More criticisms of Behe’s new ID book

I won’t belabor these two new critiques, as you can read both pieces for yourself, and I’m just keeping you up to date as Behe’s new creationist Intelligent Design book, Darwin Devolves heads to press in a week.

Actually, although IDers frenetically argue that their theory is NOT creationism, it really is a species of creationism, for it posits that God The Intelligent Designer creates new mutations required for important adaptations to evolve, mutations that couldn’t accumulate by natural selection alone. The only difference between Behe and, say, Duane Gish is that whereas Gish thought that God made birds, squirrels, and trees, Behe thinks that God made the mutations required for natural selection to bring about birds, squirrels, and trees.

I wonder whether, at the Discovery Institute, the Christians and Orthodox Jews ever ponder how their God has Himself “devolved” from a majestic de novo creator to a Heavenly Mutagen—a Divine Alpha Particle.  Why did God want to make new forms by tweaking the DNA in undetectable ways rather than just poofing them into existence? Such are the mysteries of biological theology.

Speaking of devolving, Nathan Lents has yet another critique of Behe on The Human Evolution Blog, this time centering on the word “Devolves” in the book’s title. Click on the screenshot:

It’s a short critique involving Lents’s claim that the term “devolve” is a neologism coined by Behe and doesn’t make any sense. He thinks this on three grounds, and I agree with about 2.5 of them. I quote (indented); flush left text is mine:

Misunderstanding #1: Behe seems to think that evolution is the accumulation of  complexity. If so, it’s no wonder that he has such angst about it. The reality is that evolution is aimless, sloppy, and produces clunky solutions as often as it does elegant ones. Our own bodies are filled with glitches and goofs left over from the imprecision of natural selection. This may be deeply unsatisfying to some, but nature cares little about our satisfaction.

This fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of evolution is a serious error, especially for someone who has dedicated his career to critiquing modern evolutionary theory. But it not the only one.

Agreed, since to Behe “devolution” is the loss of a trait or a reduction of complexity, yet sometimes losing a trait or becoming simpler is adaptively useful (fleas, for instance, lost their wings).

Misunderstanding #2: Behe’s notion of “irreducible complexity” demands that natural selection can only work if every single step on an evolutionary path is advantageous. We know that’s not true. Populations of organisms harbor a great deal of genetic diversity generated by gene duplications, neutral mutations (and even slightly deleterious ones), recombination, and even rare but dramatic events like chromosomal duplications or rearrangements, and horizontal gene transfer (which may actually be not as rare as we thought). Evolutionary forces then act on all that diversity in unpredictable ways. In Darwin Devolves, you will not find discussions of any of this. Behe either ignores or quickly dismisses these phenomena, despite the key role they play in the generation of the very complexity that Behe doesn’t think that nature can build.

Agreed. Behe apparently does not discuss alternative pathways for building adaptations that look “irreducibly complex” but in reality involve either straight natural selection, neutral evolution as an intermediate, or even slightly deleterious mutations, as well as important processes like gene duplication.

Misunderstanding #3: Behe frequently speaks as though natural selection (which he often calls Darwinism) is the only evolutionary force. In reality, natural selection is joined by genetic drift, neutral theory, exaptation, gene flow, sexual selection, hybridization, punctuated equilibrium, frequency-dependent selection, and dozens of other forces. Behe constantly repeats his refrain that natural selection cannot account for everything we see in nature. Yeah, we know. And we’ve known that for a very long time.

Well, here I think Lents has made some semantic errors. For instance, neutral theory is really a theory of selectively neutral alleles that evolve largely through genetic drift, so it’s not something separate from drift, and it’s a theory, not an “evolutionary force.” Exaptation, frequency-dependent selection, and sexual selection ARE subsets of natural selection, not something entirely different. Punctuated equilibrium is not known to be responsible for the evolution of any adaptation, at least not in the convoluted form presented by Gould and Eldredge. And Lents leaves out a truly unique evolutionary force: meiotic drive—evolution occurring through differential segregation of alleles at meiosis. Finally, both exaptation and punctuated equilibrium are not “forces” but phenomena.

Behe does err if he indeed neglects genetic drift in the evolution of adaptations, as it’s undoubtedly been important, including in some pathways Behe sees as “irreducibly complex”. But if I were Lents I wouldn’t leave myself open to criticism by saying that “exaptation” and “frequency-dependent selection” are forces different from natural selection.

Now you might say that my criticism of this one small part of Lents’s piece is going to make Behe happy, as he’ll crow, “See, Coyne takes issue with Lents’s criticism of my book,” but that’s bullshit. As Steve Gould said in his essay “Evolution as fact and theory” (he’s referring to his colleagues’ attempts to make him stop criticizing traditional evolutionary theory because that would play into the hands of creationists)

But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part.

But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

Make no mistake: I’m on Lents’s side here, but I do criticize the way he categorizes “evolutionary forces.” That, however, should give no succor to Behe. But he’ll take what he can get—he’s a creationist, for crying out loud.

Finally, Rich Lenski, whose work on E. coli was apparently criticized in Behe’s book, has published part two of a three-part critique of Darwin Devolves on his (Lenski’s) website Telliamed Revisited (click on screenshot):

Being a nice guy, Lenski is trying to handle the irascible Behe with kid gloves, claiming that he and Behe agree about at least two things. The first is that Behe “remains upbeat about [Lenski’s] research” Second, that both Lenski and Behe are both interested in and fascinated by evolution. But that tiny speck of agreement is where the comity ends, for then Lenski pulls out his cudgel:

Whether for secular or religious reasons, we humans are deeply interested in where we came from and how we came about. In my own small way, I take pleasure in knowing that my lab’s research helps people get a glimpse of how evolution works.

I’m concerned, though, when these scientific and religious perspectives get intertwined and confused, even when they concern those big, important questions that interest all of us. I get even more concerned when I see what I regard as non-scientific ideas (such as “intelligent agents” introducing “purposeful design” by unstated and untestable means) being used to undermine the admittedly imperfect (and always subject to revision) understanding of evolution that science provides to those who want to learn. And I am most disturbed when these confusions appear to be part of a deliberate “wedge” strategy with ulterior sociopolitical motives. People will undoubtedly have diverse views about whether scientific explanations are adequate and/or satisfying ways to understand the world, but I see danger in trying to undermine scientific methodology and reasoning to advance religious beliefs and political goals.

This is Lenski’s kindly way of saying, “Stop injecting your religion into science, you duplicitous git, because it doesn’t help us make progress.”