Darwin Party Designed Intelligently?

When biochemistry professor Michael Behe’s colleagues packed into an auditorium for a birthday party Wednesday at Lehigh University, Behe knew he wouldn’t exactly be welcome.

The birthday boy was Charles Darwin, who would have turned 199 last week. And Behe is one of his best-known critics.

Behe catapulted to worldwide recognition in a landmark 2005 Pennsylvania court case when he testified in favor of "intelligent design," arguing that some evolutionary leaps are too complex to have happened without some kind of designer, or God.

That puts him at odds with the rest of Lehigh’s biochemistry department, which states on its Web site that Behe’s views have "no basis in science," while Darwin’s theory of evolution is backed up by "findings accumulated over 140 years."

Organizers of Wednesday’s event, which celebrated Darwin’s contributions to everything from geology to theology, said the party in Bethlehem wasn’t intended as a snub, and Behe said he wasn’t offended.

"I think the party is being put on in order to show people that Darwin reigns supreme in biology," Behe said. "And because I’m also in the department and I’m an intelligent-design proponent, they want to show that most people in the department are sane," he added sarcastically.

John Nyby, a biology professor and coordinator of the event in Whitaker Laboratory, countered, "This is not an intelligent-design-bashing party. We have no interest in doing that. We’re celebrating Darwin….And we want people to know that Lehigh University supports Darwinian thought."

Partygoers heard lectures, ate birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to Darwin, who was born Feb. 12, 1809. He published his theories on evolution nearly 150 years ago, arguing that species evolved and differentiated by adapting to their environments over generations.

"Biology isn’t really understood without invoking Darwin," said Nyby, who calls Darwin "the greatest scientist of all time."

Darwin started out as a geologist, and that background "gave him a feeling for deep time," said Earth sciences professor Edward Evenson, one of the speakers Wednesday.

"People were beginning to wander away from the idea that the Earth was only a few thousand years old," the age indicated by a literal reading of the Bible, Evenson said.

He and Nyby said they’re not religious.

Darwin’s ideas also meant the book of Genesis couldn’t be read anymore as natural history, said the Rev. Lloyd Steffen, the university chaplain and another speaker at the event.

"There are Christians today [still] enormously upset about that," said Steffen, a minister in the United Church of Christ. "Me, I’m a bit of a poet, and I think there are other ways to know things," he added, saying the biblical account of creation can contain important truths even if it’s not scientifically true.

Behe, a Roman Catholic, said his problems with Darwin’s theory don’t stem from religion. "I was taught Darwin in parochial schools," he said. "I never really had much of a problem with it."

He accepts that Darwin’s theories explain how a species can adapt over time, such as how bacteria become more resistant to antibiotics. "But those are tiny, tiny changes," Behe said. For big leaps like the beginning of life itself, "nobody has the foggiest idea how that occurred."

Behe argues some parts of the cell are too complex to have evolved by chance over a long time, concluding that an intelligent designer must have guided the process. He believes that designer is God.

Steffen said he disagrees because intelligent design assumes that "science can get you to infer logically that there’s a creator." That’s a fine philosophical argument, he said, but it incorrectly assumes science "is the only way to know things."

After hearing Behe testify in the 2005 case in York County, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones called intelligent design "creationism repackaged," saying it could not be taught as science in the Dover Area School District.

Regardless of whether others accept his views, Behe said, he worries that events like Wednesday’s party will convince students that Darwin’s 150-year-old ideas will always be the last word.

"This party is like a group of scientists [around 1905] having a birthday party for Newton because they want people to think that they’re not associated with this new guy Einstein," Behe said.

Although Nyby believes Darwin’s ideas are biology’s bedrock, he agreed scientists have lots more to learn. "Science never reaches its end point," he said. "There’s an infinite amount of knowledge out there."

CHARLES DARWIN

Born Feb. 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England.

In 1831, joined a scientific expedition on the HMS Beagle as a naturalist. The voyage of nearly five years inspired many of his ideas on evolution.

In 1859, published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection."

Died April 19, 1882, and was later buried at Westminster Abbey.

michael.duck@mcall.com

610-861-3637

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