Thursday, December 2, 2010

Behe, Intelligent design and Christian integrity

Michael Behe is touring the UK giving talks promoting “Intelligent Design” (ID). His main evidence is an argument that some natural structures are “irreducibly complex”, a phrase which he seems to have coined. His favourite argument is the mousetrap which can only function with all of its parts intact and in exactly the right place. This video shows that his argument is false:



One of the structures creationists put forward as evidence against evolution is the human eye. However, the eye is strong evidence for evolution because all of its stages of development can be seen in currently living creatures. Also, half an eye actually does serve a purpose as is explained in this video:



Of course, the main problem with Intelligent Design is that the people promoting it claim not to be doing it from religious motives when many of them are fundamentalist Christians who have previously promoted religious creationism. The reason for this is that they want ID taught as part of the UK school curriculum and they can’t do that if they tell the truth and say its a religious doctrine. So much for their claim that God is a God of truth. For me this is the real problem with ID. If people want to promote creationism then let them do it honestly. Dishonesty like this just brings Christianity further into disrepute. You can read more about this in my article "why creationism is bad for Christianity".

Incidentally, Behe’s own university now has a disclaimer on its web site stating its support for evolutionary biology.