Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Beheis an American biochemist, author, and intelligent designadvocate. He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known for his argument for his stance on irreducible complexity, which argues that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
support
are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory.
issue nature statements
It's the nature of bureaucracy, I think, to issue statements like this.
intelligent discovery cells
The result of [the] cumulative efforts to investigate the cell to investigate life at the molecular level is a loud, clear, piercing cry of 'design!' The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun.
natural select function
Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on.
serendipity luck mutation
In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.
eerie focus silence
If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines the basis of life developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life's foundation has paralyzed science's attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism's universal reach.
profound levels scientist
In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.... Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.
numbers increase criteria
As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.
numbers example protein
As can be seen even by this limited number of examples proteins carry out amazingly diverse functions.
intelligent opposites design
The first point one has to get straight in discussions like this, is that ID is not the opposite of evolution. Rather, it is the opposite of Darwinism, which says life evolved by an utterly unguided, undirected mechanism. If god directed the process of evolution, or rigged the universe to produce complex life, then that is not Darwinism - it is intelligent design.
evolution theory
The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues.
american-scientist began beginning distant event expanding extremely fact loaded people singular small suggested time
This fact immediately suggested a singular event - that at some time in the distant past the universe began expanding from an extremely small size. To many people this inference was loaded with overtones of a supernatural event - the creation, the beginning of the universe.
american-scientist basic causes cease complex composed contribute parts removal several system
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
account american-scientist comparison complex sequence simply systems
But sequence comparisons simply can't account for the development of complex biochemical systems any more than Darwin's comparison of simple and complex eyes told him how vision worked.