Michael J. Behe, "Design for Living" (+ letters to NYT) (2005)

"The New York Times"
February 7, 2005

DESIGN FOR LIVING
By MICHAEL J. BEHE

Bethlehem, Pa. — IN the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design. As one of the scientists who have proposed design as an explanation for biological systems, I have found widespread confusion about what intelligent design is and what it is not.

First, what it isn't: the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments. For example, a critic recently caricatured intelligent design as the belief that if evolution occurred at all it could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator. That's misleading. Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.

Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.

Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. The 18th-century clergyman William Paley likened living things to a watch, arguing that the workings of both point to intelligent design. Modern Darwinists disagree with Paley that the perceived design is real, but they do agree that life overwhelms us with the appearance of design.

For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved. (Imagine a scientist repeating through clenched teeth: "It wasn't really designed. Not really.")

The resemblance of parts of life to engineered mechanisms like a watch is enormously stronger than what Reverend Paley imagined. In the past 50 years modern science has shown that the cell, the very foundation of life, is run by machines made of molecules. There are little molecular trucks in the cell to ferry supplies, little outboard motors to push a cell through liquid.

In 1998 an issue of the journal Cell was devoted to molecular machines, with articles like "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines" and "Mechanical Devices of the Spliceosome: Motors, Clocks, Springs and Things." Referring to his student days in the 1960's, Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered." In fact, Dr. Alberts remarked, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. He emphasized that the term machine was not some fuzzy analogy; it was meant literally.

The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.

Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.

The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.

The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.


Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, is the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution."
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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

Section A; Column 4; Editorial Desk; Pg. 22

Seeking to Explain Life's Complexity

To the Editor:

Michael J. Behe does an important service by taking the theory of intelligent design out of the hands of much of the faith-based community -- where, unfortunately, it is equated with creationism -- and providing its scientific underpinnings.

It is important to add that Darwin was not an atheist who set out to disprove that God created life. Rather, he set out to disprove that every single living thing was ''specially created'' by God and show instead that most living things evolved from other living things.

Darwin believed that God created life and ''set in motion'' the ''laws of the universe'' -- including evolution -- but did not tinker with them. Dr. Behe says that many scientists ''see roles for both the messiness of
evolution and the elegance of design.'' One could argue that the theory of evolution holds within it a theory of intelligent design.

(Rev.) Ian Alterman
New York, Feb. 7, 2005

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

Re "Design for Living," by Michael J. Behe (Op-Ed, Feb. 7):

The basic principle of intelligent design is that life is just too complicated to occur by chance, and thus there must be some intelligent entity guiding the process.

A much more likely explanation is that our inability to comprehend these phenomena that appear "designed" merely reflects our own limitations as a species. We only recently discovered fire and the wheel and remain a basically savage society. Why not recognize our own limited capacity to understand complexity?

Our perception of complexity derives from our sense of scale in daily events. Is it any surprise that from this perspective, the evolution of life is beyond our grasp to comprehend? Intelligent design, like other creation myths, is just another way for us to make sense of our world.

A simpler alternative is to embrace our limited ability to comprehend and move on from there.

Richard W. Grant, M.D.
Boston, Feb. 7, 2005

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

I, like most working scientists, remain extremely skeptical that intelligent design can yet claim to be part of science. Writers such as the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins have pointed out the philosophical and scientific weaknesses in design arguments.

For me, the telling point is that the proponents of design cannot answer how it was supposed to have happened. Was it from divine intervention, visits by space aliens, magic?

Design will be a real science when we have testable answers for these questions.

Donald Terndrup
Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 7, 2005

The writer is an associate professor of astronomy, Ohio State University.

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

Michael J. Behe is right that the general public is free to accept intelligent design. This idea may be psychologically or spiritually attractive and even consistent with the world we see around us.

But the doctrine of intelligent design does not produce falsifiable (or disprovable) statements that are susceptible to testing. This rigorous testing process is the central element of the modern scientific method.

Assertions about intelligent design fall into an area of faith and belief outside the scope of science.

Karen Rosenberg
Newark, Del., Feb. 7, 2005

The writer is chairwoman of the department of anthropology, University of Delaware.

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

I must have missed the concept of "if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck" in my studies of the scientific method.

Yes, scientists describe their observations, but this is not the scientific method. Employing experiments aimed at discovering the "compelling evidence to the contrary" is.

That is the trouble with the design - intelligent or otherwise - theory. Description is not enough in science. That is for religion.

Melissa Henriksen
New York, Feb. 7, 2005

The writer is a research assistant professor, Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Rockefeller University.

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

Michael J. Behe demonstrates why the so-called theory of intelligent design should stay out of our science classrooms. His claims of physical evidence are spurious. We see clocks and outboard motors in cells not because they are clocks and motors, but because we have no better analogy.

A century ago, the astronomer Percival Lowell described water-filled canals on Mars for the same reason. When confronted with the unknown, we first perceive it in terms of the known. Perception, however, does not make it so.

Science alone cannot sustain our society; philosophical speculation like Dr. Behe's is vital to our understanding, too. But trying to pass one off as the other serves only to undermine them both.

Jon Sanders
Monterey, Calif., Feb. 7, 2005

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

Michael J. Behe argues that the elegantly complex and efficiently operating living cell cries out for intelligent design. He hastens to say that intelligent design says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.

But the designer, whoever she may be, must surely be infinitely more complex than the products of her creations.

One then wonders who designed the designer. And that line of questioning never ends. Nor does the ultimate mystery.

Al Grand
North Bellmore, N.Y., Feb. 7, 2005

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"The New York Times" February 9, 2005 Wednesday

To the Editor:

It is time for both dogmatic evolutionists and adamant religionists to show some humility in the face of the grand mysteries of the universe.

Jay Winer
Brooklyn, Feb. 7, 2005

Jonathon Marshall, PhD.  Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PO
Box 208105, Yale University New Haven, CT  06520

[email protected]

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THE NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Opinion -- 'Intelligent Design'

To the Editor:

In "Design for Living" (Op-Ed, Feb. 7), Michael J. Behe quoted me, recalling how I discovered that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered" some 40 years ago. Dr. Behe then paraphrases my 1998 remarks that "the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines."

That I was unaware of the complexity of living things as a student should not be surprising. In fact, the majestic chemistry of life should be astounding to everyone. But these facts should not be misrepresented as support for the idea that life's molecular complexity is a result of "intelligent design." To the contrary, modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process.

In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

Bruce Alberts
President
NAS