Michael Behe

Quick Facts

Full Name	Michael Behe
Occupation	American Biochemist
Date Of Birth	Jan 18, 1952(1952-01-18)
Age	72
Birthplace	Altoona
Country	United States
Birth City	Pennsylvania
Horoscope	Capricorn

Michael Behe Biography

Michael Behe is one of the most popular and richest American biochemist who was born on January 18, 1952 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States. Michael J. Behe, pronounced /’bi:h i//BEEE-hee, was born January 18, 1952. He is an American biochemist and author. He also advocates the pseudoscientific principle intelligent design (ID). He is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania and a senior fellow in the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Behe is most well-known as a proponent of irreducible complexity (IC) which asserts that certain biochemical structures cannot be explained by evolutionary mechanisms. This makes them likely to be the result intelligent design. Behe has testified at several court cases relating to intelligent design including Kitzmiller (Dover Area School District) where his views were cited.

Behe wrote a chapter about blood clotting for Pandas 1993. He presented arguments that he later used in a chapter of Darwin’s Black Box 1996. Later, Behe agreed that they were almost identical when he defended intelligent designing at the Dover trial.

In 1996, Behe published his ideas on irreducible complexity in his book Darwin’s Black Box. Behe’s refusal to identify the nature of any proposed intelligent designer frustrates scientists, who see it as a move to avoid any possibility of testing the positive claims of ID while allowing him and the intelligent design movement to distance themselves from some of the more overtly religiously motivated critics of evolution.

In 1997, Russell Doolittle, on whose work Behe based much of the blood- clotting discussion in Darwin’s Black Box, wrote a rebuttal to the statements about irreducible complexity of certain systems. In particular, Doolittle mentioned the issue of the blood clotting in his article, “A Delicate Balance.” Later on, in 2003, Doolittle’s lab published a paper in the peer- reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which demonstrates that the pufferfish lacks at least three out of 26 blood clotting factors, yet still has a workable blood clotting system. According to Doolittle, this defeats a key claim in Behe’s book, that blood clotting is irreducibly complex.

The 1987 Edwards-v. Aguillard U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibited the teaching of creation science in public schools, but permitted evolutionary theory due to scientific validity. A later version of the book Of Pandas and People (1989), which was based on the Edwards v. Aguillard U.S. Supreme Court decision, replaced every cognate of “creation” by the phrase “intelligent Design” or similar ID terms. Phillip E. Johnson’s books on theistic realist dealt with the criticisms of evolutionary theory and its biased “materialist science” and sought to legitimize creationism teaching in schools. Behe was brought together by other prominent figures in what Johnson called the “wedge strategy” at a Southern Methodist University conference in March 1992. The 1993 meeting of the “Johnson–Behe cadre, of scholars” took place at Pajaro Dunes in California. Behe presented his irreducibly complex molecular machine for the first times. The Discovery Institute provided funding for the group following a conference in 1995 called “The Death of Materialism, and the Renewal of Cultural.” Behe was made a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s “Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture” in 1996. This organization is dedicated to the promotion of intelligent design.

Michael Behe Net Worth

Michael Behe is one of the richest American Biochemist from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Michael Behe 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

Behe was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He attended St. Margaret Mary School as a grade-schooler and then graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School. In 1974, he graduated from Drexel University with a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry. For his dissertation on sickle-cell diseases, he received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. He did postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health on DNA structure from 1978 to 1982. He was an assistant professor of Chemistry at Queens College, New York City. This is where he met Celeste. He moved to Lehigh University in 1985 and is now a Professor of Biochemistry. Lehigh University has a disclaimer that states that it does not endorse Behe’s views on evolution on their website.

Behe claims that he once accepted evolution as a scientific theory. However, after reading Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), Michael Denton, Behe began to question the validity of this theory. Behe later came to believe there was evidence at a biochemical scale that certain biological systems were “irreducibly complicated”. These systems could not have been created by natural selection, even in principle. He believed there was no other explanation for these complex structures than that they were created by an intelligent designer. This logic is very similar in nature to William Paley’s 1802 watchmaker analogy as a proof of a divine designer. This argument of irreducible complexity has been dismissed as an argument from ignorance, relying on the inability to find a natural explanation for the assumption that there is an intelligent cause other than science.

“In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum–or any equally complex system–was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.”

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

Michael Behe height Not available right now. Michael weight Not Known & body measurements will update soon.

Who is Michael Behe Dating?

According to our records, Michael Behe is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, Michael Behe’s is not dating anyone.

Relationships Record : We have no records of past relationships for Michael Behe. You may help us to build the dating records for Michael Behe!

Behe received $20,000 for testifying as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs in Association of Christian Schools International v. Roman Stearns. The case was filed by Association of Christian Schools International, which argued that the University of California was being discriminatory by not recognizing science classes that use creationist books. The 2005 filing claimed that University of California’s rejection of several of their courses was illegal “viewpoint discrimination and content regulation prohibited by the Free Speech Clause.” In 2007, Behe’s expert witness report claimed that the Christian textbooks, including William S. Pinkston, Jr.’s Biology for Christian Schools (1980; 2nd ed. 1994), are excellent works for high school students. He defended that view in a deposition. In August 2008, Judge S. James Otero rejected Behe’s claims, saying that Behe “submitted a declaration concluding that the BJU [Bob Jones University Press] text mentions standard scientific content. … However, Professor Behe ‘did not consider how much detail or depth’ the texts gave to this standard content.” Otero ruled in favor of the University of California’s decision to reject courses using these books.

Facts & Trivia

Michael Ranked on the list of most popular American biochemist. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in United States. Michael Behe celebrates birthday on January 18 of every year.

The book was reviewed, by prominent scientists in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Globe and Mail, Science, and Nature who were highly critical of the work noting that Behe appears to accept almost all of evolutionary theory, barring random mutation, which is replaced with guided mutation at the hand of an unnamed designer. The book earned Behe the Pigasus Award for the year 2007.