Guest Post by Morbo
“Intelligent Design” advocate Michael Behe of Lehigh University has a new book out titled The Edge of Evolution. One reviewer notes something interesting: In this book, Behe comes right and admits that common descent is a fact.
Behe writes that both chimp and human DNA manifest similar errors in pseudogenes. He then observes:
“If a common ancestor first sustained the mutational mistakes and subsequently gave rise to those two modern species, that would very readily account for why both species have them now. It’s hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans.”
Reviewing the book in the newsletter of the National Center for Science Education, David E. Levin, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, was perplexed. Behe now admits that the Earth is ancient and accepts descent with modification and even natural selection.
So what’s Behe’s problem? In the rest of the review, Levin dissects Behe’s argument that evolution can only go so far and that there must have been a role for a designer. As Levin points out, this is the old “argument from personal ignorance.” It says essentially, “I can’t figure this out, so it must have been God.”
I see an opportunity in Behe’s confession.
Some years ago, evolution foe Phillip Johnson devised what he called the “Wedge Strategy.” The idea was for all opponents of evolution to put aside their disagreements and jointly assail Darwinism. Johnson argued that a “wedge” should be used to foster doubts about evolution. Wedge advocates could keep pushing it in, making that crack of doubt ever larger and longer. As Darwinism crumbled, people would be introduced to the ID alternative and then Jesus.
So the IDers and the traditional creationists made an uneasy truce. However, their “wedge” scheme never really got off the ground. ID was dealt a serious blow in the Dover, Pa., legal challenge, and mainstream scientists continued to ignore ID because it is unscientific.
Now it is time for advocates of real science to get a wedge of their own. Despite the amount of ink the IDers get, old style, young-Earth creationists are still going strong. They just opened a fancy new museum in northern Kentucky. A central contention of this museum is that humans are God’s crowning achievement. We are beings with no ties to any other species — the very concept that Behe rejects in his new book.
Behe gives away too much to Darwinism — and we all know Darwinism leads to genocide, atheism and children behaving like animals because they have been taught they are no better than primordial ooze. How can self-respecting creationists work with this turncoat?
Just keep pushing in that wedge….