Sunday, July 10, 2011
Nobels All Around!
I've beem remiss in blogging of late for various reasons, so I thought I'd revive some older posts for those who don't obsessively comb through my previous efforts. Feel free to ignore this.October 1, 2005:
In case you have not been paying attention, you are fortunate to live in the time of one of the greatest discoveries ever in science, which belongs to Michael Behe. In his book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe modestly claimed:
The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell -- to investigate life at the molecular level -- is [once you apply Behe's notion of irreducible complexity] 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 in the history of science. (p. 232-33)
Why, you may ask, hasn't the Nobel Committee trampled down Behe's door in its haste to recognize this milestone? Perhaps they are trying to work out the little question of priority, for it seems there is another claimant. William Dembski has said, in his article "Science and Design":
The greatest breakthrough in philosophy of science and probability theory of recent years has been to isolate and make precise this criterion [complexity-specification]. Michael Behe's criterion of irreducible complexity for establishing the design of biochemical systems is a special case of the complexity-specification criterion for detecting design.
So it seems that Behe's "greatest achievement in the history of science" is merely the working out of some of the details of the really, really, really "greatest breakthrough" of Bill Dembski in coming up with specified complexity.
How will the Committee ever be able to choose?
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