t see the question of whether we’re related to chimps as a very important one. Nothing really hangs on it, in terms of the way we live our lives. At the very most, the discovery might bring limited medical benefits, which Professor Jerry Coyne summarizes in a post titled, Of what value is evolutionary biology in medicine? (3 April 2009).
Far more important, however, than the historical question of whether we share a common ancestor with the chimp is the more fundamental philosophical question: are the genetic differences between humans and chimps at least partly the result of an act of intelligent design, or are they entirely caused by unguided processes? In a future post, I hope to outline my reasons for believing that intelligent design is the best explanation for some of the major differences between humans and other primates.
In short: the Intelligent Design “big tent” remains standing. In order to see why it’s still standing, Professor Moran just needs to get his philosophical priorities straight.
4. Junk DNA
4. Junk DNA: If Cordova is right then most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral. This must mean that most of our genome is junk. Oops! That won’t sit well with many creationists.
Sal Cordova has already responded to Professor Moran’s argument in the post I mentioned above. I’d like to make a few comments of my own.
It appears to me that Professor Moran’s reasoning is faulty on two counts. First, the fact that “most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral” doesn’t imply that the sections of the human genome in which they occur serve no function. It simply means that the (mostly neutral) changes taking place in that section of the genome will neither help nor harm the organism. By itself, that tells us nothing about what percentage of the genome is junk.
Second, Professor Moran is committing a verbal sleight-of-hand here: he is equating “neutral” with “junk.” As Professor Moran himself writes: “The correct definition of ‘junk’ is DNA that has no known function.” Note the wording here: “no known function.” A neutral mutation, on the other hand, is simply one that does not affect an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. That doesn’t mean the mutation has no function; it simply means that it has no present function. A neutral mutation that might not affect an organism’s ability to reproduce, but it could still conceivably have an impact (positive or negative) on the fertility of the organism’s distant descendants. Or again, the mutation might (for all we know) incorporate information that is of no use to the particular species of organism in which it occurs, but which eventually turns out to be useful to that species’ evolutionary descendants. Of course, one would want to see some experimental evidence for these scenarios. The reason why I’m mentioning them is simply to show that Professor Moran’s equation of “neutral” with “junk” is conceptually careless.
Junk DNA – how much is there?
I’d like to preface my remarks by saying that I have no expertise whatsoever in genetics, and my knowledge of junk DNA is very limited. However, I’ve watched Professor PZ Myers’ video on junk DNA, and I’ve also skimmed Professor Moran’s lengthy review of Dr. Jonathan Wells’ book, The Myth of Junk DNA (see here for some more positive reviews and here for a list of news updates on junk DNA, over at Evolution News and Views). Suffice it to say that when a Professor of Medical Genetics writes, “I strongly recommend The Myth of Junk DNA, a lucid account of the evidence that junk DNA has many diverse biological functions,” and when a Professor of Microbial Genetics and Cell Biology adds that “Jonathan Wells has clearly done his homework,” you know the book can’t be as awful as Professor Moran claims it is. A short summary of Dr. Wells’ views on junk DNA can be found in his online article, Not Junk After All: Non-Protein-Coding DNA Carries Extensive Biological Information.
I would also recommend reading Dr. Richard Sternberg’s article, Matheson’s Intron Fairy Tale, Professor Moran’s reply, Sternberg’s counter-reply, Moran’s second response to Sternberg, and the follow-up article by Dr. Jonathan Wells, titled, The Fact-Free “Science” of Matheson, Hunt and Moran: Ridicule Instead of Reason, Authority Instead of Evidence. The upshot of this discussion is that of the number of human introns (non-protein coding parts of genes) that undergo alternative splicing (which suggests that they have a biological function) is at least 45,000, out of 190,000 introns in the human genome – which is far more than the figure of up to 1,000 that was originally estimated by Matheson, but which may still represent less than 30% of all introns. In short: the question of junk DNA remains open.
Of more recent interest is the September 2012 announcement by the leader of the ENCODE team that 80 percent of the genome has a “biochemical function,” meaning that “It’s not junk.” (Birney has blogged about his announcement here and here. In a review article for Nature, titled, Fighting abut ENCODE and junk (Nature News blog, 6 September 2012), science correspondent Brendan Maher offers a cooler assessment:
…[P]erhaps the main conclusion should have been that 20% of the genome in some situation can directly influence gene expression and phenotype of at least one human cell type. It’s a far cry from 80%, but a substantial increase from 1%.
Science writer Ed Yong (who originally broke news of ENCODE’s discovery), summarizes the ongoing controversy in an addendum to his report in Discover magazine (5 September 2012; update 7 September 2012):
Birney was right about the scepticism. [T. Ryan] Gregory [from Guelph University] says, “80 percent is the figure only if your definition is so loose as to be all but meaningless.” Larry Moran from the University of Toronto adds, “Functional” simply means a little bit of DNA that’s been identified in an assay of some sort or another. That’s a remarkably silly definition of function and if you’re using it to discount junk DNA it’s downright disingenuous.”…
Gregory asks why, if ENCODE is right and our genome is full of functional elements, does an onion have around five times as much non-coding DNA as we do? Or why pufferfishes can get by with just a tenth as much? Birney says the onion test is silly. While many genomes have a tight grip upon their repetitive jumping DNA, many plants seem to have relaxed that control. Consequently, their genomes have bloated in size (bolstered by the occasional mass doubling)… Conversely, the pufferfish has maintained an incredibly tight rein upon its jumping sequences. “Its genome management is pretty much perfect,” says Birney. Hence: the smaller genome.
But Gregory thinks that these answers are a dodge. “I would still like Birney to answer the question. How is it that humans “need” 100% of their non-coding DNA, but a pufferfish does fine with 1/10 as much [and] a salamander has at least 4 times as much?”
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Regarding the onion test, readers might be interested in having a look at Professor Larry Moran’s post in response to a post by Jonathan M., and Jonathan M.’s subsequent reply to Moran, titled, Why the “Onion Test” Fails as an Argument for “Junk DNA” (2 November 2011). Professor Moran’s brief response is here.
Professor Moran, who still thinks that 90% of our DNA is junk, also makes the telling point that “almost 50% of our genome is littered with dead transposons and bits of transposons,” which one would not expect to have a function. Yet even he acknowledges that “there are some other scientists who think that all of the human genome is functional.”
In light of the above-mentioned uncertainties, I think a prudent estimate of the percentage of junk DNA in the human genome would be: somewhere around 50%. It could be quite a bit more … or it could be a lot less.
Junk DNA – how much could the Intelligent Design movement live with?
Suppose that the “50% junk” figure is true. Could the Intelligent Design movement live with that? Personally, I don’t see why not. Let’s try a little thought experiment. Would it bother you if 1% of our genome turned out to be junk? I don’t imagine so. All right. What about 10%? That still leaves 90% that is functional, so I can’t see why it would matter either. Well, what about 50%? Even if 50% of our DNA were junk, you could still say that half of the human genome is there for a reason, and that the remaining half, while non-functional, isn’t harming us. That doesn’t sound so bad to me. What’s the problem?
Professor PZ Myers, in a talk given to Skepticon IV on November 19-20, 2011, quotes [at 4:56] a well-known passage from the writings of Professor William Dembski on junk DNA:
[Intelligent] design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster enquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function.
(“Science and Religion” in First Things, 17 March 2009.)
As far as I can tell, all that follows from the hypothesis of Intelligent Design is that any organisms that were designed de novo, or from scratch, should be free of junk DNA. But even if the Intelligent Designer subsequently manipulated the DNA of these organisms’ descendants, to make other kinds of organisms, I see no reason to suppose that He would have also “wiped the slate clean” at the same time, and erased all traces of the junk DNA that had accumulated in that organism over the course of time. Of course, a Designer might do that, as an act of courtesy; but who is to say that He must? Why not simply let the junk stay there, if it’s not harming the organism and if it’s not likely to harm its descendants? What do readers think?
Dr. Richard Sternberg on letting God be God
In a 2008 article titled, How My Views on Evolution Evolved, Dr. Richard Sternberg writes:
I cannot overemphasize the number of times I have listened to evolutionary biologists theologize on the basis of some gnosis they have concerning divine actions. One case stands out in particular. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH, showed a small group that included me a presumably “dead gene,” a pseudogene. Now his line of argumentation went something like this:
A. We know this pseudogene has no function, and therefore no purpose.
B. We know also that God would not make functionless, purposeless objects.
Therefore God had no role in the creation of the pseudogene – it was a random event.
Based on my conversations with Collins, it became apparent to me that his god is a strict nineteenth-century utilitarian who would, if he deigned to create, manufacture only highly efficient and minimalist entities. His deity would only provide evidence of his handiwork by means of Bauhaus-like architectures, as Baroque or Rococo designs would be, well, excessive and wasteful. A purposefully, intelligently designed cell would, judging from his points, resemble ever so much Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. And since what we so often observe are over-the-top excrescences and strings of DNA that just don’t seem to have a purpose – bad, sloppy design according to Collins’ way of thinking – we know, we know – as a scientific fact, no less – that the genome is randomly cobbled together in length and breadth and all the way up and down.
It seems to me that Dr. Sternberg has a valid point here. It is presumptuous for us to assume that God would not allow any junk in the human genome. That being the case, we should be wary of predicting the occurrence of little or no junk DNA in the genome.
I’d now like to address Professor Larry Moran’s final point.
5. Theistic Evolution
5. Theistic Evolution: There’s only one group that’s more evil than materialistic scientists and that’s theistic evolutionists. They are traitors. But if the IDiots actually were to accept the fundamental concepts of evolution, as Sal Cordova and Vincent Torley seem to be doing, then where does that leave Theistic Evolution Creationism? This cold be embarrassing when you look at all the posts on Uncommon Descent where theistic evolutionists have been mercilessly attacked.
The term “Intelligent Design proponent” could be understood in a very broad sense, as including anyone who believes that the cosmos (or at the very least, some feature of it) was designed by an Intelligent Being. On this broad definition (used by Professor Michael Behe below), theistic evolutionists already qualify as Intelligent Design advocates.
However there are two major differences separating the ID and theistic evolution camps. As regards science, the critical question that separates Intelligent Design proponents from theistic evolutionists is not whether evolution occurred, nor even whether evolution (if it occurred) was guided by God, but rather, whether the existence of an Intelligent Being guiding evolution is scientifically detectable. Modern-day theistic evolutionists say no; Intelligent Design advocates say yes.
In addition, theistic evolutionists and ID advocates are also divided on a theological level. In a 2007 post titled, Kenneth R. Miller and the Problem of Evil, Part 2 (25 October 2007), Intelligent Design advocate Professor Michael Behe gives a very clear exposition of the key issues that separate him from Catholic biochemist Kenneth Miller, who like Behe accepts common descent but rejects Intelligent Design. Although he dislikes the label, Miller could fairly be described as a theistic evolutionist. At the end of Part 1 (October 24, 2007) of his series of posts, Behe had written:
So let me emphasize: Kenneth Miller is an intelligent design proponent. He believes that the laws of the universe were purposely set up to permit life to develop. Miller thinks that, to accomplish the goal of life, the universe had to be designed to the depth of its fundamental physical constants. I agree with him as far as he goes, but, on the other hand, as I write in The Edge of Evolution, I think design extends further into the universe, past physical constants, past anthropic coincidences, and well into biology. Yet, with respect to design, he and I differ only on degree, not on principle.
In Part 2, Behe continues:
Let me emphasize the last point of my previous post: Miller and I are only quibbling over the extent of design in the universe. The fact of design, the principle of design, we agree on.
Now, let’s look a little closer at where Ken Miller draws the limits of design (the edge of evolution, one might say). Although they are clearly necessary, is there reason to suppose that the bare laws and constants of the universe — even if properly tuned — are sufficient to assure life occurs in our universe, as Miller supposes? The answer is no — many other features than just the bare laws of the universe have to be gotten right. I discuss this at considerable length in the last chapter of the book. But don’t just take my word for it. The prominent bioinformatician Eugene Koonin recently published a paper entitled “The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life”, (Biol Direct., 2007, 2:15). The gist of the paper is that — even given fine tuned laws and constants — the origin of life in our universe is so unlikely, that the non-theist Koonin invokes an infinite multiverse to assure that life happens somewhere.
…So suppose Koonin is right that fine tuning the laws of the universe is far from sufficient to assure life. In that case, switching to Miller’s scenario, God would have set up a generic universe whose laws and constants were necessary for life, but not sufficient. Since many other conditions are required for life, Miller’s God likely made a fine tuned universe for naught. It would likely be a finely tuned universe that’s nonetheless barren of life.
In The Edge of Evolution I agree with Miller (and other “theistic evolutionists”) that the laws and constants of our universe are fine tuned, but argue that “fine-tuning” extends much more deeply into nature than previously supposed, and actually extends into life itself, at least down to the level of vertebrate class. I cleverly call this view “extended fine-tuning.” In the book I argue that any person who accepts a theistic evolutionary view, such as Miller does, should have no trouble in principle with the extended fine tuning view. It is, after all, just a matter of degree. In either case the designer fine tuned enough details of our universe to get intelligent life to arise.
In Part 3 of his series, Professor Behe goes on to address the real reason that he thinks theistic evolutionists balk at Intelligent Design: since some organisms that harm human beings (e.g. the malaria parasite) appear to have been designed according to the criteria used by the ID movement, that would appear to imply that the Designer is malevolent. In other words, the issue dividing the two camps, as Behe sees it, is a theological one. Behe’s thoughtful reply is well worth reading. After adducing supporting quotations, Behe argues that Kenneth Miller and Francisco Ayala “embrace Darwinism, at least in large part, for theological reasons”: if God is not involved in the “nuts-and-bolts” of designing Nature, then He cannot be held responsible for its dangerous by-products (such as mosquitoes). Behe doesn’t buy this argument: “It seems to me that designing a poor Darwinian process that inevitably spins off natural evils leaves One as vulnerable to being sued for incompetence as directly designing them as finished products.” He goes on to say that “as a scientist, one is obliged to look at the evidence of nature dispassionately and nonjudgmentally.” Behe adds that for all we know, parasites and viruses may “actually play positive roles in the economy of biology, of which we are in large part unaware,” in which case the harm they cause to humans is an unintended side-effect. Finally, he points out that “[e]ven if God purposely designed the malarial parasite, He may not have decreed that a particular infected mosquito would bite a particular person on a particular day.”
Behe’s conclusion is worth quoting in full:
As I wrote in The Edge of Evolution, it seems to me that our world was designed to be a a dangerous living stage, one that’s set up for improvisational theater. It allows for real suffering, real pleasure, real pain, real joy. It allows for real freedom and real consequences. But if the world were not designed in sufficient detail, then no intelligent life would be around to act on the stage.