I have no objection to the reasons you give.
> You've also made the following claim that I question, "Once it is shown
not
> to hold in one case, then after
> that each case must be considered on its merits." Show me the case where
> evolutionary theory doesn't hold. You (with all the rest of the Mere
> Creation crowd) seem to assume that Mike Behe has proved his case and has
> definitively shown that evolution cannot explain irreducible complexity.
Guilty as charged. I do think he's shown gradualism cannot explain the
particular systems (not somebody else's systems) he describes.
> (Again donning the high priestly robes), I don't think Mike Behe's
> arguments hold water...as a biochemist I am not the least bit pursuaded
by
> them (in attempting to deal with the counter arguments, I believe that he
> has in his own book given the germs of the refutation of his own
critique).
> Mike raises some very good evolutionary questions that many people
(despite
> his literature search) are working on. For example, Stuart Kauffman in
the
> opening chapters of *Origins of Order* raises some of the same questions
> about the origin of irreducibly complex systems. Kauffman may call
> Darwinism into question, but he proposes alternate mechanisms of
evolution
> that give a promising theory to untie this knot. *Darwin's Black Box* is
> THE book for people who don't want evolution to be true. In it a
> credentialed and professionally active biochemist expresses his own
doubts.
> I honestly doubt whether more than 1 or 2% of the people who read Mike's
> book will have the competence to judge what he says or to know about what
> he doesn't say. My own initial ideas have been expressed at my debate
with
> Mike at the ASA meeting in 1994 (see the manuscript from the debate at
> http://mcgraytx.calvin.edu/evolution/irred_compl.html).
The test will be the response to the challenge I and others make: Get a
proposed gradualistic mechanism for one of Behe's systems past the referees
and editors of the Journal of Molecular Evolution, or some other journal,
and then let all of us take a look.
By the way: I've written in my 1993 book that there's only one
nonnegotiable matter re evolution and origins: the origin of mankind. I do
believe, however, that methodological naturalism underlies much of the
thinking in research on origins. So, while I can accept evolution (except
for humankind), I really don't expect much success in showing the validity
of more than microevolution.
Russell Maatman
e-mail: rmaat@mtcnet.net