Michael Behe | |
|---|---|
 Behe in May 2008 | |
| Born | Michael Joseph Behe (1952-01-18)January 18, 1952 (age 73)[1] Altoona, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Drexel University (BS) University of Pennsylvania (PhD) |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Known for | Irreducible complexity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | Lehigh University Discovery Institute'sCenter for Science and Culture |
| Thesis | Investigation of some physical chemical factors affecting the gelation of sickle cell hemoglobin (1978) |
| Part ofa series on |
| Intelligent design |
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Michael Joseph Behe[2] (/ˈbiːhiː/BEE-hee; born January 18, 1952) is an Americanbiochemist and an advocate of thepseudoscientific principle ofintelligent design (ID).[3][4]
Behe serves as professor of biochemistry atLehigh University inBethlehem, Pennsylvania, and as a senior fellow of theDiscovery Institute'sCenter for Science and Culture. He advocates for the validity of the argument forirreducible complexity (IC), which claims that some biochemical structures are toocomplex to be explained by knownevolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result ofintelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases related to intelligent design, including the court caseKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where his views were cited in the ruling that intelligent design is not science and is religious in nature.[5]
Behe's claims about the irreducible complexity of essentialcellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of thescientific community,[6][7] and his own biology department at Lehigh University published a statement repudiating Behe's views and intelligent design.[8][9]
Behe was born inAltoona, Pennsylvania, and grew up inHarrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he graduated fromBishop McDevitt High School.[10][11] He graduated fromDrexel University inPhiladelphia in 1974 with aB.S. in chemistry. He received hisPh.D. inbiochemistry at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1978 for hisdissertation research onsickle-cell disease.
From 1978 to 1982, he did postdoctoral work onDNA structure at theNational Institutes of Health. From 1982 to 1985, he was assistant professor of chemistry atQueens College in New York City, where he met his wife, Celeste. In 1985, he moved toLehigh University inBethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he is currently a professor of biochemistry. From 2005 to 2024, Lehigh University's department of biological sciences exhibited a position statement on its website stating that its faculty reject Behe's views onevolution:
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.[8]
As of 2024, his faculty webpage states: "My arguments about irreducible complexity and intelligent design are my own, and are not endorsed either by Lehigh University in general or by the Department of Biological Sciences in particular."[12]
Behe says he once fully accepted thescientific theory of evolution, but that after readingEvolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), byMichael Denton, he came to question evolution.[13] Later, Behe came to believe that there was evidence, at a biochemical level, that some biological systems were "irreducibly complex". He thought that these systems could not, even in principle, have evolved bynatural selection. He believed that the only possible alternative explanation for such complex structures was that they werecreated by an "intelligent designer". Irreducible complexity has been rejected by thescientific community.[14]
The 1987Edwards v. AguillardU.S. Supreme Court decision barred the required teaching ofcreation science frompublic schools but allowedevolutionary theory on the grounds of scientific validity. After the decision, a later draft of the textbookOf Pandas and People (1989) systematically replaced each and every cognate of the word "creation" with the phrase "intelligent design" or similar ID terms.[15] The books of lawyerPhillip E. Johnson ontheistic realism dealt directly with criticism of evolutionary theory and its purported biased "materialist" science, and aimed to legitimize the teaching of creationism in schools. In March 1992, a conference atSouthern Methodist University brought Behe together with other leading figures into what Johnson later called the "wedge strategy." In 1993, the "Johnson-Behe cadre of scholars" met atPajaro Dunes, California, and Behe presented for the first time his idea of irreducibly complex molecular machinery. Following a summer 1995 conference, "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture," the group obtained funding through theDiscovery Institute.
For the 1993 edition ofPandas, Behe wrote a chapter onblood clotting, presenting arguments which he later presented in very similar terms in a chapter in his 1996 bookDarwin's Black Box. Behe later agreed that they were essentially the same when he defended intelligent design at the Dover trial.[16][17]
In 1996, Behe became a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, later renamed theCenter for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promoting intelligent design.[18][19]
In 1996, Behe published his ideas on irreducible complexity in his bookDarwin's Black Box. Behe's refusal to identify the nature of any proposed intelligent designer frustrates scientists, who see it as a move to avoid any possibility of testing the positive claims of ID while allowing him and the intelligent design movement to distance themselves from some of the more overtly religiously motivated critics of evolution.[20]
As to the identity of the intelligent designer, Behe responds that if, deep in the woods, one were to come across a group of flowers that clearly spelled out the name "LEHIGH", one would have no doubt that the pattern was the result of intelligent design. Determining who the designer was, however, would not be nearly as easy.
In 1997,Russell Doolittle, on whose work Behe based much of the blood-clotting discussion inDarwin's Black Box, wrote a rebuttal to the statements about irreducible complexity of certain systems. In particular, Doolittle mentioned the issue of the blood clotting in his article, "A Delicate Balance."[21] Later on, in 2003, Doolittle's lab published a paper in thepeer-reviewed journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which demonstrates that thepufferfish lacks at least three out of 26 blood clotting factors, yet still has a workable blood clotting system. According to Doolittle, this defeats a key claim in Behe's book, that blood clotting is irreducibly complex.[22]
In reviewing a book byRobert T. Pennock, Behe took issue with the "intelligent design" group being associated with "creationism," saying readers would typically take that to meanbiblical literalism andyoung Earth creationism (YEC). In 2001 Pennock responded that he had been careful to represent their views correctly, and that while several leaders of the intelligent design movement were young Earth creationists, others including Behe were "old-earthers" and "creationists in the core sense of the term, namely, that they reject the scientific, evolutionary account of the origin of species and want to replace it with a form of special creation."[23]
In 2004, Behe published a paper withDavid Snoke, in thescientific journalProtein Science that uses a simplemathematical model to simulate the rate of evolution of proteins by point mutation,[24] which he states supports irreducible complexity, based on the calculation of the probability of mutations required for evolution to succeed. However, the paper does not mention intelligent design nor irreducible complexity, which were removed, according to Behe, at the behest of the reviewers. Nevertheless, theDiscovery Institute lists it as one of the "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design."[25]
Michael Lynch authored a response,[26] to which Behe and Snoke responded.[27]Protein Science discussed the papers in an editorial.[28]
Numerous scientists havedebunked the work, pointing out that not only has it been shown that a supposedly irreducibly complex structure can evolve, but that it can do so within a reasonable time even subject to unrealistically harsh restrictions, and noting that Behe and Snoke's paper does not properly include natural selection andgenetic redundancy. When the issue raised by Behe and Snoke is tested in the modern framework of evolutionary biology, numerous simple pathways to complexity have been shown. In their response, Behe and Snoke assumed that intermediate mutations are always damaging, where modern science allows for neutral or positive mutations.[29] Some of the critics have also noted that the Discovery Institute continues to claim the paper as 'published evidence for design,' despite its offering no design theory nor attempting to model the design process, and therefore not providing an alternative to random chance.[30]
Many of Behe's statements have been challenged by biologistKenneth R. Miller in his book,Finding Darwin's God (1999). Behe has subsequently disputed Miller's points in an online essay.[31]
In 2007, Behe's bookThe Edge of Evolution was published arguing that while evolution can produce changes within species, there is a limit to the ability of evolution to generate diversity, and this limit (the "edge of evolution") is somewhere betweenspecies andorders.
In this book Behe's central assertion is that Darwinian evolution actually exists but plays only a limited role in the development and diversification of life on Earth. To this aim, he examines the genetic changes undergone by themalaria plasmodium genome and thehuman genome in response to each other's biological defenses, and identifies that "the situation resemblestrench warfare, not anarms race", by considering thehemoglobin-destroying, protein pump-compromising as a "war by attrition". Starting from this example, he takes into account the number of mutations required to "travel" from one genetic state to another, as well as population size for the organism in question. Then, Behe calculates what he calls the "edge of evolution", i.e., the point at which Darwinian evolution would no longer be an efficacious agent of creative biological change, arguing that purposeful design plays a major role in the development of biological complexity, through the mechanism of producing "non-random mutations", which are then subjected to the sculpting hand of natural selection.[32]
The book was reviewed, by prominent scientists inThe New York Times,[33]The New Republic,[34]The Globe and Mail,[35]Science,[36] andNature[37] who were highly critical of the work noting that Behe appears to accept almost all of evolutionary theory, barring random mutation, which is replaced with guided mutation at the hand of an unnamed designer.[32] The book earned Behe thePigasus Award for the year 2007.
Behe also promotesintelligent design in his 2019 book,Darwin Devolves[38] whose central premise is that the combination of randommutation andnatural selection, apart from being incapable of generating novelty, is mainly a degradative force. Like his previous books,Darwin Devolves received negative reviews from the scientific community, including a scathing review inScience byNathan H. Lents,Richard Lenski, andS. Joshua Swamidass,[39] a harsh critique byJerry Coyne inThe Washington Post,[40] and a scholarly rebuttal inEvolution from Gregory Lang and Amber Rice, Behe's colleagues atLehigh University.[41] Lents said ofDarwin Devolves andThe Edge of Evolution: "his [ ] two books totally missed their marks and were easily dismissed by the scientific community."[42]
Lang and Rice's assessment noted that while Behe rightfully acknowledges that organisms have common ancestry, it is posited that a designer is required for more distant relationships like at the family level, and that the presentation of degradative processes is exaggerated with evidence of beneficial adaptations dodged. The article also criticized the use of false analogies and neglecting evidence of new genetic raw material production for evolution ("Behe is correct that the loss of genetic information is an important mechanism. However, the opposing processes of gene duplication, horizontal gene transfer, and introgression balance out gene loss, providing a source of new genetic material"). They then concluded with examples of adaptation that contradict the book's conclusions and expound on the flaws of Irreducible Complexity, adding that "why evolution by natural selection is difficult for so many to accept is beyond the scope of this review; however, it is not for a lack of evidence."[41]
Behe has written for theBoston Review,The American Spectator, andThe New York Times.
InKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the first direct challenge brought inUnited States federal courts to an attempt to mandate the teaching of intelligent design onFirst Amendment grounds, Behe was called as a primary witness for the defense and asked to support the idea that intelligent design was legitimate science. Some of the most crucial exchanges in the trial occurred during Behe'scross-examination, where his testimony would prove devastating to the defense. Behe was forced to concede that "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred"[43] and that his definition of 'theory' as applied to intelligent design was so loose thatastrology would also qualify.[44] Earlier during his direct testimony, Behe had argued that a computer simulation of evolution he performed with Snoke shows that evolution is not likely to produce certain complex biochemical systems. Under cross examination however, Behe was forced to agree that "the number of prokaryotes in 1 ton of soil are 7 orders of magnitude higher than the population [it would take] to produce the disulfide bond" and that "it's entirely possible that something that couldn't be produced in the lab in two years... could be produced over three and half billion years."[43][45][46]
Many of Behe's critics have pointed to these exchanges as examples they believe further undermine Behe's statements about irreducible complexity and intelligent design.John E. Jones III, the judge in the case, would ultimately rule that intelligent design is not scientific in his 139-page decision, citing Behe's testimony extensively as the basis for his findings:
Jones would later say that Eric Rothschild's cross examination of Behe was "as good a cross-examination of an expert witness as I have ever seen. It was textbook."[56][57]
Behe received $20,000 for testifying as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs inAssociation of Christian Schools International v. Roman Stearns.[58] The case was filed byAssociation of Christian Schools International, which argued that theUniversity of California was being discriminatory by not recognizing science classes that usecreationist books.[58] The 2005 filing claimed that University of California's rejection of several of their courses was illegal "viewpoint discrimination and content regulation prohibited by the Free Speech Clause."[59] In 2007, Behe's expert witness report claimed that the Christian textbooks, including William S. Pinkston, Jr.'sBiology for Christian Schools (1980; 2nd ed. 1994), are excellent works for high school students. He defended that view in a deposition.[60][61]
In August 2008, JudgeS. James Otero rejected Behe's claims, saying that Behe "submitted a declaration concluding that the BJU[Bob Jones University Press] text mentions standard scientific content. ... However, Professor Behe 'did not consider how much detail or depth' the texts gave to this standard content."[59] Otero ruled in favor of the University of California's decision to reject courses using these books.[59][62]
Behe is aCatholic.[63] He is married to Celeste Behe and they have nine children who arehomeschooled.[64]
{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools. (Phillip Johnson,American Family Radio, January 10, 2003, broadcast)
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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