By this argument, nor do your opinions carry any weight, for you’re not a full-time professional researcher in the field. If McWhorter cannot critique evolution on the grounds of being unqualified, then neither can you defend or support it. I would say, probably, 95% of my comments here involve turning the mirror back on the commentor, and just letting them see that what they posit as an argument defeats their own argument, and thus, defeats themselves, and that is certainly not a valid way to make an argument against someone else.

As you say, I am not a full-time professional researcher in this field and I make no claim to any special authority for my opinions but, like everyone else here, I believe I am entitled to express them.

McWhorter was fully entitled to discuss whatever reservations he has about evolutionary theory. That was not the problem. The issue was over the implication in vjtorley’s comment that McWhorter’s doubts were a significant criticism of evolutionary theory. Had he expressed similar concerns about Chomsky’s theories in linguistics I would have had no objection. In biology, however, Behe, as a professional biochemist, is more of an authority,

I also happen to think he was mistaken in having the video of the debate taken down. Even if he thought he had acquitted himself badly in the debate, he should have left it alone and made any corrections he felt were needed through other channels.

——Argumentum ad verecundiam McWhorter is a linguist not a biologist. No doubt he is intelligent and well-read but his opinions do not carry the weight of someone who is a full-time professional researcher in the field.

By this argument, nor do your opinions carry any weight, for you’re not a full-time professional researcher in the field. If McWhorter cannot critique evolution on the grounds of being unqualified, then neither can you defend or support it. I would say, probably, 95% of my comments here involve turning the mirror back on the commentor, and just letting them see that what they posit as an argument defeats their own argument, and thus, defeats themselves, and that is certainly not a valid way to make an argument against someone else.

(3) During the interview, McWhorter described an incident several years ago, in which he was talking to a prominent scientist about Behe’s first book, Darwin’s Black Box. (McWhorter declined to reveal the identity or even the gender of the scientist, out of respect for their legitimate right to privacy.) Much to McWhorter’s amazement, the scientist refused to read Behe’s book, even when McWhorter offered the scientist a copy. Indeed, the scientist’s outrage against Behe was so vehement that the scientist literally threw Behe’s book across the room. So much for open-mindedness!

If true, then it is only evidence for the case that scientists are actually human after all and prone to the same failings as the rest of us. We can find examples of Christians who are equally or more intolerant if we try.

(5) One thought that occurred to me during the interview was that ID would be finally able to nail the lid on the Darwinist coffin if it could formally demonstrate that large-scale evolutionary changes actually become less likely to occur over a very long interval of time (say, tens of millions of years) than over a shorter time interval (say, tens of thousands of years). In other words, it would need to be shown that the destructive effects of a large number of changes would tend to overwhelm the constructive ones, over time. But that’s another story.

a) If such a mechanism did exist then it is unlikely we would be here to discuss it.

b) You could argue that Gc (the Christian God) intervenes continually to head off genetic catastrophe but then you would have to explain:

c) Why a deity as powerful as Gc would design something so error-prone. Is He really that short of something to do?

d) It would still not be evidence for design, unless you believe in an incompetent Designer.

McWhorter’s contempt for the inadequacy of these just-so stories was palpable, and he came across as someone who was thoroughly familiar with the standard evolutionary literature, yet was unimpressed with it. Coming from an atheist, this was powerful testimony to the fact that something is badly wrong with standard textbook accounts of how evolution is supposed to have happened.

Argumentum ad verecundiam McWhorter is a linguist not a biologist. No doubt he is intelligent and well-read but his opinions do not carry the weight of someone who is a full-time professional researcher in the field.

(12) This is pure speculation on my part, but my guess is that some influential biologists sensed the damage that an interview like this could do if it became publicly available, and quietly brought pressure to bear on McWhorter to yank it off the air. However, I suspect we’ll never get to hear about that, as McWhorter is too much of a gentleman to name names.

If that is true then those responsible should be exposed because they are no friends to science. Censorship is quite wrong and totally opposed to the spirit of free and open inquiry that is supposed to prevail in the Academy.

In McWhorter’s defense, I wonder if some of the objector’s told him that he was out of his element and was speaking from ignorance. And he may have legitimately agreed with them — as he stated in the interview that though he has a love for the subject, he’s not a biologist. It’s possible he didn’t just cave to pressure, but felt that he was too ignorant of the subject (though he didn’t sound like he was in the interview at all).

Just a thought…

“… the legendary biochemist and ‘Darwin Slayer’, Michael Behe.”

Love it!!

(VJT, thanks for the play by play!)