Veritas Forum - Audience Question Period

1. Repeating Hefner’s last question (from the panel discussion section): how does design help in science?
   
   Behe’s answer: Referred to Dembski’s book again. You can use probabilities to demonstrate design. You can look at protein structure to see how likely it is that you’d get a particular protein and could it have come into existence by chance and the chance of getting protein to perform a particular job (e.g. carry oxygen). You can test the probability of two proteins binding together (as in the case of flagella and cilia) and use random mutagenesis to see how often mutants can do something. By then studying the properties of the mutated protein in reference to the normal protein, you could make some judgements about whether or not the regular protein could have evolved in gradual steps. Of course, this sort of analysis ignores a couple of things – a protein doesn’t have to be fully functional to be useful. A protein that works only slightly, is better than one that doesn’t work at all. Similarly, there is ample biological evidence that a protein that has been working in one system can be co-opted and put to a totally different use in a different system. This all also assumes that we know everything about proteins and their structure and function (which we don’t) to be able to decide on those probabilities.
   
   
2. As far as the fruitfulness of a theory, isn’t it more important that it be correct?
   
   Hefner’s Response: Well, a true theory that doesn’t make any new predictions or suggest any experiments isn’t very useful.
   
3. If you posit design, who designed the designer?
   
   Behe’s response: The question remains open. Perhaps God wasn’t designed, perhaps non-IC aliens are responsible for life. Can know something is designed without answering that question.
   
   Hefner’s Response (to Behe): Are you really at odds with Darwin? Are you saying that the agency of design is the difference (Darwin said that nature was the designer)?
   
   Behe’s Response: Darwin was using design as apparent design, not what most people think.
   
4. To Behe: Can you give a falsifiable condition for your theory?
   
   Behe's Response: take bacteria, and put them under selection pressure to move in a lab and see if it develops an IC system like the flagellum. Of course, a Darwinist would never accept this because it's not natural selection.
   
   My comment - Of course, he's neglecting that the bacterial flagellum has had several billion years to evolve. He's also failing to understand that this is not necessarily what Darwinism would predict to happen. Just because you put something under selection for a trait doesn't mean it will always develop it! If the variation doesn't exist, then the trait won't evolve just because we want it to!
   
5. To Wolfe: Is the field of microbiology the only field with the notion of design?
   
   Wolfe's response: Microbiologists look at a system in isolation, not the whole thing. Taking a system out of the organism isn't necessarily the best way to work on something.
   (There was more here, but I was talking to someone sitting next to me, so I missed it, sorry).
   
6. In IC things (e.g. a watch) we see purpose (even in the smallest parts). We see that things have no apparent purpose, so why would a designer make us with no purpose?
   
   Response from Collins: You don't have to know the purpose of something (e.g. Stonehenge) to declare that something is designed.
   
   My comment - That's nice, what he's basically saying is that it's designed because he says it is. Not the best methodology for science, IMO.
   
7. To Wolfe: How should molecular biologists ask questions?
   
   Response: They should do more wide comparisons between many different organisms, looking for similarities and for simpler systems that might show examples of how evolution could have worked.
   
8. The magnetic field of the earth is decreasing, and if we were to extrapolate backwards, it couldn’t be very old.
   
   Nobody bothered to answer this one. It's been dealt with so many times and in such detail that it's just amazing that someone would even ask this question, when it's been refuted so many times. Scary thing was, on the way out, the person who asked was congratulated by another audience member for "stumping" all the panel members with the question! No cure for ignorance, I guess.
   
9. Behe said Darwinism is being challenged, shouldn’t a theory be challenged as it gets more knowledge and be modified? Was Behe right and what does it mean?
   
   Hefner - Darwinism has been modified and changed in the face of challenges. Darwinism has been very fruitful in suggesting new avenues of research. Even with all the changes, it's still Darwinism.
   
   Behe - I'm only interested in scientific objections, it's not a question of religion.
   My comment - Right, you never find an atheistic creationist…
   
   DiSilvestro - Some religious ideas do conflict with science, so they can't be put together acceptably.
   
   (Wolfe - I missed this response as well, sorry).
   
10. If ID gets support, what happens? Do philosophy and religion have to change?
    
    Rudovsky - Design says nothing about the designer, so there would still be questions about that, which would fall under those fields.
    
    Collins - This would change what questions/theories you can have. Why should the supernatural be excluded?
    
    
11. Are there a significant number of superfluous IC systems? Are they going out or waiting for the last piece?
    
    Behe's Response - Good question…eyes in blind cavefish are clearly going out, but are they any coming in? I don't know.

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