This interview with Dr. Michael Behe was conducted in August 2003 by Tristan Abbey. Dr. Behe is a professor of biological science at Lehigh University and a senior fellow at the Center for Science & Culture. Interview questions are in bold; responses are in standard text. The views expressed below do not necessarily reflect the views of IDURC.

1. Recently there has been a lot of attention focused on Texas. The Discovery Institute and proponents of Intelligent Design are pushing revised state standards to include teaching criticism of standard evolution. What is your opinion of this effort?

I think it's a terrific idea. Of course, as a critic of Darwinism and proponent of intelligent design myself, I think there's plenty of room to raise question about the adequacy of natural selection as an explanation for life. But I also think its great pedagogy to include criticisms of the theory because it's exciting for students. It shows them that not every important question in biology is settled, and that maybe they can make a contribution to the discussion when they grow up. That makes the subject of biology a lot more interesting to a kid.

2. You recently wrote a letter to Nature on the subject of pseudogenes. In that letter, you stated that current research on pseudogenes "has forcefully shown that our intuitions about what is functionless in biology are not to be trusted." How far do you think these intuitions extend, and to what extent do you think ID may be, in the end, vindicated as more and more research is done on things presumed to be functionless?

It's a recurring theme in biology, that what we don't understand we think is useless. From "vestigial organs" to "junk DNA" what was once thought to be functionless in many cases has been found to be critical. This shows to me that even the most brilliant investigators don't have a grasp of the great complexity that is required to build a functioning organism. As life is seen to be more and more complex, and as the idea of "functionless" is confined to at best a tiny domain of life's properties, the design of life will, I think, become more compelling to more and more people.

3. As more functions are found for supposedly functionless DNA, do you think the ID community has done enough to effectively grab hold of these discoveries, so to speak? In other words, does ID have a right in these cases to say the equivalent of a scientific "I told you so!"?

I don't think one should focus on functionless DNA, if such there be, or worry about saying "I told you so" when unsuspected functions are discovered. To me, that's focusing on pebbles when we're surrounded by mountains. The real story is the enormous and growing sophistication and interactive complexity found at the molecular and cellular level of life. Darwinists expected life to be simple at its foundation. It ain't. It is complex and elegant beyond anyone's wildest imagination (including design theorists' imaginations). Whether predicted or not, such sophisticated systems are compelling support for design.

4. Ken Miller is one of your most prolific critics. Both of you have been debating with each other on the subject of irreducible complexity for quite some time. Has anything been resolved, or any common ground established?

No, I don't think anything has been resolved or any common ground established. His position and mine are, I think, the same as when we started. In my view, he does not deal seriously with the issues raised by ID and irreducible complexity, but only wants to blunt the public impact of the intelligent design movement. One good thing that has come of our debates, however, is that our positions and supporting evidence are spelled out and available on the web. So anyone interested can read the arguments and decide for himself which position is more plausible.

5. It has been reported that you are currently researching oligonucleotides. Is this true? If so, could you briefly describe your research, as well as the significance of it?

My current work is an attempt to model the evolution of new protein functions through gene duplication. Gene duplication is purported to be a major pathway for the Darwinian evolution of biochemical novelty. However, as in other areas, Darwinists have not closely examined whether gene duplication can realistically do all that they ascribe to it. I hope to help them out in this area by asking those questions.

6. Gene duplication is a relatively advanced issue when compared with some of the other more mundane aspects of the evolution debate, and yet it is often at the core of the discussion. Why do you think gene duplication may not explain all that Darwinists think it does?

Gene duplication is attractive to Darwinists for several reasons. First, the starting point is a functioning protein, so they don't have to do the hard work of explaining how a sophisticated molecular machine originated in the first place. Second, many proteins are similar to each other in sequence, so it's easy to imagine they are derived from each other. To a Darwinist gene duplication followed by natural selection is an easy explanation.

The hitch, as always, is that Darwinists virtually never explain in any detail how natural selection would actually get from protein A to protein B after the gene for protein A duplicated. After all, gene duplication just leaves you with a second copy of the same gene --- nothing different. The problem is, as everyone agrees, that the duplicated gene is much more likely to suffer a deleterious mutation than a beneficial one. Nonetheless, Darwinists hope that the occasional beneficial mutation just might come along. However, they never look very deeply into the matter. It turns out that to acquire some new functions, such as the capacity to bind a new molecule, multiple mutations would be expected to be needed, not just a single mutation. The requirement for multiple mutations would quickly render gene duplication an untenable explanation, since a duplicated gene would be riddled with deleterious mutations before acquiring several positive ones.

7. There are many young people interested in Intelligent Design. Why do you think this is, and do you have any sagely advice to give to them?

Intelligent design is exciting to young people, I think, because it's a brand new direction for science. Their textbooks have told them that everything about biology was understood, if not in detail then at least in broad outline. That turns out not to be true. What's more, ID states that to explain life, one has to invoke something fundamentally different than just matter and energy --- one has to invoke mind. The prospect of a brand new vista opening in biology understandably is attractive to younger folks who have not yet committed themselves to working with older ideas.

My advice to them would be to get the best education they possibly can. Study as widely and in as much depth as their talents allow. Save what is good from older theories, but don't be limited by them.