Michael Behe and Intelligent Design
on National Public Radio "Talk of the Nation"by Steven D. Schafersman
March, 2002On February 13, 2002, the day after Darwin Day, Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University, appeared on Talk of the Nation (TOTN) on National Public Radio. His performance was really slick. I have met him before at intelligent design (ID) conferences, most recently at the Nature of Naturalism Conference at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and he really puts on a good show of presenting himself as a serious and undogmatic scientist. Behe has, by now, heard every critical argument against his absurd and unscientific claims, and he has pretty good responses ready to spin out. Since the publication of his book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe has made dozens of public appearances to promote his creationist ideology, and he has--so to speak--learned on the job. Even I was impressed at the excellence of his sophistry.
Michael Behe represented himself as a scientist persuaded by the evidence, not a creationist with an agenda. To a question from host Melinda Penkava about how Behe's ideas differ from creationism, he disingenuously answered, "Well, now to tell you the truth, I'm not real knowledgeable about creationism. I'm a Roman Catholic." Behe used his "I am a Roman Catholic" mantra more than once to divest himself of the creationist label. Needless to say, this argument against an embarrassing label--while apparently convincing in Behe's mind--is not really conclusive (since many Catholics are creationists), and, furthermore, most of his ID colleagues can't use this argument! How are they going to refute the creationist label?
Behe's argument for why irreducible complexity proves intelligent design was simple: Mt. Rushmore. If one were to drive past Mt. Rushmore, one would conclude that a sculptor--an intelligent designer--created the complex faces, not natural wind and water erosion over time. Likewise, complex biological structures, such as the biochemical "motors" of bacteria flagella, are like little biochemical machines that should be interpreted the same way as human designed and constructed machines, such as the outboard motor of a boat. Such features, according to Behe, are irreducibly complex, composed of many separate parts; if even one part were removed or altered, the structure would not work, so the separate and mutually-interdependent parts must be designed with a final purpose in mind; they could not have evolved as different and independent parts that fortuitously and ultimately worked together to form a functioning complex structure. This argument can, of course, be used with every biological feature, structure, and process, since all are complex and make use of mutually-interdependent and interacting parts, themselves exceedingly complex.
As readers know, this argument is over two hundred years old; it was demolished by Charles Darwin with his theory of adaptation by natural selection put forth in The Origin of Species. This theory has by now been corroborated by many thousands of observations and experiments, and is as firmly accepted by scientists as any fact of biology. Irreducible complexity is a term invented by Behe. It is a myth: there is no irreducible complexity in living organisms (except that which originated by contingency and emergence, which is not the same things that Behe is proposing). There are complex biologic features and processes that would not operate at 100% effectiveness or even at all if one part were removed or altered today, but legitimate scientists believe that these features and processes were formed by a historical process (i.e., evolution by natural selection) such that they did not have in the past the identical structure or steps that they do now, and they did not operate at the same 100% effectiveness or efficiency in the past that they do now. These earlier features and processes, less efficient and sometimes having completely different functions (in such cases termed preadaptations)--that existed as steps on the evolutionary pathway to the current feature and process--nevertheless possessed adaptive value (increased fitness) of their own. They would thus be favored during natural selection and would adaptively appear and evolve. Behe, irresponsibly, either ignores or dismisses this natural and historical explanation--which happens to be the one that other scientists accept. For Behe, complex structures have no history at all, which is why he can only see their proximate usefulness and current interdependence of parts. Behe is a creationist precisely because he does not accept even the possibility of evolution and the historical modification and change of interdependent parts.
Behe's gave this ancient argument a modern twist by introducing biochemical complexity. The older arguments were refuted by Darwin's demonstration that complex structures at the organ level could change by gradual modification of parts, such as the eye could evolve by the gradual change of light-sensitive structures to less-efficient primitive invertebrate eyes to the highly-adapted and efficient eyes of vertebrates and squid. All biologically-complex features and processes at the organ and organ system level, and most at the tissue level, can today be explained this way, with abundant empirical genetic, physiological, anatomical, and fossil evidence. This is not true, however, of such features at the cellular and biochemical levels: scientists simply don't know enough yet to explain how many complex features and processes at this level evolved. Behe cleverly exploits this gap in scientific knowledge, filling it with an intelligent designer. This is classic God of the Gaps sophistry.
However, parts of the process have been worked out. A number of reviews of Behe's book have explained how some aspects of flagella evolution are known. All sorts biologic features and processes have been claimed by creationist to be "irreducibly complex," such as the eye, the Krebs and Calvin cycles, blood coagulation, the DNA code, etc., but these claims are spurious, since scientists have been able to offer good explanations for how some evolved. Spending research time explaining the evolutionary history of such features and processes is not a high priority of modern biologists. They are still trying to explain more basic processes and development of features, and the details of how they evolved eventually emerges from these more basic studies. The evolutionary history of a biological feature is not the object of most basic research in biology, but is a by-product of such research that reveals itself after a lot of information becomes known. So today we have gaps in knowledge about the evolutionary history of all sorts of complex features and processes. Behe exploits these gaps, especially the gaps at the biochemical level, but the gaps are not irremediably permanent. Scientists expect to gradually and ultimately fill these gaps in knowledge and, in fact, have been filling them.
Irreducible complexity is an argument from ignorance. No real scientist would ever say, "this is so complex that it can never be explained by evolution, so I give up." Instead, a scientist would continue to formulate hypotheses to explain it and then test the hypotheses. Behe suffers from a very unscientific failure of curiosity, creativity, and nerve. Not only does he promote willful ignorance and pseudoscience, he encourages people to repress their intellectual curiosity--a moral lapse for a scientist!
On TOTN, Behe repeatedly mischaracterized modern evolution--what he called Darwinian evolution--by claiming that only random processes generated the complexity we see in organic life. He consistently referred to "chance" processes when describing the evolutionary process. Natural selection, the primary mechanism of this process, is not a chance or random process, but a wholly deterministic one, albeit one characterized by a probabilistic determinism that can only be studied and understood statistically, so individuals often confusingly believe it is random. Michael Behe, a trained biologist, should know this and not indulge in this characteristic creationist confusion, but I guess the temptation is too great when the argument consists of sound bites. The irony of this frequent creationist misrepresentation of modern evolutionary theory as "only chance" is that the most important evolutionary process that makes modern evolutionary theory "Darwinian" is precisely the same process that prevents it from being exclusively random. A completely random process could never generate the diversity, adaptation, and complexity we observe in living organisms (as has been well documented by creationists!).
The "design" we see in nature is apparent design, not real design. Etymologically, design requires a sapient or intelligent designer, so it is proper to call the apparent design of living organisms adaptation and that of nonbiological nature simply the structure of matter and energy. Both adaptation and structure are the result of well-understood natural processes and properties of the universe explained by evolutionary and quantum theories. Similarly, the "specified complexity" of William Dembski is just a neologism for "designed complexity." Specified is another name for designed; specification requires a specifier--some being or entity with intelligence enough to engage in specifying. Certainly, intelligent design is the source of some complexity in the universe: that caused by humans. However, ordinary biological complexity--such as biochemical processes and structures, complex organs, and the diversity of species--is believed by scientists to be the result of a natural evolutionary process that began from much simpler chemical compounds that were subject to well-understood chemical laws and biological processes.
The complex structure of and information encoded in DNA, for example, is the most common example ID creationists use to demonstrate the existence of specified complexity that is not human-caused. However, I deny that DNA is an example of specified complexity. Scientists believe that it evolved early in the history of life, admittedly by a sequence of natural chemical reactions and intermediate steps that we don't yet completely understand, and that it gradually became more complex as evolution proceeded. Scientists are currently in the process of deciphering the history of the genetic code by subjecting the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of genes in a number of model organisms (those whose complete genomes are known) to a variety of statistical and bioinformatic techniques that identify genes and gene families, and portray these results in cladograms and phylogenetic trees that represent their evolution.
The appearance of design in nature is, famously, the great stumbling block for persons striving to live their lives by reason, evidence, and critical thinking. Many intelligent and educated individuals identify the design and perfection of nature as their reason for belief in a supernatural designer. This is why the argument from design--the only argument among the various arguments for the existence of a deity that makes use of empirical evidence--is the most important argument for theists and creationists, and why they fight so tenaciously to preserve it at all costs. The other theistic arguments rely solely on rationalism: logical deductions from premises assumed to be true. The problem with these arguments is that, while their logic is sound, the truth of their premises can easily be doubted or refuted. Design arugments, on the other hand, make use of ostensibly true premises derived from scientific investigation, but use specious reasoning and sophistic arguments to make their desired conclusions.
As for confidence in distinguishing real design from apparent design, whether or not you believe the complexity in nature is the result of intelligent design--or not--depends on whether you believe in gross speculation, pseudoscience, or supernaturalism--or not. It is obvious that all living species--and the rest of the universe, for that matter--could have been created by a mendacious, intelligent, cosmic, superhuman or supernatural designer who deceptively gave everything the appearance of natural adaptation, structure, and old age. This is Philip Gosse's argument in Omphalos, but even creationists don't like this argument because it is such a copout, but mostly because, if true, it means their candidate for the "intelligent designer" (their loving and trustworthy God) would be quite obviously malicious! So ID creationists persist in using misleading and specious arguments to try to show that the apparent design in nature reveals real design if only the evidence is correctly interpreted by the methods they propose (i.e., by pseudoscientific methods).
Behe was challenged to show how ID could be testable, a requirement for scientific legitimacy. His suggestion that ID can be tested by taking flagella-less bacteria and growing them for thousands of generations to see if they evolve flagella without intelligent modification of their genes was superbly audacious--for a completely absurd and useless experiment that would prove nothing. A proper test of ID would be for it to make some prediction about a biological process, event, or feature that could not, in principle, be explained by evolution but only by intelligent design, and then having that prediction corroborated. Such a testable prediction might, for example, be recognition of the operation of the intelligent force that causes the alleged organic design in nature, or a prediction of the identity of the designer.
To a question by Melinda Penkava, Behe claimed that knowing the history of an object, such as our prior knowledge of how Mt. Rushmore or a watch was created, or distinguishing between natural and artificial objects, was "not mixing apples and oranges" to infer intelligent design, since they would be observed without prior knowledge--as if this was possible or desirable. Behe states, "So I don't think [Mr. Rushmore and living organisms are] a different case. I think we're just extending the same reasoning to a new class of objects we've discovered." Contrary to Behe, however, for empiricism in general and science in particular, any knowledge, including prior knowledge, is desirable. Behe's investigation and justification of his idiosyncratic epistemology demands a certain willful ignorance from its practitioners to be successful, not to mention a tolerance for severe category confusion.
Behe said the evidence shows design in living organisms, but "ID leaves the identity of the designer open" (Dembski also uses this disingenuous argument, saying that ID research points to "generic design," not necessarily supernatural design), although it is scientifically (and epistemologically) absurd to accept these claims. There is no evidence for any design in nature, but there is excellent and well-known evidence for natural selection as the cause of apparent design or adaptation. In addition to good evidence for true design, scientists would want to know the evidence for the process by which the design is made manifest in nature and the identity of the designer before accepting the truth of all three. Furthermore, if good empirical evidence for real design in nature actually existed, scientists--using methodological naturalism, a necessary component of modern scientific method--would attribute this design to the work of superhuman and perfectly natural extraterrestrial aliens, and then direct their research to finding and understanding them. Until then, alas, the "design" we see in life is apparent, not real. Behe regrettably, but predictably, continued with these sort of specious arguments for the entire program.
You would never know from listening to Behe that every single one of the reviews of his book in scientific journals by scientists (dozens of reviews by now) completely slammed his book and his ideas of irreducible complexity and ID as unscientific and essentially worthless--a genuine argument from ignorance (many of these reviews are at Behe's Empty Box). Deborah Owens-Fink, a member of the Ohio State Board of Education (SBOE) did a remarkable job on TOTN of pretending to be unbiased and positive about this issue, saying that "we need to be very careful that we don't get into the issue of religion, but yet, at the same time, that we also do not censor ideas that might go against what some elite scientists believe with respect to evolution . . . explaining the total diversity of life and origins of life." I agree, but she didn't add that Behe is not an elite scientist and that he is the one and only scientist with a mainstream university position in the world (of whom I am aware) who continues to claim scientific support for ID (Francis Crick retracted his hypothesis and Fred Hoyle died). There are, of course, some non-scientist ID proponents with scientific training and credentials at creationist think tanks, such as the Discovery Institute, and non-scientist creationists at mainstream universities, but these hardly count as "elite scientists" (except in their own minds!). Once again, the true nature of scientific support for or against a creationist tenet is being seriously and deliberately distorted by its proponents to their advantage. I cringe every time this happens in the public media without credible opposition. Deborah Owens-Fink, in reality, is one of the main proponents on the Ohio SBOE in support of including ID in the state science standards. Without knowing Dr. Fink (a professor of marketing at the University of Akron) personally, I strongly suspect that her motives are religious; in my experience, they always are. No legitimate scientist or other informed and unbiased person is clamoring to include ID in science standards; only religiously-motivated politicians and non-scientists want to do this.
Michael Behe, William Dembski, and their fellow creationists continue to maintain--against reason, evidence, and methodological naturalism--that biological complexity in nature is the result of intelligent design. The arguments they use--specified complexity and irreducible complexity--are contrived and specious, convincing only to individuals uninformed about logic, science, and scientific method. Unfortunately, that means they are convincing to 95% of the American population and the vast majority of public officials, school board members, state board of education members, US congressmen, etc., the very people creationists want to convince. Attempting to convince legitimate scientists (a minority of the remaining 5%), on the other hand, is not on their agenda, since that would require going out and actually gathering data, generating testable and falsifiable hypotheses, doing the arduous scientific work of testing the hypotheses, and publishing the results in the scientific literature. Rather than perform real science, they would rather indulge in pseudoscholarship, the indispensable foundation of pseudoscience.
The point is that Behe's sophistic and misleading claims and his responses to arguments against ID would probably be convincing to many--perhaps most--of the radio listeners. It was the responsibility of the legitimate science supporter on TOTN, Prof. David Haury (a professor of science education at Ohio State University), to refute Behe's pseudoscientific arguments, but he failed to properly respond to them. This often occurs when creationists get valuable public exposure in the mainstream media. I visited Dr. Haury's university homepage, and he truly has impressive credentials and a background in science education, so he should have done better. As we well know, however, university professors who have a great deal of knowledge about science and science education are frequently not that knowledgeable about the specious arguments and tricks that creationists use to promote their agenda, and thus cannot properly respond to them.
I sent Dr. Haury an early version of this essay, and he described to me his long history of anti-creationist activity, a history similar to mine. He told me, quite convincingly, that he attempted to answer Behe's arguments, but was not presented with the opportunity to do so. He said, "We both agree that Behe and Owens-Fink misrepresented both science and themselves, and were very slick in their deliveries, but there were a few different agendas competing for time during the show. Michael Behe's arguments are patently absurd, and I would think most people listening to NPR would recognize that." I responded that I didn't really think most folks would recognize that. We recognize the absurdity of Behe's arguments because we understand logic and are trained in science, but we are members of the 5% of the population who enjoy scientific literacy. The success of creationism depends on the scientific illiteracy of the general citizenry, which is why creationists do so well. Sophistry, by definition, is convincing to listeners who don't realize it's sophistry.
Dr. Haury continued: "What is not so obvious to folks in general is that there are school issues that go beyond science, and I was hoping to move on to those issues more quickly by simply noting that Michael's do not come to us from within the scientific community, are not embraced by scientists, and fail all tests of being identified as science. I did not want to waste air time getting immersed in debating his absurd ideas point by point." I agree with David here. He did not have time to adequately debate absurd creationist ideas or arguments point by point, so I suggested he just say, "Michael Behe's ideas are not scientific, are not accepted by any legitimate scientist in this country, have been criticized and refuted by dozens of evolutionary scientists in reviews and essays in the scientific literature, and fail all tests of being identified as science." Let Michael try to respond to that in a few seconds! Don't feel you have to treat him collegially or politely; Behe depends on scientific critics treating him that way to help establish the legitimacy of his unscientific claims, but he himself is not being either collegial or polite. Sophistry, nonsense-peddling, and pseudoscience-mongering are neither collegial nor polite! Michael Behe is undoubtedly sincere in his efforts to convince others that what he is selling is authentic science, but he himself is aware that it is not. As with any confidence man, Prof. Behe wants you to trust him, his credentials, his university position, his quiet, confident voice, and the apparent reasonableness of his arguments. But his arguments are not reasonable--they are misleading, unsound, and invalid.
I was especially unhappy with Dr. Haury's mistaken notion "that the idea of intelligent design and the theory of evolution do not talk about the same things." According to Dr. Haury, ID is about how "it all got started," while evolution is "about how things change over time. . . . It makes no statement about the origins [of life]," so they are really different explanations that, presumably (as I interpreted his meaning) shouldn't be in obvious conflict. This characterization is simply wrong in two ways. First, ID and evolution are mutually exclusive, because both aim to explain the existence of biological diversity by mutually exclusive generative processes (intelligent design v. mechanistic, unplanned, natural selection). Second, the origin of life is also a scientific topic with which ID is in opposition; scientists believe that life originated by a mechanistic, unplanned, undesigned natural process termed abiogenesis (but often called chemical evolution to distinguish it from biological evolution). So, ID purports to explain both the origin of life and the generation of diversity (to some extent, anyway, since the limits of ID in generating diversity differ for different ID proponents; Behe allows for some evolution--but never evolution by natural selection--in later stages, while some of his colleagues believe that no evolution of species occurs at all), and both of these explanations conflict with well-established evolutionary explanations.
David Haury responded: "My comments about ID and evolution not being about the same thing relates to the context of the science curriculum in schools, not the question of whether science is interested in origins. The point I was attempting to make is that the school curriculum has standards relating to biological change over time and evolutionary explanations for those changes. There are no science standards related to scientific explanations for origins. The notion of ID by definition implies a creator (designer) who put things in place at the origin, and there is no new mechanism suggested to account for change over time. So supplementing the science curriculum with ID is not the same as providing an "alternate theory" to evolution. They are not focused on the same events. You did in fact misinterpret my comments if you feel that I think the two ideas are not in conflict; they certainly are."
I replied to David that I now understand what he was saying, and didn't disagree with him on this point, but without the correct context the statement came across just as I described it. Other listeners to the program made the same misinterpretation that I did. Also, David is quoted in a New York Times February 11 article saying exactly the same thing, again not in the correct context. ID proponents have greatly differing views about how ID accounts for diversity, and I suggest it is important to clearly emphasize that ID and evolution are in direct conflict for both origin of life and generation of diversity, and that evolution is the legitimate scientific explanation of the two.
The callers to TOTN were wonderful: they had questions that really put Michael Behe on the defensive. Steve of Danville, California, asked the guests to address the "God of the gaps" approach to science, correctly observing that ID was an example of this approach. Michael Behe responded by saying that, "I've heard the phrase 'God of the gaps'." I hope he has, since it's the essence of his argument! Behe tried to turn the God of the gaps argument back against evolutionary scientists by preposterously claiming that "ID has grown stronger as we have learned more about science." He alleged it does not apply to irreducible complexity arguments for ID because we have learned that cells are more complex than we knew in the nineteenth century, when evolution was proposed to explain adaptive complexity in nature. He ignores the fact that the degree of complexity is not the issue in claiming that an explanation--like irreducible complexity--is a God of the gaps argument, but whether it is used to claim ultimate ignorance and the uselessness of further study. Behe claimed that scientists must beware of what he calls a "naturalism of the gaps" approach to interpreting organic complexity, even though such a claim is specious to anyone who understands how science is conducted. "Naturalism of the gaps" is precisely the expected condition of our knowledge in a natural universe, in which we have gaps in our knowledge of the nature, but we certainly know that the universe is at least natural and use naturalistic methods to study it. The remaining question is whether it is also supernatural, which is where the God of the gaps comes in. So Behe tried to present our perfectly normal and noncontroversial scientific state of affairs as something pejorative and wrongheaded. This effort by a so-called scientist was really shameful!
Another caller, Jim of Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, said that ID proponents like Michael Behe "need to come clean" about whether they attribute design in nature to God or an extraterrestrial alien. Behe replied that, "if you think a space alien is a good candidate, you're welcome to think so." Behe doesn't think so, of course, but to reveal his true candidate would compromise his effort to make ID acceptable for the public school science curriculum.
David of Athens, Ohio, called and said that public schools should only teach reliable scientific information in science classrooms and save the religious ideas, like ID, for religion classes. Science tells us "what and how" about nature, while religion provides the "why." Michael Behe responded by implying that David was confused, thinking that ID is about religion; for Behe, the scientific evidence persuaded him that Darwinian evolution is wrong and ID must therefore be correct. Behe asked, "How do you falsify the contention that a cell arose by Darwinian natural selection? How many experiments have been done to show cells arising by natural selection?" This is typical creationist rhetoric, demanding experimental verification of scientific conclusions derived from non-experimental methods. The origin of cells and other biological features by natural selection are historical events that are inferred from observations, not by direct experiment. Behe here invokes the common public ignorance of scientific inference to promote his fallacious argument. For a biology professor at a respected university to do this is reprehensible.
Mark of Columbus, Ohio, was especially perceptive about the issue. He said that science provides tools to investigate how nature works, and that shouldn't be threatening to anyone. If the cell is complex, then let's use the tools of science to study it, and not say that "it must be some sort of magical or Godly kind of thing that happened." Mark wanted to know how the idea of intelligent design gave students a better understanding of how the world works than the tools of science. This, of course, is one of the major ironies of ID studies: unlike science, ID is a question stopper, not a question generator. Behe's response? He allowed that "Darwinian theory" works for some things, but for "other things it doesn't work at all. . . . I'm not going to say any more than when we drive past Mt. Rushmore, we just throw up our hands and say because we can't understand how wind and rain did this, then it must have been designed." I think this response is as good a summary of the vacuity of ID ideology as anything can possibly be.
It was a pleasure to hear from the Rev. Ernan McMullin, a distinguished historian and philosopher of science (and a professor of these subjects at Notre Dame University) and a person whom I admire for his previous insight and fairness on the creation/evolution controversy. He understood the issue perfectly, and he properly and cogently argued against the two Ohio measures: (1) House Bill 481, which requires that "origins science" be "taught objectively and without religious, naturalistic, or philosophic bias or assumption.," and (2) the effort by Ohio SBOE to force the teaching of ID in public school science classrooms by requiring its placement in the science curriculum. Prof. McMullin agreed that "the motive behind this proposed measure in Ohio . . . is clearly one which would advance religion." Of course the effort to politicize science education by requiring legislative oversight of evolutionary topics (this never happens with gravity, thermodynamics, or planetary revolutions!) and requiring the inclusion of ID instruction in science standards is politically and religiously motivated by the desire to include God in the public school science classroom. There is no other credible reason for anyone to make such an effort. Clearly the reason is not to improve science education, otherwise the politicians would let the scientists and science educators write the standards themselves without political interference!
The next caller was Cynthia of Phoenix, Arizona, who agreed with Prof. McMullin about the effort by ID advocates in Ohio. She said, "I think what worries me most about it is it seems to be a very thinly veiled attempt of conservative forces trying to get religion into politics so that certain of their agendas will be easier to be put across. And it actually demeans my opinion of those people who otherwise, I think, have strong religious and good reasons for their religious beliefs [but] are just co-opting anything they can get their hands on if they think it's going to further them." Michael Behe replied that, in his opinion, topics like ID are mistakenly excluded from the public schools because people believe they have "religious implications." Perhaps some people do believe that, but that's not the real reason ID is excluded: it's because ID is lousy science! The slightest bit of thought on Behe's part would help him understand that every single topic taught in schools has some religious implication for one religion or another, so that's hardly a reason to exclude any specific topic. Topics are legitimately excluded from schools because they have no proper relevance to the curriculum . . . such as ID doctrine in a biology course.
Like other religious authoritarians, proponents of the Ohio measures intend to accomplish their goal of inculcating theism in the public schools by using a legislative statute and the rules of the Ohio SBOE--the powers of the state--rather than rely on the knowledge and wisdom of actual scientists and science teachers to do the right thing. Regardless of the fact that essentially the entire scientific community is opposed to both ID as a scientific concept and its instruction in science classrooms, the very nature and motivation of the political activities in Ohio serve to make clear that this effort is both immoral (for attempting to force children to be exposed to creationist beliefs) and illegal (because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment). Whatever a person's personal beliefs in God, the supernatural, or how the Deity plans or guides It's creation using the purely material, mechanistic, and natural processes we see operating in nature, there is no good or legal reason to disrupt the neutral, secular, public school system or pervert the principles and practices of science by promoting creationist measures in Ohio. It is the responsibility of theists and supernaturalists to explain how planning and purpose are manifested in what we scientists observe to be unplanned and purposeless natural processes. If they are appalled by the lack of obvious meaning and purpose in the natural universe, then they need to do what the rest of use do: create their own meanings and purposes for themselves, and stop trying to fool people that intelligent design is immanent in nature.
Copyright © 2002 by Steven D. Schafersman Steven Schafersman taught biology, geology, and environmental science at various colleges and universites for 23 years. He has been a science educator for 25 years and, by necessity, an anti-creationist activist for 20 of those years. His scientific research includes the tempo and mode of evolution of fossil marine protists from complete and continuous stratigraphic sequences and, most recently, the molecular evolution of a gene family in model organisms studied using bioinformatics.