Letters to the Editor
Naecos
Published Letters: 46 Editor's Choice: 4
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Review of "Darwin's Black Box" and the Christian right...
[Read the article: Survival of the unfittest]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" has been recommended in this forum - please also refer to Kenneth Miller's review of Behe's book at http://biomed.brown.edu/Faculty/M/Miller/Behe.html . An interesting and pertinent excerpt from the review:
'As the book draws to a conclusion, Behe attempts to develop the idea of intelligent design into a testable, scientific hypothesis. This is a lofty goal, but this is also where his argument collapses. Scientific ideas must be formulated in terms that make them testable. Indeed, Darwin himself proposed several ways in which his theory might be tested and disproved. And one of these ways - the contention that organisms contain biochemical parts that could not have been produced by Darwinian means - is the basis of Behe's criticisms of evolution. Being a trained experimental scientist, one would have expected that Behe would have seen the need to do likewise. Unfortunately, he did not.
"Let's suppose, for example, that a fellow scientist were to take Behe's challenge to evolution seriously, and attempted to show how a specific biochemical system composed of multiple parts could have evolved. A hypothesis for design, formulated in genuinely scientific terms, must be disprovable, and this is exactly the kind of evidence that might disprove it. Incredibly, Behe has intentionally insulated "intelligent design" from this and any other scientific test. How has he done this? In the penultimate chapter of his text, he lists some of the driving forces associated with evolutionary change, including natural selection, genetic drift, founder effects, gene flow, meiotic drive, and transposition (9). Behe states that all of these agents can effect change in biological systems, and admits that they may account completely for at least some of the biochemical features of a living cell. So, if our colleague were to show how these forces could have produced, say, the bacterial flagellum, would he be entitled to say: "I have disproved design?" Not at all, according to Behe. "The production of some biological improvements by mutation and natural selection - by evolution - is quite compatible with intelligent design theory." (10) In other words, any evidence for the evolution of complexity is dismissed in advance as being irrelevant to the problem of design. "Design" exists only when and where evolution cannot explain it!
This sterile definition of design means that Behe is free to ignore any conceivable evidence for the evolution of any biochemical system. Such an idea, intentionally placed outside the realm of testability, is not science, whatever the pretensions of its advocates.'
I think the review effectively skewers ID...
I think the debate over ID is really part of a bigger push by the christian right to, well, shove their ideas about God down the rest of society's collective throat. Witness Bush's "Faith-based initiative" - funneling federal money to religious groups performing social work. (while cutting secular programs...) Please see Chris Hedge's essay "THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM" at http://www.theocracywatch.org/chris_hedges_nov24_04.htm
The Dover outcome supports real science and is a powerful blow against right-wing christianity!
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If all else fails...
[Read the article: Survival of the unfittest]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey Poco - yep, if all else fails, threaten unbelievers (or, more accurately, folks who don't share your beliefs... As a novice at a Benedictine monastery, my brother used to proudly sport his Darwin tee-shirt...) with damnation. If a carrot won't work...
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Torture
[Read the article: More than a "few rotten apples"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So... A soldier - our nation's soldier, tortured a prisoner to death. Imagine youself in such a situation, savagely beaten, bound, and shoved into a sleeping bag head first. Now someone sits on your chest. You try to breath but you can't. What is it like to suffocate to death? Your murderer? He gets confined to base for 2 months. Your murder also costs him 6000 dollars. Oh yeah, there is a letter of reprimand in his record now. That's it. And his superiors? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What about the folks who beat you? U.S. civilians? CIA? Who the hell knows... What did Bush say? "We do not torture." Bullshit. We absolutely do torture. Our military is out of control. Our government is out of control. I am sick and ashamed of our country...