Science & Tech Quote by Michael Behe

Behe’s line stages itself as a modest observation, but it’s really a pressure test: how “open” is science allowed to be when certain answers carry cultural and metaphysical baggage? The phrase “often said” is doing quiet work. It distances him from the claim while still smuggling it in as a widely accepted norm, the kind you’re meant to feel rather than argue about. And “smack of” is a tell: not “are supernatural,” but merely resemble it. The target isn’t just theology; it’s the boundary-policing reflex that treats any whiff of metaphysics as contamination.

The subtext is strategic. By framing methodological naturalism as a kind of taboo rather than a practical rule, Behe implies that science might be artificially narrowing its own vision. It recasts the exclusion of supernatural explanations as ideology, not method. That repositioning matters because Behe’s larger project (best known through the intelligent design movement) depends on turning a procedural constraint into a philosophical prejudice. If science “must avoid” the supernatural, then design-friendly conclusions can be dismissed on principle before evidence is weighed; the deck is stacked.

Context sharpens the intent. In late 20th-century American culture wars over evolution, the fight wasn’t only about fossils or biochemistry; it was about who gets to define “knowledge.” Behe’s sentence is a wedge: it invites listeners to see mainstream science as gatekeeping, and to view challenges to evolutionary explanations not as religious incursions but as censored possibilities. It’s persuasive because it leverages a real tension - science’s limits - while nudging those limits to look like fear.