I want to respond to some of Jim's comments. While in general I am not
very impressed by the appeal to "the journals" for similar reasons to what
has been given by Russ in previous messages on this thread, Mike Behe has
upped the ante a bit by his claim that there was nothing in "the journals"
that explained the origin of "irreducibly complex" systems. At the same
time, I am amused by Jim's appeal to "the journals" on this issue, when
appeals to "the journals" in other circumstances are considered invalid
because of a "priesthood" mentality or because "the only people who get
published in the journals have been professionally indoctrinated into
Darwinism". Well, my amusement is just a side issue here, not the gist of
this message.
In my opinion, Mike Behe is dead-wrong about the state of the literature.
As the famous apologetic goes--that Christ is either a liar, a lunatic, or
Lord--Mike Behe is either a liar or a lunatic (I don't think we need to
consider him Lord). I know Mike Behe and he is a godly man, full of
integrity, so I don't think that he is a liar. So that leaves lunatic.
Now by lunatic, of course, I'm saying that Mike Behe is wild-eyed,
irrational crazy man, but rather someone who has deluded himself into
believing that he is right when he is really wrong. The sad thing is that
his delusion has captured such otherwise clear thinkers as Philip Johnson,
Jim Bell, and the editors of the evangelical press.
In one sense, Behe's claim that the professional literature contains not
even attempts to explain irreducibly complex is self-refuting. He claims
that there is nothing in the literature on this subject, but then he
devotes several pages in each chapter refuting what is in the literature.
Hmm... His original claim must be wrong. (More on why he thinks what is
in the literature doesn't count later.) Also, he does admit that there are
hundreds of sequence comparison papers. Well, guess what? Nearly all of
the discussion of mechanisms of the origin of these complex systems is in
the context of sequence comparison papers! This was clearly shown at the
Behe, Dennett, Haig debate in Haig's very cogent summary of the evolution
of the complement system DERIVED FROM THE LITERATURE! (Remember, Haig is
no biochemist or immunologist--this was not his area of research--but he
did his homework and found scores of papers in the literature to support
his story. He was incensed when Behe claimed that the whole story came
from one four page review article. Russ Doolittle was equally incensed at
Behe's review of his work on the blood clotting system (see
http://www-polisci.mit.edu/bostonreview/br22.1/doolittle.html). I believe
that these critics are correct--Mike has mis-represented and mis-used the
literature. There is a massive literature on this stuff--so much so that
ther is a significant review literature that accompanies it.
Whoa! What's the problem then? The problem has to do with Behe's, Bell's,
and others' selectivity. The literature that all the Behe critics point to
doesn't count in their view. It's not detailed enough--it's not testable
enough--etc. Jim, there is plenty in the literature to support the Robison
t.o. piece. I disagree with your and Mike's assessment that it's not
detailed enough. But this is where the burden of proof falls on Mike.
Behe is making some dramatic and absolute claims that such and such could
not have happened. The fact of the matter is that there is plenty of
suggestion FROM THE LITERATURE that such and such did happen. You say
"Show me more", "Give me more detail", etc. I have sympathy with Russ who
suggested that you appear to be demanding a time machine. It's going to
take a lot more than Mike Behe saying "it's not plausible TO ME" to
overturn the mass of very suggestive data that has been accumulated so far.
As to the demand of testability, I have the following observation. No one
seems to dispute the globin story that many critics including myself have
reviewed. Mike Behe himself accepts that story. Yet the data for this
story are simply sequence comparisons, evidence of gene duplications,
comparative biochemistry--exactly the same data that we are all using to
provide plausible scenarios for the evolution of the systms that Mike
describes. What's going on here? Why the double standard? No doubt, we
know a lot more about the globin evolution than about ciliar evolution.
But this raises the critical observation. We don't know as many details
about these other systems because the comparative work has not been done.
Mike is simply pointing this out. But we all knew this already. These are
very interesting questions and we've have only the broadest sketch outlines
of the answers. So let's get to work! As I have stated in my review--the
critical comparative work for some of these systems, such as cilia and
transports must be done by doing the comparative genetics and biochemistry
on organisms that no one is interested in studying (at least for useful
medical applications), i.e. the eukaryotic phyla where there is diversity
in these systems. If all the yeast, drosophila, mouse, human systems share
all of these features, then nothing can be learned about a possible origin
pathway by studying them--other than saying that they arose prior to the
divergence of these--which is what everyone believes anyway. But to
conclude from the absence of this comparative work that this could not have
happened by some evolutionary mechanism--no way, unless you want to have
some reason for not wanting to accept evolution in the first place
(buttress by an apparent mastery of technical details and an acquaintance
with the professional literature). And that's how the evangelical press is
reacting to this book--Aha! Finally we have a reason to not accept
evolution that's derived from other than Scientific Creationist arguments.
When is Christianity Today and World going to publish a list of the
technical reviews that argue against Behe's book so that the Christian
public isn't duped into thinking that the scientific community has been
caught wearing the emporer's new clothes.
So the appeal to complexity and even irreducible complexity does not
impress me. The very systems that Mike discusses evidence the tell-tale
signs of exaptation (or pre-adaptation) in that all of the components are
structurally and functionally similar to components utilized in other
systems. So, Jim, if you want the relevant literature (in *refereed
journals*), you can find the tip of the iceberg cited in *Darwin's Black
Box*. Dig a little deeper and apply reasonable standards of plausibility
and you will see that Mike's claim about the literature is just plain wrong
and that nearly every biochemist knows it.
TG
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 49546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt
*This mission critical message was written on a Macintosh with Eudora Pro*
Special messages for Macintosh naysayers:
http://www.macworld.com/pages/july.96/Column.2204.html
http://www.macworld.com/pages/june.97/Column.3700.html