[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Eric Anderson, and today on our show, I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Michael Behe, author of the newly released book A Mousetrap for Darwin. Dr. Behee is a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's center for Science Culture and a professor in the department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University. He received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, and while he has published dozens of professional papers, he is best known for his previous books, Darwin's Black Box, the Edge of Evolution, and Darwin Devolves. His books have been reviewed by the New York Times, Nature, Philosophy of science, and numerous other venues. Welcome, Mike.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Thanks, Eric. It's great to be with you.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: As we begin. I know many listeners are already aware of this and you'd probably prefer just to dive into the science rather than hearing some praise, but I think it would be remiss if I didn't mention that your first book in 1996, Darwin's Black Box, was an absolute watershed in the debate over evolution and intelligent design. This book caused a stir that continues to this day and was named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century, which is just an astounding achievement. It's hard to overstate the impact this book has had on the debate generally and on so many people individually. Mike, at the risk of being a little personal, I'll tell you that Darwin's black box was the key book that got me interested in intelligent design many years ago and is still one of the primary resources I recommend to people who want to learn more about evolution and intelligent design. So personally and on behalf of many, many others, thank you for all you've done and all you continue to do to share this important message.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Aw, shocks you make me blush.
Yeah. Okay. Well, from my point of view, the fascinating thing is that this is so clear and so obvious and doesn't take much to see it.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Well, it's been great to have you being willing to put yourself out there, so to speak, and to take some of the criticism that we're going to talk about a little bit today and that you talk about in this new book. So let's jump into the new book. This is quite an impressive Tome, clocking in at over 500 pages. I'm reading now from the book description behues that much recent evidence suggests that blind evolution cannot build the complex machinery essential to life. What can be he's money is on intelligent design and he says the proof that he's right is the sheer vacuity of the attacks leveled against him, many offered by undeniably brilliant scientists. Mike, tell us how this book came together. What was the impetus?
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Well, a few years ago, Steve Meyer of the Discovery Institute suggested that I gather together a lot of the pieces that I'd written over the past couple decades, and that sounded like a big job to me, so I never actually did it. But then when my newer book, Darwin Devolves, came out last year, the review of the book in science, the journal Science, said that I had never responded to a number of rebuttals to my previous books. And that made me bad because I had responded numerous times and it seemed that they just hadn't read those or hadn't bothered to look them up. And so then I thought that Steve Meyer was a very wise man, and I went and gathered together everything, and it turned out to be a whole lot more than even I had thought I'd done.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: That's excellent. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure to read this book. In addition to being a biochemist, you're obviously a very gifted author with the ability to explain technical concepts to non specialists in writing. That's just very clear and enjoyable. I found myself laughing out loud at many of the delightful turns of phrase that you use in your prose and in terms of the content. This book, for me, brought back a lot of reminders of the many excellent arguments you've made over the years. And on that basis alone, I can absolutely recommend this book. It's very worthwhile. But I want to emphasize for our listeners, because there are probably a lot of listeners like me who've been following this debate for years, and we kind of think, gee, I've read everything there is on the subject. I found that there's actually a fair amount of new material in this book, at least in terms of what's been available before, including some of your responses and letters to editors and so forth that weren't previously published. So no matter how much any listener might think they've already read, this volume provides many wonderful new nuggets.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. A number of the replies were specialized and did not appear in easily accessible places. So, yeah, this does bring together some new pieces, new concepts, new points and so on. So I was going through it last night and, hey, I had forgotten some of those points.
Fun for me to read, too.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I find that occasionally I go back and read something, I'm like, hey, that was a great point I made.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: I wish I'd said that.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Yes, definitely an impressive volume. I should add that in addition to allowing you to set the record straight, so to speak, and show how you've regularly and fully responded to your critics over the years, this book is just a fantastic long term resource for anybody who's interested in these topics, and a guide, I would say, for how to respond to the criticisms that come up. So for anybody who's interested in the topics you cover, like irreducible complexity, the failure of the darwinian paradigm, the limits of the evolutionary process, the way the neodarwinian mechanism is actually a deevolutionary process instead of the creative process it's touted to be, all of these topics is just a great resource for anybody to have on their shelf going forward.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't have to reinvent the wheel then. So anybody who gets into discussions with their brother in law or family members or some group or other, and they bring up objections to ID, you should realize that they've been dealt with before, and the ODs are extremely high that they will be in the book.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Well, let's go ahead and jump into the book. Last week on our podcast, we had you do a reading of the book's introduction, which I definitely encourage our audience to check out. Thanks so much for doing that.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: And in that introduction and in part one of the book, which is what I want to focus on today, there are a few key issues that jumped out at me that I wanted to ask you about today.
First, you mentioned that among professionals in the field, there's a growing recognition that darwinian evolution is not living up to the task. As University of Chicago biochemist James Shapiro said years ago, there are no detailed darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. That's a pretty provocative admission.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. And it remains true. Decades after Jim Shapiro wrote that. I'd like to give the example that about five or so years ago in the journal Nature, they published two opposing letters by two big groups of scientists, and the article was titled, does evolution need a rethink? And one group supported Darwinism and the other one said, yes, it is time for rethink that Darwinism doesn't really cut it so unlike what the public is led to believe.
Professional scientists are actually kind of searching for something, right?
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It seems the public narrative is very different. I must have clicked on something a while back in my Google Analytics that picked up on. But I get news stories almost every single day in my feed about how this or that proves evolution or how such and such an observation finally vindicates Darwin's theory. So the public narrative is very much know along the lines of touting Darwin.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah. It gives you a real appreciation for the sociology of the discussion of ideas. That been a long time since scientists said out loud for each other that Darwin's theory explains it all. But in popular press and newspapers and so on, and whenever the public also has to be kept in place, that is, if know, raising some objections, then everybody reverts to Darwin's theory.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Somebody may be writing a book that becomes very, well, I got.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Can't have that. Can't have that.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So another issue that's evident from this book that you wrote is that so many of the critics of intelligent design simply don't, or perhaps I might even say won't understand what intelligent design is. You've been accused of arguing from ignorance, of having a lack of imagination, of being religiously motivated, of failing to explain everything in biology and so on. Maybe you could talk us through a few of the ways that opponents have misunderstood or misinterpreted the concept of intelligent.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of something that Philip Johnson said, the author of Darwin on trial, who died recently, he said, there's a powerful will to misunderstand these arguments because otherwise you'd have to deal with them. Some common objections are that it's an argument from ignorance, kind of a God of the gaps argument that, hey, we don't know how this thing happens, we don't know how evolution happens, so God must have done it. And that's silly. Nobody says that. Certainly I don't. And it turns out we positively apprehend purposeful design in what I call the purposeful arrangement of parts. When we see pieces matched to each other, like in a mousetrap, where all the pieces are arranged for a purpose.
Another argument is that, well, hey, this is just a religious argument, you are a Christian and, well, that's nice and all, but you shouldn't let it interfere with your science. But very few religious arguments use the bacterial flagellum and blood clotting system, and it might have religious implications, but so does a lot of science that deals with origins, especially like, say, the big bang theory or the age of the earth stuff. So it may have implications, but it's not a religious argument. Right. And some people say, yeah, well, now you're having design extend down to everything in the world, everything's design, but that's not the case. Certainly there's contingency in nature. There's accident. There's random stuff, but the question is how much of that is explained by just random changes, natural law and what requires purposeful design. So we're pretty diligent about trying to not claim more for design than necessary.
Another thing is that they say, well, you talk about molecular machines and talk about the flagellum's machine, but they're not machines, they're biological.
A colleague of mine at Lehigh, Greg Lang, and Amber Rice co wrote a review in which they said, the flagellum isn't a machine. Proteins aren't machine. Proteins are proteins. Well, there. Well, that explains it now, doesn't it? But that's not the case. These are real proteins. A flagellum is a real outboard motor. It uses mechanical force. And unless you're into some vitalism or something, the carbon atoms and the nitrogen atoms and so on that make up all those machines, those protein machines are the same as inorganic materials. So these are literally machines.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: I like what you say in the book. You say the flagellum is not just like a motor, it is a motor.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And whenever scientists are speaking and the issue of evolution and such things are not on the table, that's exactly the way they talk.
It's like saying the eye is its function as first sight and it's built like a camera. Well, the flagellum is the same thing. It's an outboard motor, really.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: I'm not trying to make a point that isn't supported by the evidence. I just want to follow the evidence where it goes.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And I guess at the end of the day, the design question or questions are very simple. I mean, we could say, number one, is it possible that some things in nature are designed? And number two, how could we tell? It's very simple. Yeah. And we look around in the world generally, and we recognize some things are designed, some aren't, and it's perfectly reasonable distinction. And yet, when it comes to biology, then all heck breaks loose, if you dare to apply that.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: That's exactly correct. So I'm a stubborn guy, and I'm just going to keep plugging away until I get real answers.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: That's great. So let me play devil's advocate for a minute, Mike. If design in nature is real, and the design argument, or the argument for design is, as you argue, the best explanation for some of the remarkable systems we see in biology, why aren't more scientists clamoring to get on board?
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Well, that's a good question, and there's a number of reasons. First of all, most scientists don't really think about these issues. They're doing their own thing. They're working on obscured technical areas and they just don't give it much thought. And the second thing is that when they do kind of think of it, they generally go, say, and read about it in the New York Times or other publications that filter the idea through a very specific lens and essentially denigrate it. So it doesn't seem like it's a valid idea there. They rarely go to the writings of intelligent design advocates and see what they have to say. Additionally, once it gets kind of to be an issue, when people start talking about it, newspapers, newspapers run stories about it, then there's a social phenomenon where everybody's expected to get on board. And if you say something like, well, I think those ID folks, they have a point here, maybe we should think about it. Well, you don't say that if you have a career that you want to keep. So the one thing is that people don't get on board for a number of reasons, but it's not because the arguments have been refuted.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Are we seeing any strides in the last few years? I think there have been several prominent dissenters from Darwin, folks like that, who have been courageous enough to stand up in the last few years, though. So hopefully we're seeing some progress.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we will. And I'm very optimistic that eventually science and academia in general will come on board simply because it's not because of anything I've said or written or other folks have said or written, but because that's where the data are heading. The more science learns about life and particular, the foundation of life in cells and molecules, the more and more obvious design becomes. And you can't deny the data forever.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Right. I now want to move on to the next point, which relates to a misunderstanding. And that has to do with the idea of irreducible complexity. What have you seen from critics on this front in terms of misunderstanding the concept of irreducible complexity?
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Well, a number of things. Some people simply don't get it and others try actively to substitute their own definitions of irreducible complexity. For mine, for example, I wrote that irreducible complexity is when a system needs a number of parts, and if you take one away, the system doesn't work. And I used a mousetrap, a simple mousetrap, for an example. But then folks, especially a man named Kenneth Miller, who's a biology professor at.
No, no. What irreducible complexity really means is that the parts of the system can't be used for anything else. That, of course, is a straw man because, hey, you can always take apart anything and you could use part of it for a paper weight or to dam up a plug in a drain or something. And that's pretty much exactly what he did then. And unfortunately, much of the media ran with it. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal which echoed his argument, but that's incorrect. Some other folks just think that irreducible complexity means something, like, if you're missing this part, well, eventually you'll die. And that's not the same thing either. It's the system itself, the mousetrap, the flagellum, not the bacterium or whatever else it's attached to. Yeah. So it's a simple concept. Most people get it, except for folks who try to think about it too hard.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah, think about it in a way that's not maybe completely following your approach that you took.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Could you talk for just a minute about some of the attempts to get around the problem of irreducible complexity that you talked about in Darwin's black box? I know there's been self organization, gene duplication, neutral evolution, quantum action, by God, lots of different ideas that have been thrown out there.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of weird stuff. Biologists are really casting around for something in addition to Darwin's theory because they see it won't cut the mustard with what has been discovered in the cell. Yeah. One thing is called neutral evolution. And neutral evolution just means that most changes in DNA in an organism don't have any effects on it one way or the other. It doesn't help, doesn't hurt. For example, human DNA is, there's 3 billion letters in human DNA, and if you change one to another, most of the time it doesn't have an effect. Sometimes it does, and almost always when it does have an effect, it's detrimental. But nonetheless, most of the time it doesn't have an effect. So changes in those positions are said to be neutral. And some people have said, well, maybe most of the machinery in the cell or many of the features of the cell arose through neutral evolution. The problem with that is then you don't have selection. And so the features of the cell and the machinery of the cell, that's effectively saying it all arose by chance, by pure, unselected chance. And that's worse than Darwin's theory.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just trying to figure out if I was missing something or not, because the whole point of natural selection was to say, hey, we've got something that can overcome this pure randomness problem that nobody takes seriously.
And now we're just throwing out the baby with the bathwater and going back to pure chance.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And in my recent book, Darwin devolves, I have a couple chapters devoted to these other non darwinian ideas, and I show that none of them explain the origin of molecular machinery and such sophisticated features of cell. Some of them do explain niche ideas or niche features, but none of them even try to explain the eye or the bacterial flagellum or things like that. When they get to that, they all defer to Darwin's theory. They all say, well, I guess these arose by then. And then animals went onto the savannah and they started to do other things, and we have to consider that. But alternatives to Darwin's theory can't explain the features that I write about, even as well as Darwin's could do.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Well, Mike, it looks like that's about all the time we have for today. I'd love to have you back again for more discussion about this fantastic new book.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be great anytime.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: This has been a conversation with Michael Behe, author of the brand new book A Mousetrap for Darwin. I can't recommend this book enough. It's an excellent read and just a fantastic reference book for the many crucial issues raised by Dr. Behee over the years and his thoughtful and detailed responses to critics. Get your copy of a mousetrap for Darwin today in paperback or ebook format at online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Until next time. For id the future, I'm Eric Anderson.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
