The Edge of Evolution

This 44-minute bloggingheads.tv video is good: John McWhorter of Manhattan Institute interviews Michael Behe about evolution. Controversy followed when the interview was pulled, then again when it was put back on. This stuff is dangerous, you see.

Comments

[Julana]

The push-me-pull-you that followed is as interesting as the video, which is fascinating.

[Mairnéalach]

Behe completely supports evolution. He only wants to differentiate himself from an outright Darwinist by saying that the mechanism is not random, but rather is guided, and that math is capable of demonstrating this.

Most other Christian evolution supporters (often labeled theistic evolutionists) say exactly the same thing as Behe, but insist that "guidedness" cannot be conclusively demonstrated according to the commonly accepted definition of science. They claim that this is an inherent limitation of science, not a limitation of God.

They further protest that it is wrong to insist that statistical randomness must be inherently outside of God's providence, as IDers claim. They appeal to scripture to state that even genuine randomness is fully within God's control (The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.)

In this respect, I agree with the "theistic evolutionists" and disagree with IDers.

[Judy K. Warner]

Here is Behe's account of what happened:

http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2009/08/bloggingheads-tv-and-me/

I'm sure he's right -- it was cowardice that led them to take down the interview. But they put it up again -- was that double-cowardice or a decision to be brave? I guess what happened is that McWhorter read Behe, was fascinated by his book, and wanted to talk to him -- something entirely normal. For some reason McWhorter had no idea that you can't talk about evolution as if it's just any old topic. It's a religious subject. McWhorter might be an atheist, but he's not religious about it, so he didn't appreciate the passions that would be aroused against him. I've noticed before that McWhorter doesn't always like to follow his logic where it leads, if it leads him too far out of the mainstream, so when he realized that's what he'd done, he backed off.

[Tony Esolen]

I wish that everybody were at least a little bit conversant with what the late Scholastics called God's concurrence, and God's conservation. Nothing, of course, which is contingent is outside the bounds of God's providence, whether God permits the contingency, or whether he wills directly what only appears to us as contingent.