I just wanted to make anyone out there aware of this video on Youtube. Ken Miller had already told many of those little stories in his talk at Case Western and managed to thoroughly trounce all of Behe’s typical arguments. It was fun to see them acted out on last night’s NOVA special. If anyone has an account on CFI please feel free to post the video link under to the Behe interview discussion.

It’s encouraging to see that there are some very intelligent religious scientists out there who won’t stand for this ridiculous ID movement.

I was also struck by his rather extreme lack of humility. He gave me the impression that he reveled in the attention his notoriety has given him. I think I would have liked him better if he was a selfless ideologue.

At least he mentions William Paley, a natural theologian who was pro-ID and was taken seriously, back in, uh, 1802? Way to back up your hypothesis by pointing to opinions from 200 years ago, Dr. Behe.

I told you he was archiac and I haven’t even listened to the podcast. I’m not sure if I’m going to bother listening after hearing him on PBS.

~12.30

Behe Claim: After Denton’s 1985 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, he started to have doubts about evolution. As did Philip Johnson. The ID movement was sorta started by Philip Johnson and other like-minded thinkers in the early 1990s, and they first wanted to talk about ID to educated laypeople, not public school children or anything.

Contrary Facts: Of Pandas and People, a public school textbook published in 1987, was one of the first books to reference intelligent design, by those exact words. Philip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial from 1991 references Of Pandas and People.

Truth?: ID was already being pushed in the public school system, and then the people who eventually self-collected themselves into the Discovery Institute took the idea of ID and tried to make it more scientifically appetizing.

21.10

At least he mentions William Paley, a natural theologian who was pro-ID and was taken seriously, back in, uh, 1802? Way to back up your hypothesis by pointing to opinions from 200 years ago, Dr. Behe.

33.30-34.20

Wow, watch as Michael Behe jumps the shark by trying to say that the damage that (in his opinion) intelligently designed malaria causes to people is not inconsistent with a benevolent God and ends up basically saying “God works in mysterious ways”.

DJ asks something along the lines of “ID proponents didnt go from being Christian to supporting ID?”

Behe says “Well, many actually didn’t, I didn’t, and a couple guys I know pretty well, Bill Dembski, Johnathan Wells, didn’t either”

Actual quotes from William Dembski:

“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory”

“Any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient. … The conceptual soundness of a scientific theory cannot be maintained apart from Christ.”

“Intelligent Design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. … The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. … And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.”

And as far as Johnathan Wells, the whole reason he went to school to get a PhD in biology was because Sun-Myung Moon (basically) told him to, or, in his words, “Father chose me”.

Behe has another 32 minutes to be dishonest, let’s see what else he has…

Is there an argument to be made that they shouldn’t be giving Behe any more publicity?

He is an intellectual minnow, let alone when you compare him to DJ’s other guests.

Behe gave me the same chuckle, because his “science” sounded much similar.