Hello Maverick, and welcome to this long discussion! I really hope you have read the entire thread, since most of what I have to say about the subject is already stated in previous posts.
When debating a subject, any subject, it is of crucial importance that the different sides are:
1. Debating the same topic
2. Familiar with how the concepts and terms used in the discussion are defined in case there are standard definitions.
3. Debating the topic and it's actual issues, not side issues irrelevant to the topic, or other topics involving invalid arguments or personal attacks.
The reason why this is of importance, is that very often in debates, you will see that people area actually not debating the same topic, or that people use different definitions of the same word, which is the cause of much unnecessary misunderstanding. For this reason, it is good if you have read the earlier posts in this thread so we all have a clear understanding of what science is and how it works, what a scientific theory is versus other types of "theories" and what creationism states and what is is based on, and what science states and what it is based on.
With this done, I will start by commenting the three books you recommended. My posts will be long, so I take one at the time, and I start with the one I am most familiar with:
Originally posted by maverick8088
[Darwins Black Box written by Michael J. Behe, a biochemist: Dr. Behe here presents a scientific argument for the existence of God
This book, although it is written by a biochemist, gives a view of biochemistry and molecular biology that is not shared by a majority of scientists working the field of biochemisty and molecular biology, but is instead the author's private interpretation of certain phenomena. It is not a scientific text, it is a popular text where the author refers to some selected biochemical phenomen and interprets this in his own way. Behe
does not present scientific arguments for the existence of a god, Behe presents his personal, subjective opinions of why he believes certain biological observations means a god exists. I realise that a layman may get the impression that Behe's arguements are scientific arguments, but they are not and will try to explain why.
Firstly, Behe equals evolution with the concept of gradual natural selection as described by Darwin. He totally excludes the major observations done in modern time regarding other evolutionary mechanisms such as punctual equilibrium and mutation. He also excludes the entire area of molecular biology and molecular genetics, and instead claims there is no molecular evolutionary science. So Behe selects a small part of the field of evolutionary science (ie gradual natural selection) and then he criticise only this part as if it was the only part. Very strange.
Secondly, I think it is a major flaw that Behe presents several false statements. His proposal that there is no scientific literature or experiments performed in the area of molecular evoution is simply not true, and I don't understand at all how Behe can have missed this major field within biology, that has produced a vast literature and thousand of studies over the last 40 years. If he has missed 40 years of research in his own field, I must question how well educated and how knowledgable he is in the field, since this is common knowledge among people working in the field and has been tested and many times. Furthermore, Behe gives evidence to his own opinions by using erranous and selected quotations, and stating things about biology that are false. He also claims that Darwin stated certain things, and that evolutionary science states certain things, that they simply do not. Why is Behe both presenting a false image of evolution and of science?
Behe says about cell biology:
"The result of these 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 of the history of science...
This is his
personal opinion. He uses examples from molecular biology such as the blood clotting process and the proteins that make up RNA and DNA. This may sound very scientific because Behe uses all the technical terms, but we must look at the
line of reasoning, ie how is he using these terms and what conclusions does he make?
One example: Behe believes in what he calls "irreducible complexity" and to illustrate this concept, he takes a mousetrap as example. A mousetrap consists of several different parts, but those parts will not be
functional as a mouse trap taken seperatly, they must be put together in a certain construction in order to work properly. Behe claims that it's the same with proteins and makes an analogy to bacterial flagella. He claims that bacterial flagella consist of 240 proteins and that they, just like the mousetrap, does not function if they don't have all these 240 proteins. However, this is completly untrue, and any person who has studied basic medicine, biology or is just interested enough in immulogy/bacteriology knows that there are many different bacterial flagella and some are larger than 240 proteins, whereas others are as small as about 30 proteins and are still fully functional flagella. So what he is saying in his book, is not true.
It all boils down to that the book presents Behe's personal opinion, which is that the cell, the compartments of the cell and the moleculus of life, are so complex so it cannot have happened by evolutionary mechanisms, it must have been designed by and intelligent designer. This is the same argument as creationists have used for many years - the eye is so complex so it must have been designed, the brain is so complex so it must have been designed, etc. However,
complexity is no evidence of anything at all - there mere observation that something is complex says nothing about the existance or non-existance of a god. For instance, the genome of a garlic is more complex than the genome of a human being - what does it prove? That it is more likely that a god made the garlic than humans?
I am sure Behe's book seems serious and scientific to a layman, but what I dislike about it is that it contains untrue statements which he presents as if they were facts. If you want to discuss the book more closely, I'd gladly provide you with hundreds of scientific articles and literature that demostrates what science says, as opposed to what Behe says. Science is impersonal and unsubjective, it doesn't matter what a scientist thinks or what believes s/he holds - repeated, controlled experiments testing hypothesis is how science works. It is very important to understand that science and religion are dealing with two different aspects of life and have nothing in common - which also means there can (or rather should) not be any conflict between the two.
