It ain't rocket science... it's icky squooshy science

[essentialsaltes]

I'm delighted to see that some of my major beefs with Behe's Edge of Evolution (found in my mega-review) are quite similar to those offered by someone who actually knows what he's talking about: biologist Joe Thornton, whose work sheds light on the historical evolution of a cortisol receptor, one nucleotide at a time. Behe first called Thornton's work 'piddling', but later amended his judgment to 'great' once he decided that Thornton's work, which patiently shows how evolution can explain the phenomenon in a step by step process, actually shows that evolution can't explain it.

Anyway, Thornton has responded with a public letter, and I'm tickled to see the similarities - probability (especially after-the-fact probability), neutral mutation, telos. But again, Thornton has the distinct advantage of knowing what he's talking about and relevant scientific experiments to draw from.

Comments

[my-wits-end.livejournal.com]

I would be really surprised if any scientist outside of the Discovery Institute took Behe seriously. I haven't read much of his work and I don't see any reason to. He is for intelligent design, that's about as much as I need to know. (FWIW I did a B.S. in biochemistry.) But I suppose I'm glad that someone is refuting him. (I've read a some of Ken Miller's refutations of his flagellum arguments.)

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

I hear ya.

Nevertheless, yes it is a good thing that his claims are being addressed, since otherwise the DI will whine that Science is ignoring the purported evidence for ID. Well, they whine that anyway, but at least we know they're liars.

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

WTF is Behe's issue anyway? I had heard that he just likes to be a contrarian, but that act gets old after a while.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

If I were to be my least charitable, I'd call him a creationist concern troll. He has an actual Ph.D. in science, so he can't say anything too silly. He supports common descent and evolution up to a point, but he expresses some concerns that maybe evolution can't be the whole story -- more accurately, he strongly asserts that evolution is not the whole story -- and then plugs an Intelligent Designer into the concern gap.