Imagine taking a sip of genuine fine cognac from a new bottle of your favourite brand and feeling the unmistakeable smack of kerosene — maybe just a tiny drop, 1 ppm, has found its way into the bottle. Would you excuse the maker on account of the 99.9999% of excellent liquor that still is in the bottle? Would you ever buy that brand again?

I don’t think it is right when the science elite drive great teachers like Behe from the public space. Judging from the little I have learned from repeated attempts to read science pubs like Scientific American, Discover and NY Times Science Tueday, Behe’s talents as an educator in the popular science arena are rarely encountered.

Just to reinforce my assertion that the very idea of IC is not a priori absurd, one has but to look at the methodology of Lynch’s commendable paper which refutes it. He uses Monte Carlo models to determine the likelihood of complex structures arising by evolution in available timescales with available numbers of organisms. This is an experimental, not a deductive, refutation, and though the results that Lynch obtains through numerical experiment support the evolutionary model, it could in principle have been the other way round. What would the response be if his numbers had proved the opposite?

Finally, again to emphasize what I regard as an inconsistent approach to ‘engagement with ones adversaries’ by Sean Carroll, I would ask Dr. Carroll if he would truly pass up an opportunity to debate this issue (if asked) with, say, Bill O’Reilly of Fox ‘News’? Fox is nothing if it isn’t an abject shill for right wing fallacies of virtually every flavor, and yet even Dawkins appeared on his show (and endured a particularly pitiful ‘proof’ of God’s existence by O’Reilly – the interview is available at Dawkins’ website: http://richarddawkins.net/article,915,The-Video-Bill-OReilly-Interviews-Richard-Dawkins,The-OReilly-Factor-Fox-News ).

I am willing to trust Robert Wright’s explanation of the Behe affair;
I applaud BHTV for making a commitment to discuss controversial matters including the intersection of science and religion, while most of the world is pretending the controversy doesn’t exist;
I accept that this noble commitment may sometimes go wrong, as in the admittedly and admitted foolish mistake of having Behe interviewed by a non-biologist who couldn’t call his BS;
I observe that noble commitments to repeatedly discuss dangerous controversies cannot possibly be expected to go right every time;
I put forth that people of plausibly good intentions, who have served us well in the past, should be allowed to recover from their (or their coworkers’) errors – even more than one error, so long as mistakes don’t seem to be happening systematically;
And I announce my intention to stay on Bloggingheads.tv.

The problem is, Sean Carrol has already made up his mind, he probably thinks your a nut as well for posting that.

Basically Sean Carrol lives in his own little fantasy world, where everything has to go his way.

I want to say that I have a great deal of respect for you and your work.

That said, I have two problems with your hard-over position on this, which drove you to quit an interesting show and useful platform for discussion.

First problem: From your post I have to conclude that your position on irreducible complexity (I.C.) is this: the very idea of ‘irreducible complexity’ (specifically – not ID in general, or Michael Behe’s arguments about it, or Behe’s reputation, nor its potential implications about a Creator, etc.) is scientifically and logically absurd on the face of it, in an a priori sense – independent of any evidence for or against it. I say this because (at least in these comments) your dismissal of it as an idea is based on:

1. The specific example of a mousetrap has been disputed.
2. Behe was made to look a fool during his testimony in Kitzmiller vs. Dover
3. No ‘serious’ biologist ever talks about irreducible complexity.

But these arguments do not seem to me to be sufficient to dismiss the very idea of irreducible complexity, yet you do. So any one (however willing to be convinced) who even admits to not seeing the inherent and a priori fallacy of the idea and would like to be convinced of that, is obviously a ‘crackpot’ and not worth your time. But if your goal is to engage sincere and open-minded people in conversation, this attitude seems dogmatic and counterproductive. Although I myself am highly skeptical of the idea of irreducible complexity, I do not see how it is, in and of itself, logically absurd. Yet this is the position you take. As for me, the two best arguments against irreducible complexity are 1. It seems to be an argument from personal incredulity, and 2. if I.C. is used as a way to justify a Creator then, as Dawkins has eloquently said, it seems a bizarre God who creates a fantastic mechanism for generating ever more complex machines (evolution) and then resorts to tweeking the system constantly. But neither of these arguments speak to the inherent fallacy of IC. Furthermore, I actually think that the posing of the idea of irreducible complexity has actually been productive and usefully challenging to the scientific community, because it resulted in serious thinking about the evolutionary pathways necessary to create certain types of machinery that do seem difficult to explain.

Second problem: The idea that you would resign from further participation in a show because some other guests on the show voiced views which you find absurd seems extreme. For example, would you object to the appearance on the show of a renowned and respected theologian, who believed in a God and therefore also believed, by definition, in the general occurrence in this world of supernatural and causality-defying phenomena? And I know that you have been involved with the ‘Great Courses’ project, which discusses religion as well as science. So I see your reaction to the appearance of Behe as inconsistent. Your position seems to be that it’s fine to have conversations with religious people who absolutely believe that supernatural phenomena are rampant in this world, as long as they never seek to explain these (very real, by their accounts) phenomena in scientific terms.

Again, personally I don’t believe in ID, nor do I find the case for IC particularly compelling. But I do not see that the very idea of IC is inherently absurd, and this seems to be the position you have taken here.

I’m a commentor at BhTV and follow the science diavlogs punctually. I have enjoyed and learned from your appearances there and think very highly of you as a scientist and a a teacher.

I understand the reasons for your decision. They have been discussed ad nauseum everywhere. I won’t engage in further discussion of the topic, but I want to say that I can’t help but to hope that you are able to work out some agreement with BhTV administrators so that you can come back and we, the audience, can continue to enjoy and learn from you.

Additionally, I am concerned about the other scientists or science presenters who have also withdrawn and the potential that still others could do the same in the near future.

Thank you for your contributions.

By the way, Robert Wright and George Johnson have a diavblog up now discussing this whole controversy.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/22300

ode to wave function

no-thing is truth
and every-thing
reveals the truth
of no-thing