Hey everyone, we’re back with more of this series
exposing all the frauds associated with Discovery Institute, the Christian propaganda mill hellbent
on pushing religion as science. We’ve already made mincemeat of Casey Luskin and Stephen
Meyer, so today we move on to Michael Behe. Now unlike most of the DI’s sad little roster,
Behe was at one point a real scientist, a biochemist who published real research. But so
is James Tour, and we are well aware how ignorant and dishonest he is when it comes to science that
infringes on his faith. As will become clear, devout Catholic Behe, the DI’s starting pitcher,
so to speak, is pretty much the same as Tour. A real scientist, but on topics like evolution,
he's just embarrassingly wrong, and also a liar, even if a little less unhinged than Tour.
With this in mind, we are going to examine the claims that Behe makes, most notably
the concept of “irreducible complexity” that he is famous for, and demonstrate
that they are nothing more than run of the mill science denial. Ready? Let’s begin.
In addition to his full-time academic career, Behe is a Senior Fellow at the Center for
Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, whose agenda was described in great detail
in parts 1 and 2 so we won’t backtrack here. Those who are familiar with the scripture of
intelligent design are likely aware that Behe’s primary contribution to their mission has been to
coin “irreducible complexity” as a concept that applies to biological systems and is probably
their single favorite anti-evolution argument. Behe’s first and most popular work is
Darwin’s Black Box, published in 1996, in which he makes the case against evolution
based on this concept of irreducible complexity. Despite the book being promoted as a
“scientific” rebuttal to “Darwinian” evolution, it obviously was not subject to peer review. It’s
a book written for a mass audience of laypeople, not Behe’s peers in the scientific community,
just as with all the books written by anyone else affiliated with the DI. This is how
the intelligent design movement operates, exclusively outside the scrutiny of real science,
and for very good reason, as we shall see. So what is irreducible complexity? Here’s
how Behe defines it in Darwin’s Black Box: “By irreducibly complex I mean a single
system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic
function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously
improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive
modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that
is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there
is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. Since natural selection can
only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be
produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for
natural selection to have anything to act on.” So to put it even more simply, he is
saying that if a biological system, such as their absolute favorite example,
the bacterial flagellum, has multiple parts, and it needs all of those parts for the system
to work, the system could not have evolved via so-called “Darwinian” means, because there isn’t
a step-by-step pathway to go from not having that system, to having the complete, functional
system as it currently exists. Any simpler or incomplete version of that system would be
non-functional and thus could not be selected for. Now, there are three ways to interpret this
paragraph from Behe’s book, and Behe has seemed to float between them based on the specific
context, so rather than trying to divine exactly what he means, we’ll take each one and explain
why it doesn’t work. Remember, the hypothesis Behe is proposing is that systems which meet his
criteria for irreducible complexity cannot evolve. The first way to interpret this argument is the
most literal interpretation, that the hypothesis only applies to Darwinian mechanisms of evolution,
since he specifies “a challenge to Darwinian evolution”. Charles Darwin published
On the Origin of Species in 1859, in which he described evolution as a
process that occurs via natural selection acting on heritable variation within populations.
Traits that confer a fitness advantage, meaning a comparative edge in successfully reproducing and
having offspring who also subsequently reproduce, will become more common as generations pass,
at the expense of less beneficial traits. As differences accumulate, populations and species
may split in two, leading to new species, and through this mechanism, all extant organisms are
related via common ancestry. In modern parlance, “Darwinian” evolution is natural selection
acting on variation caused by mutations. Remember, the relevant question when it comes
to the irreducible complexity hypothesis is “can this system evolve?” Therefore, if we’re limiting
the mechanisms to just those proposed by Darwin in 1859, the concept of irreducible complexity is
irrelevant. There are many, many other mechanisms of evolution that we’ve discovered since 1859.
A list of them would include genetic drift, sexual selection, recombination, gene flow
- including horizontal gene transfer, niche construction, and epigenetics, most of which are
explained in my biology series for those looking for some background information on mechanisms of
evolution. But the point is that we do not refer to these mechanisms as “Darwinian”, since Darwin
did not describe them, as he was unaware of the entirety of genetics. It would be silly to develop
a criterion that excludes all but the most basic mechanisms of evolution and then write a book
arguing that this criterion precludes evolution in general, given the reality of all these other
evolutionary mechanisms. Behe recognizes that other mechanisms exist, but incorrectly insists
on calling any “unguided” process “Darwinian”. And gene duplication, that’s fine,
that’s one event though. So, yeah. So, any unguided process. Alright, any unguided
pro... Ok, any unguided processes, got it. So… Pretty bush league error, but let’s give Behe
a pass here and revise his hypothesis for him. So a better interpretation of irreducible
complexity is that we are considering not just the kinds of processes Darwin proposed,
but all evolutionary processes. In that context, there are two remaining versions of the
hypothesis, and neither one is any better than the first. The second possible interpretation,
and the “best” one, if we can call it that, in terms of being an actual, testable hypothesis,
could be stated as “no systems that meet the criteria for irreducible complexity can arise
through evolutionary processes”. Unfortunately, since this form of the argument is actually
testable and falsifiable, it has, of course, been falsified. Many times. All it takes to
invalidate this argument is a single observed instance of the evolution of a system that
checks Behe’s boxes, and we have more than that. One example comes from the famous Lenski
Long Term Evolution Experiment, or LTEE, which we mentioned briefly in the Meyer debunk.
In this experiment, 12 populations of E. coli have been evolving in the lab since 1988. They’re grown
with glucose as the only food source, but one of the twelve populations evolved the ability to
metabolize another compound in their environment: citrate. E. coli can digest citrate, but
only when there isn’t any oxygen around. This one group of E. coli started eating citrate
in our normal, oxygen-containing atmosphere, and when researchers looked into how that
happened, they found a bunch of mutations, all of which were required for the
new trait, which they called “Cit+”. Specifically, there were mutations to the CitT
gene, mutations in another gene called DctA, and a duplication of that CitT gene into a new
region of the E. coli genome. It was this new copy that was active under aerobic conditions,
conferring the Cit+ trait, but the duplication alone wasn’t sufficient. The Cit+ E. coli needed
all of the mutations to have the new trait, meaning it meets Behe’s criteria for irreducible
complexity: a novel function requiring multiple mutations or changes to the genome, none of
which can have been selected for individually. Now, since we got to see it evolve before our
eyes in this long-running evolution experiment, we’ve instantly falsified this version
of the irreducible complexity hypothesis. Ironically, one of Behe’s colleagues at
Discovery Institute, Dr. Scott Minnich, a professor in the Department of Agricultural
and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho, co-authored a paper describing this pathway
in detail, inadvertently highlighting its irreducible nature. I’m sure he got a slap
on the wrist from Meyer and pals for that. Moving on from E. coli, there are other such
directly observed examples of irreducibly complex traits evolving. There is the VPU protein
in HIV-1 group M, the lineage of HIV responsible for the global HIV pandemic first documented in
the early 1980s. This now has a novel function inactivating a protein of the human immune system
called tetherin. Human tetherin is different enough from the same protein in chimpanzees
such that simian immunodeficiency virus, from which HIV evolved, can’t counter it. This new
trait requires three to seven specific mutations, leading to several completely new protein
binding sites. HIV only jumped from chimps into humans around 1930, so this is another recent
example of an irreducibly complex trait evolving. There are also the many animals that eat
photosynthetic algae which appear to be on their way to becoming photosynthetic themselves
via endosymbiosis. There are lizards which are transitioning from laying eggs to live birth, in
one case doing both in a single litter. There are the unicellular algae that evolved in the
lab to become permanently multicellular. All of these traits are extremely complex and
unquestionably meet Behe’s criteria. And since they’ve all unquestionably evolved,
each one falsifies Behe’s claim that irreducibly complex systems can’t evolve.
“But wait!” says the creationist. “Sure, some irreducibly complex systems could evolve,
but there are some biological systems so complex that they definitely couldn’t.” This is
what you find behind door number three of the irreducible complexity argument: Irreducible
complexity doesn’t entirely preclude evolution, but there are some cases in which it does.
This is, unfortunately for creationists, an unfalsifiable claim. It turns a scientific
hypothesis into a game of whack-a-mole. No matter how many times creationists
point to a supposedly unevolvable system, and then biologists figure out its evolutionary
history, there’s always another system creationists will point to and say “but this
one, surely, this one couldn’t have evolved.” So if creationists want to fall back to
this version of irreducible complexity, they are welcome to it, but it’s not real science,
and it is utterly transparent in its desperation. People like Behe, and especially the
non-scientists who hold up his claims as gospel, will avoid and redirect by whatever means
necessary, no matter the level of dishonesty required. That’s why even Behe himself pushes
the same tired trope of using man-made objects to pretend that evolution is impossible.
There is a reason all creationists do this. Behe needs the example to be relatable for the
layperson or its manipulative power falls apart. Now it turns out, if any of these parts are
missing, the trap doesn’t work. So, not only is it complex, it’s what I call irreducibly complex.
You can’t take a part away and still have it work. If you took away this hammer, you know the mice
don’t get caught. You take away the spring or the holding bar, any of the pieces, it doesn’t work.
That’s right, a mouse trap. Something humans built, for a specific purpose, doesn’t work the
way it’s supposed to work if it’s not built the way we designed it. So basically, humans build
things, therefore everything must have been built. An argument so stupid, a child could debunk it.
Do you see how all proponents of intelligent design eventually sound just like Kent
Hovind if you listen to them long enough? This is made of natural components, is
it possible for a pen to make itself? Or does this require a designer, whether I ever
meet the guy or not, would you say it’s logical to say this had a designer?
But we immediately see that the arrangement of these parts has a purpose. And
so we immediately grasp the intelligence that was needed to produce something like this.
Virtually indistinguishable. This same dishonesty is behind the persistent fixation
on biological functionality that is seemingly analogous to machinery. It’s a way to make the
mouse trap comparison seem more valid. Hence, the bacterial flagellum, which has some parts
that work together, kind of like a machine. This is presented ad nauseam because Behe’s
targets do not understand what is involved in generating any of the new functionalities
we described with E. coli or HIV, as it requires some knowledge of genetics, so they don’t
understand that these examples debunk irreducible complexity. They just need to see something
that looks kind of like a machine to them, and the dishonest comparison to the actual
machine will have a shot at convincing them. Here’s a bacterium. A single-cell
microbe. Some bacteria have a flagellum, which is like an outboard motor on a boat.
It rotates to propel bacteria through liquid, and it’s necessary for their survival,
in order to swim to search for food. A flagellum has a number of parts. A drive
shaft, a universal joint, a rotor, bushings, stator, even a clutch and braking system. The
motor of the flagellum has been clocked at 100,000 revolutions per minute. And as with the mouse
trap, removing even one component of this elegant machine destroys its function and renders the
bacterium, shall we say, dead in the water. The flagellum is irreducibly complex. Notice the constant references to other machines
and machine parts. This is very deliberate. Well unfortunately for Behe, even the evolution
of the bacterial flagellum has been explained. He simply relies on his audience not knowing
that these proteins which comprise the system can have, and did have, alternative functions
as parts of other systems. There are countless examples in evolutionary history of an existing
functional protein being co-opted to serve some other function, particularly following
gene duplication. But more importantly, the system is not irreducibly complex. A simpler
system could still function, and in fact a simpler flagellum does indeed exist in certain extant
species of archaea. The flagellum can be reduced, so it is not irreducible. Behe can’t demonstrate
that every protein is needed for functionality, he just blindly asserts it. Remember that nature
finds something that works and then refines it over time. He has no idea what past iterations
of a flagellum looked like. A version that merely twitches instead of rotating smoothly would also
produce motion, and thus could be selected for. Behe doesn’t even specify a particular bacterial
flagellum despite the fact that there are many types. And of course he ignores any potential
alternate functions for any of these structures, which do exist. Some flagella export proteins.
Spirochete flagella maintain cell shape. Some flagella are used for cell-to-cell contacts.
These are functions that can be selected for, allowing for novel function to emerge over
time. And in fact, similar structures used by some bacterial species are capable of
injecting poison into other organisms. And it turns out, the two structures look similar
for a reason. The syringe on the right is made of a subset of the very same protein types found in
the base of the flagellum on the left. Though the syringe is missing proteins found in the motor,
and therefore cannot produce rotary motion, it functions perfectly as an
apparatus for transmitting disease. There you go. It’s reducible.
But Behe just doesn’t get it. Here he is complaining in a 2016 blog post for ID
propaganda outlet Evolution News, where he wants someone to take a bacterial species, knock out the
genes for the flagellum, apply selective pressure, and wait for it to evolve a flagellum or
an equally complex system. Hilariously, he is oblivious to the fact that this precise
experiment was carried out the year before. Here’s the paper. Gene deletion produced
two strains of bacteria with no flagellum. They then introduced selective pressure for
motility by depleting the nutrients in the colony. Within 96 hours, both strains
had regenerated flagellar motility by a pathway involving two successive point
mutations in genes that served other purposes. Exaption of genes for a novel purpose is something
these DI folks don’t want anyone to know about, but either way, we’ve shown conclusively that the
bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex. This same treatment can be offered for any other
system they try to complain about, and when shown to their face the clear pathway by which it either
evolved in front of our eyes, or likely evolved in the past, it’s never anything but obfuscation and
redirection. This is one of the many ways we know that intelligent design isn’t science, because
that’s not how scientists behave. Scientists acknowledge data, and in the case of anomalous
data, science is revised to fit the new data. Interestingly, in an attempt to appear empirical
on the matter, Behe himself published the results of a simulation ostensibly testing his idea.
The paper is titled “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require
multiple amino acid residues”, by Michael Behe and David Snoke, and it was published in the
journal Protein Science in 2004. In this paper, Behe and Snoke describe a simulation in which
they documented the time it would take to evolve a new trait requiring two specific mutations - in
other words, how long it would take to evolve a new trait with irreducible complexity. They and
other ID proponents have touted the results as validating not just the concept of irreducible
complexity but intelligent design as a whole, when in reality the opposite is true. In their
model, Behe and Snoke permitted only single-base mutations and natural selection. No recombination,
no duplications beyond the initial presumed one, no other evolutionary changes. They also
specified a pre-determined target sequence and only considered the simulation to have been
“successful” if that specific target evolved. In other words, they made the same errors other
creationists have made and continue to make when they invoke things like the so-called “waiting
time problem”, which we talked about in the Meyer debunk. They are pretending that nature has to do
an extremely specific thing in order to evolve, when it just doesn’t, and they all know
this. Hilariously, despite all these flaws, Behe and Snoke found that their target sequence
did actually evolve, in population sizes and timeframes that are entirely realistic, and if
anything, quite small compared to real-world populations. The paper literally proves them
wrong, and they somehow count it as a win anyway. This and other revelations about Behe’s work were
exposed because of the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, which we also talked about in the Meyer debunk.
This was the most recent in a line of cases testing the legality of evolution and creationism
in the public science classroom whose lineage stretches back to the 1925 Scopes monkey trial.
The school district in question added a one-page statement on “intelligent design” to its high
school biology curriculum, which was challenged as an Establishment Clause violation by parents
and teachers. Both sides brought their big names as expert witnesses in the ensuing trial, and on
the ID side, no name was bigger than Michael Behe. His “expert testimony” in defense of ID went well
enough, but his cross-examination, much less so, as can be seen by anyone who reads the
transcript which is freely available. When questioned about his 2004 paper, Behe
tacitly acknowledged that the population size in their model was orders of magnitude smaller
than real-world bacterial populations, which had the effect of vastly underestimating the rate
at which such “irreducible” traits could evolve, even without the other unrealistic constraints
of their model. In one striking exchange, Behe acknowledged a paper which indicated that
there are more prokaryotes in a single ton of soil than in his model population, and that
there is a lot more than one ton of soil on Earth. He also made a complete fool of himself in a
discussion about theories. Here he is sounding like a flat earther, attempting to contrast
theory and fact, as though they are antonyms. He then goes on to acknowledge that in order for
intelligent design to be considered science at all, a redefinition of the concept of a scientific
theory would be required, and this new definition “sweeps in a lot more propositions”,
including superstitions like astrology. So yes, ID is a theory like astrology
is a theory, in that they both aren’t. Furthermore, the Dover trial illustrated something
that is a bit of a trend throughout Behe’s work: ignoring existing research on a topic in order to
claim that there just isn’t an explanation for X, or we’ve never seen Y, when in fact
we have exactly what Behe wants. He just refuses to acknowledge it. This tendency
was revealed under cross-examination in Dover as lawyers for the plaintiffs produced literal
stacks of papers and books on the evolution of systems which Behe not only claimed scientists
are ignorant of, but are actually impossible to evolve due to their “irreducibly complex”
nature. At one point, when claiming the immune system was irreducibly complex, he was presented
with 58 peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about
the evolution of the immune system, which we know a lot about from studying the immune systems
of many different extant species which exhibit a tremendous variety in their complexity. But
like a child, “nuh uh” was Behe’s best defense. And that’s all Behe really had. ID is like
astrology, and pretending science which proves him wrong isn’t real. Since Behe was
the highlight of the trial for the ID side, it’s no wonder the judge scathingly rebuked the
school district and tossed out intelligent design as creationism with a new name. In fact, the
“intelligent design textbook” purchased by the district with an anonymous donation originally
started out as a “creation science” text, containing this definition: “Creation means that
the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their
distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks,
and wings, etc.” But a subsequent edition, dated shortly after the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard
decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that “creation science” is a religious concept and
therefore a violation of the Establishment Clause if taught in public school science classes,
contained this definition of intelligent design: “Intelligent design means that various forms of
life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact –
fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.” Shockingly similar, huh?
An early post-Edwards version even contained the telling typo “cdesign proponentsists”, where the
word “creationists” was improperly replaced by “design proponents”. How much more transparently
can it be demonstrated that intelligent design is just creationism with a different name
literally cut and pasted in its place? Of course Behe is aware of all this, but
continues to lend his credentials and reputation to the cause so that the ID movement can
dishonestly misrepresent itself as real science. We have two more of Behe’s books to tear apart,
but first let’s pause for a quick announcement. What can you do to help fight against
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Moving on, Behe’s second book, The Edge of Evolution, was published in 2007. Of course
like any other book, it was not peer-reviewed, and it shows. Had an evolutionary biologist
given it a once-over prior to publication, the many basic errors could have been addressed,
things like incorrectly defining the concept of evolutionary fitness, mis-stating what is meant
by the mitochondrial most recent common ancestor, implying that evolution is synonymous with
“random”, misrepresenting the genetics underlying developmental processes, and
getting the units for “mutation rate” wrong. He also analogizes evolutionary
competition to trench warfare, in contrast to the frequently employed “arms
race” analogy, the attempted point being that evolution ultimately results in a destructive
stasis rather than progress. But his history is as bad as his biology on this point, because World
War I saw enormous innovation in infantry tactics, such as infiltration tactics, small unit tactics,
and combined arms involving infantry, artillery, and ultimately tanks, all of which ultimately
led to Blitzkrieg. So likening evolution to trench warfare is a surprisingly good analogy,
but for the precise opposite reason Behe thinks. Of course, these are small quibbles. The real
problem here is that Behe is essentially making a book-length “waiting time problem” argument.
He picks examples of evolution that he thinks represent the absolute maximum rate at which
evolution can occur, tries to show how that rate is too slow to accomplish anything significant,
even in the entire history of life on earth, and argues that there must therefore be some
underlying intelligent force causing or guiding evolutionary change. Let’s break our refutation
of this fallacious argument into two parts. First we’ll look at conceptual problems stemming
from Behe’s poor understanding of evolutionary biology, and then we’ll examine why he’s
wrong about the specific examples he employs. Big picture first, Behe’s arguments are based
on clear misunderstandings of basic aspects of evolutionary theory. For example, he seems
to think that for any given biochemical trait, like drug resistance or disease immunity, there is
one way, and only one way, to accomplish that job, despite he himself describing the biochemical
details of more than one form of malaria resistance found in humans. Direct experiments
on this question using random DNA sequences have shown that there are often many ways
of accomplishing the same biological job. He also talks about what evolutionary processes
can and cannot accomplish “by themselves”, as though they take turns as species evolve.
Well, evolutionary processes don’t operate “by themselves”, in a vacuum. In reality, a
number of processes - selection, mutation, drift, recombination, and others - are all operating
simultaneously. Examining each one on its own and throwing up your hands at their limitations is
straight from the traditional “creation science” playbook. You can find writers for Answers
in Genesis explaining how natural selection can’t create anything new, without bothering to
acknowledge that mutation and recombination can. Speaking of recombination, like the other
proponents of the waiting time problem, Behe ignores recombination entirely. He seems to
think that as the number of mutations needed for a trait increase, you need a correspondingly large
increase in population size to have even a chance of evolving that trait, since of course it would
take longer and longer to get them sequentially. And also, if any step in the process is harmful,
like if a set of two mutations is beneficial, but each individual mutation is harmful, no
evolution for you. Both of these “problems” are solved by recombination, removing the requirement
that individual mutations occur sequentially and persist until the next one occurs in the same
lineage. Two versions of the same chromosome, each with one mutation, can cross over and
produce one chromosome with both mutations, going from one to two pertinent mutations
in a single generation. Again, check the Meyer debunk for a full explanation of this.
Later, Behe butchers the concept of fitness landscapes in a way that is both extremely
basic and completely undermines his argument. To understand how, we need to take a moment to
explain fitness landscapes. A fitness landscape is a representation of how different genotypes
are more or less fit in a specific environment. They’re usually shown visually as two-
or three-dimensional graphs of fitness as a product of genotype. More fit genotypes
are shown as higher elevations on the landscape. That “in a specific environment” part is
important, because fitness is all about context. In one time or place, a particular genotype
might be extremely fit, but in a different time or place, it might have low fitness.
Behe completely misses this trivial detail. He argues that crossing “valleys” is
impossible via evolutionary processes, since any intermediate between two peaks or
two high-fitness genotypes will be low fitness, and selected against. In making this argument, he
assumes that fitness landscapes are constant, and genotypes have fixed fitness values, regardless
of environmental or ecological conditions. He clearly is not familiar enough with basic
evolutionary concepts to make a coherent argument, since variable fitness landscapes solve the
problem he says is unsolvable. As conditions change, genotypes that were valleys previously
can come to occupy new fitness peaks, and what were peaks can become valleys. So selection will
favor different genotypes over time, allowing a population to cross from one peak to another.
Again, this is super basic, and it’s inexcusable that Behe doesn’t understand it, or much worse
if he does, and makes the argument anyway. The final conceptual problem here is that he
constantly, like virtually all of his Discovery Institute colleagues, uses “Darwinism” as
a synonym for “evolution”, knowing full well that the vast majority of evolutionary
biology is based on non-Darwinian processes, or stuff that we figured out well after Darwin.
Darwinists will be happy to talk with you all day. Nobody’s even tried to explain how a Darwinian
process could produce the blood clotting system or the flagellum, and so on. Darwin’s mechanism
can do this or that or the other thing. I talked about this misleading language in
the Luskin debunk, much to the dislike of Gunter Bechly, who whined about it in a series
of pathetic blog posts for Evolution News that acknowledged none of the meat of my video. For
that move he earned himself a spot in this series, so we will deal with him and his lies
later. But for now, Behe knows full well that he’s misleading his audience by calling
aspects of evolutionary theory from the 1980s “Darwinian”, in an attempt to reduce the entire
field of evolutionary biology to the utterances of a single dead prophet. A mere belief system
that can be pitted against other belief systems, like religion, when in fact evolution is the
cornerstone of biology, which is a science. It’s a smear campaign. But having a boogeyman is useful,
so he goes all in just like the rest of them. They should probably listen to biologist and
christian Josh Swamidass, who acknowledges this misspeak on the part of creationists.
And I’m not a Darwinist. Biologists aren’t Darwinists. Ken Miller isn’t a Darwinist.
Eugenie Scott is not a Darwinist either. We’ve moved on from Darwin, who was like
150 years ago. We’re dealing with more modern evolutionary science to be clear.
That’s right, folks. From the mouth of a christian, biologists aren’t Darwinists. Funny
how the DI frauds just keep saying it anyway, huh? These problems on their own are enough for anyone
to toss out Edge of Evolution as complete garbage, but the specific examples he picks to represent
the so-called “edge” of evolution – the evolutionary speed limit, essentially - are
terrible examples to use. The two cases he focuses on – and yes, he picks only two cases
and extrapolates to literally all life – are chloroquine resistance in plasmodium, the parasite
that causes malaria, and HIV adaptation in humans. In my second book, the Edge of Evolution,
I discuss the evolution of resistance of malaria cells to chloroquine, an anti-malarial
drug. And I point out that in the, in its journey before it evolved this resistance, there were
10^20, an astronomical number of malarial cells that could have evolved or could have mutated
or something, to produce some really snazzy new molecular machinery. And it turns out that when
the changes conferring chloroquine resistance onto the malaria were discovered, they were just two
crummy little changes, in a pre-existing protein in the malarial cell. So that, I
think, was just straight, pretty much micro, Darwinian microevolution.
The first problem is that both cases are examples of directional selection. This is when a
population is under a single overriding selective pressure, in these cases drug exposure and living
in a new host. Under directional selection, the single trait under selection will experience
rapid adaptation until it gets “good enough”, so to speak. Then we have “stabilizing selection”,
or selection against any future changes, because they could make the trait worse. What Behe
should have focused on is disruptive selection, or selection for different traits in a single
population - or adaptive radiation events - when one species or population diversifies under
a range of selective pressures, not just one. The second problem with Behe’s argument is that
he ignores competing selective pressures that slow down one-dimensional adaptation. He actually talks
about this elsewhere as a problem for evolution, but somehow doesn’t realize that it applies
to his own argument. Basically, there are tradeoffs to everything. Drug resistance is a
common example. Germs can gain drug resistance, but that costs energy, so in the absence of the
drug, resistance can actually be harmful. That energy cost is still there even when the germs are
not benefiting from the drug resistance, and it often gets worse the more resistant they are. So
you’ll see rapid evolution of resistance until the costs outweigh the benefits. Then we see, again,
stabilizing selection: get less resistant and you die, get more resistant and you’re wasting energy.
So Behe takes an example of drug resistance, says “this is a strong selection pressure, so it should
be fast evolution”, and then says “but we only see X changes in Y years, so evolution is too slow!”
ignoring that this is exactly what we should expect. Once the plasmodia are resistant enough
to survive, evolving more is a waste of energy, and is selected against. That makes Behe’s
supposed speed limit slower than the actual rate of evolution in the examples he’s using,
since he’s lumping the directional and stabilizing parts of the pathway together, instead of
just looking at the directional selection. Also, it’s quite amusing to note that if Behe
considers this drug resistance to be impossible to evolve, it means that he believes in a god who
deliberately bestowed plasmodia with resistance to our drugs in order to ensure that we continue
to contract malaria. Gee, what a swell guy. It actually gets even worse than this, because it
turns out Behe didn’t actually look that hard at these examples that supposedly don’t show enough
evolution, as he missed some pretty significant evolution that happened a lot faster than he
says it can. In chapter 7, writing about HIV, he said “there have been no significant basic
biochemical changes in the virus at all” and “there have been no reports of new viral
protein-protein interactions developing in an infected cell due to mutations in HIV proteins”,
and those statements are both flat-out wrong. We already talked about this example a bit earlier,
but to reiterate, an HIV protein called Vpu did exactly what Behe says can’t happen.
It evolved two new protein binding sites involving multiple mutations in the time since
HIV-1 jumped from chimps into humans in the early twentieth century, in order to deactivate
human tetherin. This required as many as seven new mutations to produce a novel function.
I want to be extremely clear here: this is undeniably a direct refutation of Behe’s
argument in Edge. It’s exactly the kind of thing that he claims would take too long
to have evolved. He actually coined a rule, the “two-binding-sites rule”, which states
that the probability of two new protein-protein binding sites evolving would require more
cells than have ever existed on earth, and is therefore “beyond the edge of evolution”.
But here we have exactly that feature appearing in HIV. And HIV has only existed for about a
hundred years, which means the “two-binding-sites rule” does not exist, and neither does
Behe’s supposed evolutionary speed limit. This little problem with Edge of Evolution
was first pointed out by an at-the-time graduate student and blogger, now Dr. Abbie Smith,
on her blog, ERV, as in “endogenous retrovirus”, since Smith is an expert in the very thing
Behe was spouting off about. Behe’s response was dismissive of then-student Smith’s argument,
involved just a wee bit of casual sexism with an allusion to Mean Girls, and misrepresented
the novel traits in HIV by describing them as “gumming up the works”, rather than as new
specific protein-protein binding sites. In a subsequent exchange with Dr. Ian Musgrave,
Behe defended comparing a young woman to Mean Girls, waffled a bit on what the argument was
actually about, and ultimately conceded the point, saying: “Yes, I’m perfectly willing to concede
that this does appear to be the development of a new viral protein-viral protein binding site,
one which I overlooked when writing about HIV.” So to review, Behe got just about everything on
this wrong. First he said HIV has evolved no new biochemical traits. Then he said Vpu isn’t a good
example because it’s just “gunking up the works”, which is wrong because it actually evolved several
new specific binding sites. Then he conceded the point, which, for those keeping score, completely
invalidates his argument in The Edge of Evolution. We are just about done here, but to be
thorough, let’s finish off Behe’s major works. His third book was 2019’s Darwin Devolves.
The central thesis of this book is that, sure, new traits can evolve, and sometimes do
so fairly rapidly, but the vast majority of new traits are actually reductive or destructive
in some way, and more broadly, since, according to him, most new traits that evolve are
actually due to some kind of loss of function, such as drug resistance in bacteria due to
the gene for a receptor protein being deleted, large-scale evolutionary changes are impossible.
If Behe had bothered to look at some of the most well-documented examples of evolutionary change,
he’d know that this isn’t the case. In fact, he should know this is nonsense based on examples he
himself described in his other works. For example, in Edge of Evolution, Behe describes a hemoglobin
allele called HbC-Harlem, which, similar to the allele that causes sickle cell disease, confers
resistance to malaria, with, as Behe describes, “the advantages but not the drawbacks of sickle”.
He also describes the aforementioned Cit+ trait in the E. coli of the LTEE, which has a new
metabolic option, without compromising any existing pathways, literally debunking
himself yet refusing to acknowledge it. He has a talent for referencing science that
debunks him but twisting it to pretend that it supports him, like he does here for the LTEE.
And the long and the short is that 30 years after his, or 25 years after his experiment began, he
tracked down about three dozen different mutations that helped the bacterium grow faster or
compete in its environment. And they were all ones that either destroyed or at least
degraded the genes in which they occurred. This is just a lie. We talked about how the
Cit+ trait arose, and it is not through any degradation. Some of the traits are due to
degradation, because of the nature of the experiment. Because the flasks are shaken as
they incubate, this moves the bacteria around, so they don’t need flagella. So losing them is
advantageous energetically, and other things of this nature. Yes, it is possible for the
deactivation of a gene to be selected for, and some such cases occurred in this experiment.
But not dozens, and certainly not “all”, as he claims, as we have explained with the
Cit+ trait. The experiment shows that novel, beneficial, irreducible traits can evolve
rapidly. So he is lying. And he knows it. But this false narrative is just too perfect to
pass up. It’s a way for him to feign charity, describing certain legitimate phenomena in
evolutionary biology, but cherry-picking in a dishonest manner that allows him to pretend that
large-scale evolution can’t happen. This is what most of his current talking points sound like.
In short, helpful mutations are not a DNA upgrade. Getting a newer smartphone is
an upgrade. It’s more helpful because it has completely new features. But
mutations don’t install new features in DNA. They only make changes to existing ones. A
mutation is more like disabling your GPS. It may help you save your battery,
but it doesn’t add a new function. We are told that random mutation is the
main driver for evolutionary change, and that evolution is responsible for lower forms
being upgraded to higher ones. Yet the latest scientific results show new species are made by
breaking genes. By devolution, not evolution. Again, just straight lies. There is no
“devolution”. As you are likely beginning to see, creationists have a sadistic obsession with
painting evolution as some kind of destructive force, but to do so they have to ignore
a long and expanding list of completely new genes rapidly evolving everywhere we look.
There are many papers like this one examining the concept of de novo genes. These are new genes
that originate when previously non-expressed DNA becomes protein coding and preserved via
natural selection, due to promoters arising near previously non-coding sections of DNA. So
we have a section of DNA that was not a gene, which is now a gene. New genes. We used to think
this was rare, but once we figured out how to look for them, by identifying protein-coding sequences
that aren’t protein-coding in all the most closely related species, we started finding them all
over the place. Primates, insects, fungi, plants, you name it. More are being found all the time.
Here’s a paper showing de novo multicellularity for a species of algae in response to predation.
You can use this example anytime a creationist asks you how multicellular organisms first
evolved and watch them become speechless. So again, the point is that Behe and pals need to
deny any non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution, because they love to pretend that the field
hasn’t progressed in 150 years. In actuality, beyond the examples just cited, many or most major
evolutionary events tend to occur through the duplication of genes or even entire chromosomes,
which can then diverge from the original copy to accumulate mutations and produce totally new
proteins with novel functions, without losing any existing functionality from the original gene.
This can alter cellular and metabolic activity, and if these new genes guide embryonic
development, there can even be significant changes to the body plan. This pageantry about
a cell phone losing functions to save energy is just lies disguised as something relatable,
which is all that apologists can do. But beyond all this, perhaps the best
evidence that Darwin Devolves is nonsense is that Behe had to flat out lie to defend
it. In a discussion of Behe’s treatment of documented adaptations in polar bears, Dr. Nathan
Lents pointed out that Behe did not accurately represent the findings of a paper he cited, when
he claimed that virtually all adaptations that polar bears have to their arctic climate are
actually damaging in some way. In response, Behe provided a table from that paper, showing
that all the documented mutations are either “possibly damaging” or “probably damaging”. But
he must have thought nobody would check up on him, since Dr. Lents showed that Behe sneakily omitted
two columns and many rows, and the omitted data, unsurprisingly, tell a very different story.
Here’s the actual table from the paper, supplemental table S7. Whoops. Apart from the two
restored columns, look at all those rows that say “benign”, meaning not harmful in effect. You
know, the exact opposite of what Behe is claiming? There sure are a lot of them, huh? I
wonder how he could have missed those? This is clearly not an accident. Behe is
deliberately misrepresenting scientific research to support his baseless claims. He chopped up
the table to lie to his readers so they would think his book isn’t trash. The data have to be
manipulated because he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Then again, can anyone really be surprised
that he’s a liar? I’ve never come across a single proponent of creationism who isn’t one. From the
lowliest preacher, to the tiny handful with actual scientific credentials, and everyone in between.
So in summary, although Behe was a real scientist, who at one point did real work in the field he
is discussing, a truly rare thing for anyone affiliated with the Discovery Institute, he
is not above promoting pseudoscience like intelligent design. He does this with bad science
like “irreducible complexity”, but also with lies and misrepresentations, like using “Darwinism”
as an epithet for all of evolutionary theory, doctoring data, and promoting the fiction that ID
isn’t just creationism with a new name. Of course, if he wanted to show that ID is real science
worth considering, he knows how to do that. He knows how peer review works and how
real scientists try to persuade each other. But instead of doing that, he writes crappy
books on topics he doesn’t understand that are full of bad arguments, incorrect
information, and deliberate disinformation, all to further the agenda of a propaganda mill
actively trying to pull us back to the dark ages. Special thanks go out to Dan Stern
Cardinale, an evolutionary biologist who helped me prepare this video. He runs a
great debunking channel called Creation Myths, so if you enjoyed this debunk I highly recommend
checking that out for lots more content like this. So that’s it for Michael Behe, the fading
star quarterback of intelligent design. If you previously found him persuasive, hopefully
now you don’t. And if you know anyone who regularly brings up his doctrine, like irreducible
complexity, you now know what to tell them. But we still have more DI frauds to
deal with, so I’ll see you next time.
