Various blogs<\/a> have been drawing attention to this topic. Adaptive Complexity<\/a> rightly expresses appreciation for Carroll\u2019s willingness to demonstrate to a wider audience the weakness of the Intelligent Design position, weaknesses that are much more readily visible to experts than to laypeople, especially ones inclined to sympathize with ID for religious reasons. ID proponents<\/a> have also been quick to respond, providing selective sympathetic quotes from Behe (since they are experts at quote mining) without undermining in any way the substance of Carroll\u2019s critique.<\/p>\n Carroll is not alone in showing that Michael Behe is not doing first-rate science<\/a>, to say the least. Ken Miller<\/a> (who clearly is<\/em> a top-notch biologist) has done so more than once. I will not pretend I can add to the scientific critique of Behe. But I do think I understand why<\/em> he is so persistent in advocating his viewpoint.<\/p>\n History was once expected to provide proof of the claims of the Christian faith. Historical criticism ended up doing the opposite, showing that the Bible is at the very least not inerrantly factual, and proving unable to demonstrate that miracles happen. It is not surprising that many have turned to science<\/em> to provide such an evidentiary basis where historical study cannot. At least science can investigate modern claims to miraculous healing, weeping statues, and \u2013 some hope \u2013 miraculous creation. The most fundamental problem in the latter case, however, is that it seems far too soon to declare the avenues of possible scientific explanation exhausted. And until they are, the \u201cmust have been God, then\u201d argument seems premature. But even more fundamentally, it seems misguided (as Sean Carroll said at lunch) to bet one\u2019s faith on science\u2019s inability to explain something. It has been done before many times, and that is why such bets nowadays are considered long shots.<\/p>\n Figuring out what science, history and the Bible can and cannot do is of prime importance if there is to be an intelligent treatment of these subjects. I thus concur with a recent blog entry<\/a> that emphasizes this point by talking about one of the many ways the Bible cannot be trusted. For instance, it is not intended for use as a floatation device. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my syllabi makes the same point<\/a>.<\/p>\n I had the privilege of having lunch today with a couple of my colleagues and Sean B. Carroll, who is doing some of the most interesting work at the cutting edge of biology, more specifically in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (or evo devo for short). I had students read a significant number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-3501831374957287145?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")