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Hagiography for Nature‘s Faithful


Readers of ENV may remember that I critiqued the newest paper by the lab of Joseph Thornton a few months ago. Well, the current edition of Nature contains a four-page spread (counting a full-page photo of a dapper Thornton in his lab) on the man himself. It’s an interesting read; Thornton has taken a circuitous route to his present position, by way of some unusual pursuits.
The focus of the feature, however, is not so much Thornton as it is intelligent design. The title, “Raising the Dead,” quickly gets one in mind of that old time religion, and the subtitle trumpets, “His findings rebut creationists….” We learn that, with undoubtedly girded loins, “he has been fearless — almost enthusiastic — about [challenging] a creationist argument called intelligent design: the claim that complex molecular systems can only have been created by a divine force.” And of course heroes never fail: “Thornton shows how evolution did the job, leaving no need for a designer.”
The author of the feature, longtime Nature writer Helen Pearson, cites Christoph Adami in a 2006 Science commentary asserting modestly that an earlier Thornton paper “solidly refute[s] all parts of the intelligent design arguments.” For balance she quotes an ID crank (moi) observing, “I think [Thornton’s] results are quite consistent with my own view that Darwinian processes are poor ones to explain the complexity found in life.” Tired of pussyfooting around with heretics, she later snorts that the current study “flipped another finger to intelligent-design proponents.”
Well, now. Hagiography can be inspiring for the faithful, but for those who want a less credulous assessment of the import of Thornton’s work, simply do a search on his name for articles here at ENV. It tickles me no end that Nature is so emotionally invested in engaging intelligent design. I look forward to their next several dozen articles that solidly refute all parts of intelligent-design arguments.

Michael J. Behe

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
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 three books, Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA that Challenges Evolution, 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.

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C.S. LewisFreud's Last SessionHelen Pearsonintelligent designJoe ThortonMichael BehenatureplayscienceSigmund Freud