Expert Witness Sees
Evidence in Nature
for Intelligent
Design
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN,
NYTimes on the Web, October 18, 2005
HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 17 --
Michael J. Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania,
has spent the last eight years traveling to colleges promoting intelligent
design as a challenge to the theory of evolution.
On Monday Mr. Behe brought his lecture and slides to a closely watched trial in
federal district court, where a judge will decide whether the town of Dover,
Pa., violated the boundary between church and state when it required students to
hear a statement about intelligent design in a high school biology class.
The Dover school board is being sued by 11 parents who say intelligent design is
inappropriate in a biology class because it is merely religious creationism
repackaged to resemble science. Proponents of intelligent design, however,
argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a
higher intelligence designed them.
With the trial in its fourth week, Mr. Behe was the first expert witness for the
defense. Asked whether intelligent design is religion, or "based on any
religious beliefs," Mr. Behe said, "No, it isn't."
"It is based entirely on observable, physical evidence from nature," he said.
Mr. Behe said the "best and most striking example of design" is the bacterial
flagellum, "the outboard motor bacteria use to swim." He projected a
drawing of a flagellum depicting what he called a "rotary motor" attached to a
"drive shaft" that pushes a propeller, and said it was impossible avoid
concluding that the mechanism was "a purposeful arrangement of parts."
Mr. Behe is the author of "Darwin's Black Box," a book published in 1996 that
spurred the intelligent design movement. He is also a fellow at the
Discovery Institute, a research organization that advocates intelligent design.
For three weeks, the plaintiffs called expert witnesses, including a biologist,
a theologian, a paleontologist and two philosophers, who testified that
intelligent design did not meet the definition of science because it could not
be tested or disproved. They said that intelligent design proponents had
not published scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and that most
scientists did not question evolution's basic tenets.
Mr. Behe testified that intelligent design was science and that it made testable
claims.
Mr. Behe said he had been able to publish only one article on intelligent design
in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, a piece he co-wrote in Protein Science in
2004.
Robert Muise, a defense lawyer, asked Mr. Behe, "Do you perceive a bias against
publishing articles on intelligent design in peer-reviewed journals?"
Mr. Behe said he did. "My ideas on intelligent design have been subjected
to a thousand times more scrutiny than anything I've written before."
Mr. Behe testified that intelligent design did not claim to identify the
intelligent designer, or even to "require knowledge of the designer."
However, Mr. Behe, a Roman Catholic, was asked whether he had concluded that
"the designer is God." He said yes, but added that his conclusion was not
based on science.
"I concluded that based on theological, philosophical and historical facts," he
said.
Mr. Behe said he believed schools should teach evolution because it was "widely
used in science" and "many aspects are well substantiated." And he said
intelligent design was "quite limited" because it challenged only one part of
evolutionary theory, natural selection.
Mr. Muise then asked whether natural selection could "explain the existence" of
DNA, the immune system or blood clotting. Mr. Behe said no.
As Mr. Behe's responses grew increasingly long and arcane, Judge John E. Jones
III slumped in his chair. When Mr. Muise asked the judge whether he should
stop for the day, Judge Jones sat up and agreed, saying, "We've certainly
absorbed a lot, haven't we?"
Randy Tomasacci, a woodworker who serves on his school board in Shickshinny,
Pa., said his district was considering teaching intelligent design. He
said Mr. Behe's testimony "reinforces my point of view."
|
