Michael Behe Responds To Näsvall et al. (2012)
| November 7, 2012 | Posted by News under News |
Michael Behe has a new blog post at Evolution News & Views responding to this paper that recently appeared in Science:
A paper appeared recently in Science that reminded me of one of my favorite toys when I was a kid — a rolling-ball maze. Over the years I had a few different varieties, including two- and three-dimensional ones. The basic gist is that a person has to twist and turn the toy to roll a ball through a plastic, transparent maze from the entrance to the exit. Of course there are a lot of dead ends and blind alleys, so it’s pretty tricky, at least at first. Once you learn the path, it becomes trivial.
Näsvall et al. (2012) do the same with a protein, manipulating experimental conditions to roll it through dead ends and have it come out in the place they want. Although the printed paper itself and an accompanying commentary by Elizabeth Pennisi paint the results as an advance in understanding evolution, that’s so only if evolution has eyes and a mind like a kid solving a maze. The investigators’ exceptionally intelligent manipulations are relegated to the online supplemental materials.
3 Responses to Michael Behe Responds To Näsvall et al. (2012)
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Animists are Maccabean in their ferocious loyalty to their gods, Michael.
Isn’t the production of the ‘protein needed to make the essential amino acid tryptophan’ utterly useless for the bacteria if a regulationary system is lacking? Too much or too little tryptophan is unhealthy, I suppose.
‘The essence of cellular life is regulation: The cell controls how much and what kinds of chemicals it makes; when it loses control, it dies’, Michael Behe, Darwin’s black box, p.191.
If so, did Näsvall et al remove the regulationary system as well?
Is there some reason to think that evolution isn’t guided?