Debate on Intelligent Design: Dr. Michael Behe and Dr. Joshua Swamidass
This podcast features a friendly, but spirited debate between Dr. Michael Behe and Dr. Joshua Swamidass over intelligent design, especially as it relates to the notion of “irreducible complexity” and the challenge this poses (as Dr. Behe would argue) to modern evolutionary theory. Dr. Behe is the recent author of Darwin Devolves, to which Dr. Swamidass (author of The Genealogical Adam and Eve) has responded to critically.
Profiles of the Participants
About Dr. Michael Behe
Michael J. Behe is Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. Behe’s current research involves delineation of design and natural selection in protein structures. In his career he has authored over 40 technical papers and two books, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, which argue that living system at the molecular level are best explained as being the result of deliberate intelligent design.
About Dr. Joshua Swamidass
Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass MD, Ph.D. is a physician, scientist, and Associate Professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at Washington University in Saint Louis. He leads a computational biology group that studies information at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and medicine. Dr. Swamidass is the author of his new book, titled: The Genealogical Adam and Eve. Here he tests a scientific hypothesis: What if the traditional account is somehow true, with the origins of Adam and Eve taking place alongside evolution?
Comparative Data of the Debate Participants
| Participant | Academic Affiliation | Key Publication | Core Argument/Research |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr. Michael Behe | Lehigh University | Darwin Devolves | Living systems at the molecular level are result of deliberate intelligent design. |
| Dr. Joshua Swamidass | Washington University in Saint Louis | The Genealogical Adam and Eve | Testing origins of Adam and Eve taking place alongside evolution. |
Defining the Scientific Nature of Intelligent Design
Proponents of ID have long stressed that ID, in its purest sense, does not necessarily postulate a supernatural cause but is consistent with a natural or supernatural intelligence. Furthermore, the natural / supernatural distinction is problematic. A more helpful distinction, then, is between material and non-material causes. But non-material causes are already demonstrably a part of the natural world, since all of us have minds. Thus, the fact that ID postulates a non-material entity cannot be used to exclude ID from the natural sciences.
Observation and Testing Methods
The invocation of an unobservable entity should not be a demarcating factor that renders ID unscientific, for that would exclude other scientific disciplines, such as particle and nuclear physics, as well. Unobservable entities can often be detected by their effects, even without direct observation. For example, black holes are not directly observable since they do not emit electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with telescopes. Their existence and presence, however, is inferred by the effects that they exert on nearby matter.
Third, ID is testable in the same way that other hypotheses purporting to explain events in the distant past (including evolution by natural selection) are tested — by the historical abductive method of inference to the best explanation. Given that functionally specific information content is, in every other realm of experience, habitually associated with conscious activity and no other category of explanation has been demonstrated to be causally sufficient to account for its origin, ID is the most causally adequate explanation of the relevant data.
The Role of Predictions
A scientific theory can be well justified even if it does not make strong predictions; it just needs to render the evidence significantly more probable than it would have otherwise been. If our epistemology arbitrarily excludes one possible answer to an inquiry a priori, there is a real danger of being led to an incorrect conclusion about the natural world.