Zatera Ul

I went to Michael Behe’s lecture on Intelligent Design (sometimes abbreviated as ID) at the University last week. It was quite interesting, although as a public lecture there weren’t as many gory details as I would have liked. He stuck fairly close to the material in his book, Darwin’s Black Box. His theme is that there are microbiological structures that are irreducibly complex, that could not have evolved into their present forms, because there are no plausible functioning intermediaries. One analogy he used was a mousetrap: all the parts work toward the function. Take away any part, and it really doesn’t work (except by having the mouse trip over it, as he joked).

John MacDonald, among others, claims to have created a Reducibly Complex Mousetrap, or at least cartoons of one. I don’t entirely buy it, because the early mousetrap stages, consisting of single pieces of wire, have to be carefully propped up against something. In fact, they are shown propped up right in front of the mousehole, which seems a bit nonrandom and out of the anti-teleological spirit. Also, I’ve taken several tries at recreating the first one, with “springy wire” at hand (paper clips and coat hangers). Shaping and setting up the trap is a nontrivial effort, and requires some intelligent design to make it work. Both seem unlikely to even inconvenience a mouse, beyond being a trip hazard. Much of the spring in the trap is lost when it is set. At most, the coat hanger wire trap perhaps could break a mouse leg.

Another (and better) review of Behe’s lecture is at Peace Like a River:

It goes without saying that many scientists who believe in evolution react to ID as if you suggested the world was created by little Keebler elves.