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Saturday, August 04, 2007

So the significance of Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution is beginning to be understood?

First Things top editor Richard John Neuhaus defends Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution, noting about Richard Dawkins' attack review in the New York Times,
You usually know that somebody is losing the argument when he loses his cool and resorts to bluster, abuse, caricature, and the invocation of authorities who agree with him. The New York Times Book Review, for reasons that surpass charitable explanation, gave Michael Behe’s most recent book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, to Richard Dawkins for review. Behe is a biochemist, author of Darwins Black Box, and a proponent of Intelligent Design. Dawkins is an atheist polemicist against religion, holds the ill-named Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and is author of the God Delusion.

Dawkins begins by saying he feels "sorry" for Behe, whom he describes as the “poster boy of creationists everywhere.” Never mind that Behe is not a “creationist.” No less than three times in the review, Dawkins alludes to the fact that Behe’s colleagues in his university’s biology department have publicly distanced themselves from his position. The other biologists at Lehigh University disagree with Behe. It follows that he must be a nut. Further, “Behe is taking on Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J.B.S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Richard Lewontin, John Maynard Smith, and hundreds of their talented coworkers and intellectual descendents.” This is what is known as argument from authority.

Basically, Dawkins cannot answer Behe's findings about the inability of OBSERVED Darwinian evolution to do what he claims, so he is forced to resort to these rhetorical dodges. It should play well among older middle aged women who shock themselves with their opinions.

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