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By Design: Behe, Lennox, and Meyer on the Evidence for a Creator
Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Steven Meyer are three of the leading voices in science and academia on the case for an intelligent designer of the universe and everything in it (including us). In this wide-ranging conversation, they point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory and the increasing amount of evidence uncovered by a rigorous application of the scientific method that points to an intentional design and creation of the physical world.
Recorded on October 15, 2022, in Fiesole, Italy.
Published in General
Can’t wait to hear it! I’m already a big fan of Steven Meyer.
Can someone please some up where Darwin got it wrong.
I read the “Return of the God Hypothesis” – worth reading.
So does Meyer really have a beef with Darwin.
He has a bigger beef with those who call intelligent design as “God of the gaps” and then propose theories like the Multiverse
It is definitely worth considering. It still seems like a hypothesis at this point than a theory though.
So many choices! Take what you like from the buffet!
The whole point of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, touting the mutation-selection mechanism of evolution, was to fill in the 40-50% or so gap of how evolution works, because Darwin missed it.
The whole point of punctuated equilibrium theory is that
BidenDarwin got gradualism wrong.An early point from Behe is that classical Darwinism thinks complex life systems can be explained by simpler systems–look smaller, look deeper, and you’ll find simpler things! But it turns out Leibniz was right: The components of complex life systems are themselves complex systems, down to the cellular level and then well below that!
The gist of Meyer et al is: Whether or not macroevolution occurred in our past, it is not explicable in physical, mechanistic terms alone. To explain it in such terms was the whole point of Darwin.
David Berlinski mentioned that the fossil record is a dismal failure in terms of demonstrating a macroevolutionary history for present-day lifeforms, contrary to Darwinian prediction of what it would eventually show, with one or two exceptions. (Whales, I believe, were mentioned.)
Genesis read straightforwardly suggests a different backstory to life on earth as we know it. Say what you like about biblical inerrantists who read Genesis 1-3 straightforwardly, but they have a better track record than scientists of late.
All that “evidence” has been “increasing” for thousands of years, but nothing has changed the fact that there is no evidence, just wishful thinking. People seem to want to believe and nothing will stop that desire to believe, but no matter how desperately they want to believe, there is nothing there. In fact, many Christians require faith and eschew searches for evidence as a sign of weak faith.
I am familiar with Darwinian mechanisms of evolution, but am not familiar with what Darwin might have predicted that the fossil record would show. Nor that mechanisms of evolution depend on such a prediction, but do you have a cite for that?
Finding the Berlinksi interview might be better than finding anything else I can remember. It was in the Ben Stein documentary.
Now, if I remember correctly, Darwin himself may have predicted this. But I’m having trouble recalling any details except that I may have heard that on a podcast in the last few weeks. Note that I didn’t say “Darwin’s prediction.” I said “Darwinian prediction,” because this is the sort of prediction Darwinism would naturally make.
As for Darwin specifically, a few minutes in his book shows that he was well aware of difficulties in the fossil record, and took great care to explain why we should not expect to find all intermediate stages between one species and another. Rather, we should be able to find “representative species” between one species and another. See here:
And here:
He is pretty optimistic about the state of the fossil record as known at the time. He does not explicitly (in these passages) predict that we’ll find solid evidence for his theory by uncovering a great many more “representative species” in the fossil record, but his theory does clearly imply that more discoveries in the fossil record will lead to a great deal more of this.
I wonder what would have led to that idea, given that the chance of fossilization of any given life form is far from random.
Whatever the reason, he says the fossil record can be expected to give us the “representative species.”
So all humanity descends from Middle Eastern incest? I would prefer Darwin’s flaws over biblical inerrancy.
Less incest.
That’s interesting. I’d like to try to find those statements in larger context, not that I think it affects the validity of his understanding of the working of mutation and natural selection.
It reminds me that a colleague had, when we first hired him, done the computer program for a concordance to Darwin’s notebooks. This was back in the days before Google-type search engines and the massive amount of searchable OCR’d documents we have nowadays. The notebooks are probably not where I should expect to find this, but it brought that old project to mind.
Demonstrating that a physical object within the already existing world was intelligently created can never by itself constitute proof of a divine being, or that the intelligence that created it is a divine being. This is true whether the object is a watch, a computer, or a life form. The differences between these things are matters of degree only. So debunking Darwin doesn’t really do anything to defend or advance a religion or religious worldview.
Proving that the universe itself was intelligently created is a different matter.
The unbelievable complexity of a single celled organism makes a computer look like blocks of crudely carved wood.
And a quantum computer makes an abacus look like that too.
No one has made a quantum computer. Maybe we cannot make a quantum computer. The stunning complexity of single celled organisms are well documented.
The alternative to Darwin isn’t biblical innerancy (nor ID) and unless you think a large number of humans evolved simultaneously from an ancestor, you are stuck with a small original breeding pool-even if you are Darwin.
“So many choices! Take what you like from the buffet!” I says.
And you says, “Hey, there’s broccoli in one of them! I don’t like broccoli”
This isn’t just biblical inerrancy. It’s biblical inerrancy + taking Genesis 1-3 straightforwardly.
But what’s wrong with that? Maybe there was enough active DNA–see Lee Spetner’s book that I haven’t read either, Not By Chance, if you want more on this idea–that incest wasn’t a problem.
Or . . . maybe something else. I see no problem with “The straightforward reading of the Bible is probably a correct one, and G-d knows the answer to this mystery.” If the evidence for the faith is good enough and if the evidence for the alternative worldviews is bad enough, that’s a very ok place to be.
Did I say it did?
And fewer sex robots.
Excellent show. These gentlemen are each enjoyable to hear in their own videos but together works nicely. They do a great job explaining why the more we learn about the cell and how it works, the more it makes the hypothesis of an intelligent creator entirely plausible. Darwin had no way to know how a cell works. It was a gelatinous blob to him instead of the marvelously complex multi-part machine it actually is. His theory explains changes within a species to adapt to a new niche but not the massive differences between species. And so much more.
Lennox explains how the sheer mathematics of what is required versus the time available since the earth’s beginning invalidates evolution as the explanation for the origin of life.
My son and I watched this together and found it fascinating. It’s conclusion is that a belief in an intelligent creator is not a throwback to religious superstition but actually where the latest scientific evidence leads as most reasonable explanation.
Check it out!!
“Can someone show where Darwin got it wrong? ” Start with the “warm little pond”, move to the undifferentiated protoplasm supposedly constituting cells, move on applying the principles of artificial, intelligently designed selection of organisms to “natural selection” (which can never select for non-functional proto-organs and can only explain survival of the fittest, never arrival of the fittest), to later extrapolations of his theory which posited the existence of vestigal organs and junk DNA, both of which have long since been proven not to exist. See also the current state of argument about the results of the ENCODE project.
Isn’t taking the bible straightforwardly Biblical inerrancy?
Heavens, no!
When you disagree with it, that’s because you take it straightforwardly while not believing in biblical inerrancy.
And some Christians will observe, with you, that some straightforward reading appears to be a falsehood and conclude that they should read it non-straightforwardly. But there’s only one way to get from “This straightforward interpretation is a falsehood” to “Therefore, this straightforward interpretation is not the correct one,” and that’s “No falsehoods are correct interpretations.”
In other words, they’re inerratists, at least in practice. (Not that they always consciously realize the significance of their own reasoning.) But they’re not reading it straightforwardly.
I’ll do it myself at need!
Give me evidence that some biblical reading is a falsehood, and if that evidence is stronger than any evidence I have that it should be read straightforwardly, then I’ll conclude that the straightforward reading is incorrect.
And if you really want to have some fun, here’s the formula for showing me that biblical inerrancy is wrong:
X times Y is greater than Z,
where X = the probability that a biblical passage has a straightforward original meaning,
Y = the probability that that meaning is a falsehood,
and Z = the probability that biblical inerrancy is correct.
I’m glad I watched all the way to the end. One of the most fascinating parts is John Lennox’s repudiationment of the Enlightenment and the new Testament emphasis on Christ’s trial and Pilate’s conclusion.