Re: Behe, Snoke Article

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Jack Haas wrote:

> Would any of you like to comment on this article?
>
> Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that
> require multiple amino acid residues. Michael J. Behe and David W.
> Snoke

  I read the abstract and quickly skimmed the article. My impression:
compared to most I.D. "popular" publications, this article makes much more
modest and, hence, more scientifically supportable claims.
  Many ID popular publications have been rightly criticized for not being
clear about the model of biological evolution they are considering, for
implicitly assuming simplistic models of evolution which don't take into
account all of the mechanisms by which evolution can happen, and (as a
result) for reaching broad but poorly-supported conclusions. This
article, by contrast, is explicit about the model and mechanisms of
evolution being considered. As a result, this article can make a
scientifically supportable but much more modest claim along the lines of:
"Certain kinds of biological features probably could not have evolved and
become fixed in a population _using_only_the_mechanisms_in_this_model. If
those features evolved, other mechanisms must have been involved."

Loren Haarsma
Received on Tue Jul 19 11:49:48 2005