Michael Behe and Darwin's big theory

Years ago, I met Michael Behe, American biochemist and author of Edge of Evolution, and he - then and always - struck me as a scientist who needed to witness to what science is supposed to be, against the spirit of the age.

Born in the wrong time, he was. In a time when scientists exist to provide proof for fascistic atheism.

Darwin's theory of evolution is promoted in order to make atheism work.

Behe could not make Darwin's theory work because the theory is not true to the reality of life. And he was not willing to buy into the many ways that others cope with that fact, and go on with their careers.

Political correctness demands that he either make the theory work, or pretend to. But he can't because it is not true.

Of course, hordes of grantsmen are willing to pretend that it is true. The sponsors of theories like the peacock's tail and the big bazooms theory of human evolution prance and dance before the grants committees. So?

Surely we have all been here before. Flatuent profs and glad rag-waving teachers, to say nothing of eager, agreeable museum docents. The sort of people whose position depends on agreeing with whatever is going down.

But they cannot make their shibboleth true by an exercise of the will alone.

No wonder Behe is so hated. Anyway, here is a podcast with Behe:

How Michael Behe Came to Doubt Darwin's Theory

Click here to listen.

This episode of ID the Future features a clip from national radio host Michael Medved's intriguing interview with CSC senior fellow and biochemist Michael Behe. How did Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution first come to doubt Darwin's theory? Listen in and find out.

Christian mathematician John Lennox vs. former Christian science writer Michael Shermer, on God, design, and all that

Here's the The Great Debate - Does God Exist?, between British mathematician John Lennox and American science writer Michael Shermer at the Center for Public Christianity, Sydney, Australia (August 27, 2008)

Lennox tells me in a recent post that he has always been a Christian - unlike his Oxford colleague Alister McGrath, who was at one time an atheist. (I'm told Lennox has since moved to University of London, but (update) apparently not.) Lennox is a very active debater, too Here are some of his venues:


Events:

"New debate on God, atheism, and science on very spot where Samuel Wilberforce debated Thomas Huxley"

"Debate with Christopher Hitchens at the Edinburgh Festival on "The New Europe should prefer the New Atheism."

"Scientist apologist John Lennox to debate atheist Richard Dawkins October 3, 2007" Also: "Lennox-Dawkins debate - updates" (This one was live blogged.)

My review of Lennox's book God's Undertaker

("God's Undertaker?: Well, you know, that undertaker is 001 in the unemployment line, ... and still waiting ") The book is being relaunched next year, bigger and better, he tells me.

Here's more on Shermer, and here's his "former Christian" story in his own words:

I had found the One True Religion, and it was my duty — indeed it was my pleasure — to tell others about it, including my parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and even total strangers. In other words, I “witnessed” to people — a polite term for trying to convert them (one wag called it Amway with Bibles). Of course, I read the Bible, as well as books about the Bible. I regularly attended youth church groups, one in particular at a place called “The Barn,” a large red house in La Crescenta, California at which Christians gathered a couple of times a week to sing, pray, and worship. I got so involved that I eventually began to put on Bible study courses myself. (Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: W.H. Freeman, 2000), 2-3.)

But as he tells it later,

By the end of my first year in a graduate program in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, I had abandoned Christianity and stripped off my silver ichthus, replacing what was for me the stultifying dogma of a 2,000-year-old religion with the worldview of an always changing, always fresh science. The passionate nature of this perspective was espoused most emphatically by my evolutionary biology professor …

"For sale, one silver ichthus, lightly used"?