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Darwin Devolves : The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution
The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design� and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that science itself has proven that intelligent design is a better explanation for the origin of life. In Darwin Devolves, Behe advances his argument, presenting new research that offers a startling reconsideration of how Darwin’s mechanism works, weakening the theory’s validity even more.
A system of natural selection acting on random mutation, evolution can help make something look and act differently. But evolution never creates something organically. Behe contends that Darwinism actually works by a process of devolution—damaging cells in DNA in order to create something new at the lowest biological levels. This is important, he makes clear, because it shows the Darwinian process cannot explain the creation of life itself. “A process that so easily tears down sophisticated machinery is not one which will build complex, functional systems,� he writes.
In addition to disputing the methodology of Darwinism and how it conflicts with the concept of creation, Behe reveals that what makes Intelligent Design unique—and right—is that it acknowledges causation. Evolution proposes that organisms living today are descended with modification from organisms that lived in the distant past. But Intelligent Design goes a step further asking, what caused such astounding changes to take place? What is the reason or mechanism for evolution? For Behe, this is what makes Intelligent Design so important.
A system of natural selection acting on random mutation, evolution can help make something look and act differently. But evolution never creates something organically. Behe contends that Darwinism actually works by a process of devolution—damaging cells in DNA in order to create something new at the lowest biological levels. This is important, he makes clear, because it shows the Darwinian process cannot explain the creation of life itself. “A process that so easily tears down sophisticated machinery is not one which will build complex, functional systems,� he writes.
In addition to disputing the methodology of Darwinism and how it conflicts with the concept of creation, Behe reveals that what makes Intelligent Design unique—and right—is that it acknowledges causation. Evolution proposes that organisms living today are descended with modification from organisms that lived in the distant past. But Intelligent Design goes a step further asking, what caused such astounding changes to take place? What is the reason or mechanism for evolution? For Behe, this is what makes Intelligent Design so important.
333 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 26, 2019
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1,109 people want to read
About the author
Michael J. Behe
26books216followersMichael J. Behe is Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. 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 addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, he has also written editorial features in Boston Review, American Spectator, and The New York Times. His book, Darwin's Black Box discusses the implications for neo-Darwinism of what he calls "irreducibly complex" biochemical systems. The book was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and recently named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Behe has presented and debated his work at major universities throughout North America and England.
Department of Biological Sciences
Iacocca Hall, Room D-221
111 Research Drive
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610-758-3474 voice
443-346-2436 fax
[email protected]
In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, he has also written editorial features in Boston Review, American Spectator, and The New York Times. His book, Darwin's Black Box discusses the implications for neo-Darwinism of what he calls "irreducibly complex" biochemical systems. The book was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and recently named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Behe has presented and debated his work at major universities throughout North America and England.
Department of Biological Sciences
Iacocca Hall, Room D-221
111 Research Drive
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610-758-3474 voice
443-346-2436 fax
[email protected]
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December 4, 2021
Sell Me A Bridge!
Although it pretends to be something else, this is a book about metaphysics - our fundamental presumptions about the way the world is. Unfortunately it isn’t a very good one. The Ancient Greek philosophers started the genre when they made the distinction between cause and purpose. Everything has a prior cause but for some things that cause is an intention, which is, they thought, it’s own cause.
Eventually the opposing ideas cause/effect and purpose ripened into what we now call mechanism and teleology. And we’re still trying to work out the relationship between them. Behe’s book continues the battle between cause and purpose as the way the world ‘really� is and how the process of evolution takes place as a consequence.
Behe has chosen to opt for a teleological view of the world. This hasn’t been popular among philosophers (or evolutionary scientists) for the last century or so. Arguably, the last well-known thinkers to adopt a teleological approach to evolution include two Frenchmen, Henri Bergson (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1927) and Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit palaeontologist).
Both these men thought that the universe was pursuing a goal rather than following the strictly random progression of cause and effect. Bergson identified this purposefulness with the élan vital or creative impulse of human beings as the source of spontaneous innovation. Teilhard suggested that the entire cosmos was headed toward not a grim heat death but what he called the Omega Point, essentially a reuniting of all things, or, less euphemistically: God.
The teleological pot never quite stopped simmering for the remainder of the 20th century - it was kept barely going by, of all things, American Pragmatism, a philosophy which is implicitly teleological. But the world at large became dominated by the physical mechanics of evolution sparked by the discovery of DNA.
DNA, it was presumed, was the missing mechanical link in Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was the molecular locus at which things happened and through which all life from bacteria to human beings was generated. And DNA was the substance whose random mutations could account for the mechanical progression from one form of life to another, and from species to species within those forms.
But, according to Behe, scientific results aren’t turning out as expected. While he recognises that DNA is “an elaborate molecular code expressed through the intricate actions of hugely complicated molecular machines,� he doesn’t buy the implication that the process of evolution is ultimately without some more general purpose. His evidence for this conclusion is precisely that provided by other theoreticians as evidence for the opposition, essentially junk DNA.
In Behe’s view, evolved life forms, during the process of progressively adapting to their environment actually devolve. That is to say, their genes are degraded from those of their ancestors as they sacrifice long term development for short term gain. Human beings in fact have mostly bits and pieces of now inoperative DNA in their chromosomes, suggesting some really massive ‘fall� from a previous superior state. Darwinian evolution is wasteful and its destructive!
For someone committed to purposeful cosmic development this waste and destruction is intolerable. Darwin must be wrong. His theory, because it is about destruction, cannot account, Behe says, for that first positive productive spark of life, that first molecular occurrence of DNA. We must look at the bigger picture to understand what’s happening here. And that bigger picture means recognising that there is a design that we haven’t yet grasped, a quite literal Deus ex machina.
Forget the origins of the Big Bang, it’s that first molecule which must have been inserted into the soup of creation which is the core of the problem. And, of course, if there is such an insertion, there must be a design; and if there is a design, there must be a designer. And the traditional name for this designer is God. And thanks to theologians like Thomas Aquinas, it is clear that the designer-God that best fits the needs of the universe and its orderly development is that described by Christianity.
As usual, a metaphysical choice apparently has found its own confirmation. If purpose is presumed then purpose will be found. But the flaw in Behe’s argument is not in his metaphysics but in what might be called his post-metaphysical analysis. This analysis is largely cultural and has much more to do with Behe’s Roman Catholic background than either his metaphysics or science.
I don’t begrudge Behe’s metaphysical stance. On the contrary, to the extent that his metaphysics conforms to that of Bergson, Teilhard, and many of the American Pragmatists, I am right there with him. And for the sake of argument, I’m even willing to accept his claims about intelligent design. Who am I after all to contradict Aquinas. But at that point we part company.
Christian thinking did not spawn the idea of intelligent design. Before Christianity, the Gnostics of Persia and their forebears had already thought through the issue of reconciling a God of creation with the apparent waste and destruction that is apparent, not just in molecular DNA but in a dog eat dog world of aggression, violence, injustice and death.
The God of gnosticism is neither the rather distant Ancient of Days of Judaism nor the supposedly benign and co-suffering triune God of followers of Jesus. The Gnostic God is evil. The purpose this God had in mind is precisely what we can observe and experience around us - a world of unrelieved suffering, overwhelming desire to escape through myth, universal grasping for power, and a general disappointment with the way things have turned out.
Gnosticism invaded Christian thought at an early stage and pops its head up periodically in sectarian enthusiasms - strict Calvinism, Jansenism, and some Anabaptist cults for example. But in Roman Catholicism, gnosticism is formally a heresy. According to doctrine, creation is good, as is the God who/which established its existence.
So it is obvious that what Behe is pushing is not science, not even metaphysics, but religion - his religion against what he believes are heretics. He wants us to believe that there is not just intention behind the cosmos but good intention. He believes this as an article of Faith and wants to rest of us to accept it as a methodological principle.
As they say in New York City: “Sell me a bridge!�
Although it pretends to be something else, this is a book about metaphysics - our fundamental presumptions about the way the world is. Unfortunately it isn’t a very good one. The Ancient Greek philosophers started the genre when they made the distinction between cause and purpose. Everything has a prior cause but for some things that cause is an intention, which is, they thought, it’s own cause.
Eventually the opposing ideas cause/effect and purpose ripened into what we now call mechanism and teleology. And we’re still trying to work out the relationship between them. Behe’s book continues the battle between cause and purpose as the way the world ‘really� is and how the process of evolution takes place as a consequence.
Behe has chosen to opt for a teleological view of the world. This hasn’t been popular among philosophers (or evolutionary scientists) for the last century or so. Arguably, the last well-known thinkers to adopt a teleological approach to evolution include two Frenchmen, Henri Bergson (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1927) and Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit palaeontologist).
Both these men thought that the universe was pursuing a goal rather than following the strictly random progression of cause and effect. Bergson identified this purposefulness with the élan vital or creative impulse of human beings as the source of spontaneous innovation. Teilhard suggested that the entire cosmos was headed toward not a grim heat death but what he called the Omega Point, essentially a reuniting of all things, or, less euphemistically: God.
The teleological pot never quite stopped simmering for the remainder of the 20th century - it was kept barely going by, of all things, American Pragmatism, a philosophy which is implicitly teleological. But the world at large became dominated by the physical mechanics of evolution sparked by the discovery of DNA.
DNA, it was presumed, was the missing mechanical link in Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was the molecular locus at which things happened and through which all life from bacteria to human beings was generated. And DNA was the substance whose random mutations could account for the mechanical progression from one form of life to another, and from species to species within those forms.
But, according to Behe, scientific results aren’t turning out as expected. While he recognises that DNA is “an elaborate molecular code expressed through the intricate actions of hugely complicated molecular machines,� he doesn’t buy the implication that the process of evolution is ultimately without some more general purpose. His evidence for this conclusion is precisely that provided by other theoreticians as evidence for the opposition, essentially junk DNA.
In Behe’s view, evolved life forms, during the process of progressively adapting to their environment actually devolve. That is to say, their genes are degraded from those of their ancestors as they sacrifice long term development for short term gain. Human beings in fact have mostly bits and pieces of now inoperative DNA in their chromosomes, suggesting some really massive ‘fall� from a previous superior state. Darwinian evolution is wasteful and its destructive!
For someone committed to purposeful cosmic development this waste and destruction is intolerable. Darwin must be wrong. His theory, because it is about destruction, cannot account, Behe says, for that first positive productive spark of life, that first molecular occurrence of DNA. We must look at the bigger picture to understand what’s happening here. And that bigger picture means recognising that there is a design that we haven’t yet grasped, a quite literal Deus ex machina.
Forget the origins of the Big Bang, it’s that first molecule which must have been inserted into the soup of creation which is the core of the problem. And, of course, if there is such an insertion, there must be a design; and if there is a design, there must be a designer. And the traditional name for this designer is God. And thanks to theologians like Thomas Aquinas, it is clear that the designer-God that best fits the needs of the universe and its orderly development is that described by Christianity.
As usual, a metaphysical choice apparently has found its own confirmation. If purpose is presumed then purpose will be found. But the flaw in Behe’s argument is not in his metaphysics but in what might be called his post-metaphysical analysis. This analysis is largely cultural and has much more to do with Behe’s Roman Catholic background than either his metaphysics or science.
I don’t begrudge Behe’s metaphysical stance. On the contrary, to the extent that his metaphysics conforms to that of Bergson, Teilhard, and many of the American Pragmatists, I am right there with him. And for the sake of argument, I’m even willing to accept his claims about intelligent design. Who am I after all to contradict Aquinas. But at that point we part company.
Christian thinking did not spawn the idea of intelligent design. Before Christianity, the Gnostics of Persia and their forebears had already thought through the issue of reconciling a God of creation with the apparent waste and destruction that is apparent, not just in molecular DNA but in a dog eat dog world of aggression, violence, injustice and death.
The God of gnosticism is neither the rather distant Ancient of Days of Judaism nor the supposedly benign and co-suffering triune God of followers of Jesus. The Gnostic God is evil. The purpose this God had in mind is precisely what we can observe and experience around us - a world of unrelieved suffering, overwhelming desire to escape through myth, universal grasping for power, and a general disappointment with the way things have turned out.
Gnosticism invaded Christian thought at an early stage and pops its head up periodically in sectarian enthusiasms - strict Calvinism, Jansenism, and some Anabaptist cults for example. But in Roman Catholicism, gnosticism is formally a heresy. According to doctrine, creation is good, as is the God who/which established its existence.
So it is obvious that what Behe is pushing is not science, not even metaphysics, but religion - his religion against what he believes are heretics. He wants us to believe that there is not just intention behind the cosmos but good intention. He believes this as an article of Faith and wants to rest of us to accept it as a methodological principle.
As they say in New York City: “Sell me a bridge!�
April 12, 2019
Of the many books on Darwinian evolution that I have read, the best fall into three different categories:
1. Scholastic dispute � these books start with a statement of the question to be addressed, such as “What is the origin of life?� or “What caused the Cambrian explosion?�, then consider philosophically the methodological tools to be used to answer the question, then look at the complete range of attempted solutions, and finally present the correct solution. Stephen Meyer’s books Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt are of this form.
2. Engineering problem � the angle of this type of book is to consider what it would take to build a living cell or an animal body or some other biological component. Based on our detailed knowledge of the components of living things, what would it take to assemble the parts? Michael Behe’s first two books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution are of this form.
3. Assumption checking � this last approach considers the fact that Darwin proposed his theory of random mutation and natural selection as a possible explanation of the emergence of new biological forms, that the theory relied on various assumptions that he made about nature, that science had not advanced sufficiently at the time to test those assumptions rigorously, but we are in a position now, 150 years later, to evaluate those assumptions with precise scientific data. The New Story of Biology by Robert Augros and George Stanciu follows this approach.
Behe, in Darwin Devolves, definitely engages in the type of engineering analysis that made his first two books so effective, and dabbles in scholastic disputation, but the book as a whole is of the third type. Time and again, he repeats that we have much more scientific information available today that we did a century and a half ago, and even than we did twenty years ago. For instance, in the final chapter, Behe states:
So, that is exactly what Behe the biochemist sets out to do:
1. Note Darwin’s assumptions about the capabilities of random mutation and natural selection to account for the origin of new biological species.
2. Use the incredible advances of today’s science in the understanding of life’s molecular processes to evaluate what random mutation and natural selection can actually accomplish.
3. Compare the evidence of science with Darwin’s assumptions and draw conclusions about the real explanatory power of Darwin’s evolutionary mechanism.
So, first of all, what were Darwin’s assumptions (chapter 3)?
The important thing to note about this assumption is that Darwin makes evolution out to be a process that perfects in a cumulative fashion. It has successive stages that build on one another. It is not just a question of one change happening here and another disconnected change happening over there. Rather, it is change built upon change built upon change, over long periods of time, that progressively produces the panorama of living things.
Before using modern science to see whether these expectations of Darwin can be squared with biological reality, Behe first spends two chapters considering how other scientists have attempted to reconcile today’s knowledge with a century-and-a-half-old theory. All of these scientists realize that they have an extremely tough job on their hands, and they give it their best shot.
Chapter 4 speaks of neutral theory, which speculates that mutations that are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous pave the way for later advantageous mutations and so bring about new biological features; web of life theory, which opines that species of microorganisms might pass genes among themselves and so the long history of life has just been a constant interchange of genetic material that originated because we are part of an infinite multiverse in which everything possible happens an infinite number of times (not a joke!); and self-organization theory, which holds as a possibility that living things have the built-in capacity, under the right conditions, to organize themselves into other more complex living things.
Chapter 5 considers attempted improvements to neo-Darwinism that are classified as being part of an extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The proponents of EES posit various mechanisms as being capable of enhancing the chances for Darwin’s theory to be plausible, such as:
� master genes: perhaps random changes in those genes could cause the development of new and complex features
� inclusive inheritance: perhaps traits that are not coded in DNA and are passed on to successive generations can cause more variations for natural selection to choose from
� niche construction: perhaps the way that animals interact with their environment causes genetic changes in animals
� developmental plasticity: perhaps plants and animals, in adjusting to their environments, alter their behavior so that they survive and, in doing so, pass on those alterations to the next generation
All of these ideas that are meant to help modern Darwinists to the explanatory finish line suffer from the same defect:
That is the million-dollar question to which Behe continually returns: where did ancestral plants and animals get their traits, and how did their lineages come to differ? EES does not attempt to answer that question and so is not able to really boost evolution’s explanatory power.
This leaves us with classic random mutation and natural selection. Are they able to account for the origin of species, as Darwin thought they could? Based on what we know today, the answer is: certainly not.
In chapter 6, Behe showcases various field studies that help us determine the reach of random mutation. Peter and Rosemary Grant did exhaustive investigations of the Galapagos finches and, using newly-developed techniques, sequenced the genomes of 120 of them, enabling them to determine which genes cause variation in the finches� beak size. Similar studies were done on hundreds of species of cichlid fish in African lakes, with differences being traced all the way down to the level of the genome. In those cases and others cited by Behe, the changes were quite small and they were never sufficient to introduce a new biological family into the world (in the Linnaean system of taxonomical classification, species is the lowest level, then genus, then family).
We reach the heart of the book in chapter 7, as it provides the new information about random mutation that Darwin could not know:
In other words, when random mutation provides a benefit to a plant or animal, it almost always does so by damaging its genetic material. Just as throwing cargo overboard can sometimes make for the survival of the crew, so too, in the world of life, the destruction of certain functions has sometimes provided lifeforms with a survival advantage. When it does, natural selection steps in to conserve the damaged genetic material. The plants or animals with certain debilitated functions are the ones that survive. Knowing this, we arrive at the shocking realization that the mechanism which Darwin hoped would cause an evolution actually causes a devolution.
Chapter 8 tracks what happens from there. After a random mutation that destroys functionality causes a survival advantage, the damaged genetic material spreads throughout a population. Once that takes place, there is no getting the good genes back again. You throw the cargo overboard in order to obtain a temporary advantage, but you have to suffer the long-term consequences: there is no way to retrieve the cargo.
Natural selection preserves the degradation, and it cannot reconstruct the missing function. The reason is that natural selection is blind. Behe explains that it is a mere metaphor; there is no actual selection taking place. If there were, the selector could note that damaged animals might have a temporary survival advantage, but retaining them in the population would not be good in the long run. Since natural selection is blind—since it is simply a term saying that those who survive in nature are the ones more apt to survive—it “will favor the increase in the number of organisms that do better in their environment for any reason, regardless of the basis of the variation� (p. 203). And, as we have seen, in the vast majority of cases, the basis for doing better is a damaging of the genome.
What we have learned, then, through a more detailed knowledge of the molecular basis of life, is that the little variation that we are able to observe in nature as being caused by random mutation and natural selection—the appearance of new species and genera—is actually the result of loss of function and so devolution, reduces the possibility of any further change by restricting the variability of the genome, and provides no explanation for any notable feature of the biological world.
To emphasize just how inadequate empirical data has shown the Darwinian mechanism to be, Behe revisits his famous notion of “irreducible complexity� in chapter 9. There, he shows that we not only have no reasonable expectation that random mutation and natural selection can build systems that need all parts to be present for them to be functional (irreducibly complex systems), we can’t even expect it to be able to build the parts of those parts in anything close to the time needed (mini-irreducibly complex systems).
Behe is extremely kind to evolutionists throughout the book—including some vociferous opponents of his science—but be he ever so kind, or be he ever so Behe, he does have to ask the question: why are so many 21st century scientists sold on an idea that their own science has shown definitively to be utterly inadequate? Effectively, he believes it is due to two reasons (p. 218): a) they are believers in outdated mathematical studies that did not take into account biological reality as we know it today; b) they are unable to see the real problem that they have to solve, which is also the hardest problem, the million-dollar question mentioned above. Quoting Chesterton, he notes that they are “in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea� (p. 245).
The obsession with Darwinism leads some scientists to come up with the craziest of proposals—that mind is just the product of neural impulses, that our free will and desires do not really exist, and that reality is just a computer simulation. Besides the fact that these ideas, which Behe treats in chapter 10, destroy all scientific endeavor, they also manifest how humans can sometimes be willing to sacrifice their very rationality in order to hold on to a cherished idea.
It has been obvious to most everyone in the history of the world that the purposeful arrangement of parts that is manifest in every member of the biological world is the product of mind. Atheists like Richard Dawkins were hoping that random mutation and natural selection could prove that lifeforms are only apparently designed. People of common sense knew all along that they were building castles in the air. But now that Darwin’s mechanism has been tested at the molecular level of life, we can definitively show its utter inadequacy to account for anything of real moment in the world around us.
I highly recommend Darwin Devolves for an authentic 21st century scientific account of the explanatory power of Darwin’s theory. And while Behe does engage in some geek-talk occasionally, overall the book is extremely readable. It is loaded with the analogies for which Behe has a gift, movie references, and helpful diagrams and tables. Even for someone who is not conversant with the literature treating evolution, Darwin Devolves promises to be an interesting read.
1. Scholastic dispute � these books start with a statement of the question to be addressed, such as “What is the origin of life?� or “What caused the Cambrian explosion?�, then consider philosophically the methodological tools to be used to answer the question, then look at the complete range of attempted solutions, and finally present the correct solution. Stephen Meyer’s books Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt are of this form.
2. Engineering problem � the angle of this type of book is to consider what it would take to build a living cell or an animal body or some other biological component. Based on our detailed knowledge of the components of living things, what would it take to assemble the parts? Michael Behe’s first two books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution are of this form.
3. Assumption checking � this last approach considers the fact that Darwin proposed his theory of random mutation and natural selection as a possible explanation of the emergence of new biological forms, that the theory relied on various assumptions that he made about nature, that science had not advanced sufficiently at the time to test those assumptions rigorously, but we are in a position now, 150 years later, to evaluate those assumptions with precise scientific data. The New Story of Biology by Robert Augros and George Stanciu follows this approach.
Behe, in Darwin Devolves, definitely engages in the type of engineering analysis that made his first two books so effective, and dabbles in scholastic disputation, but the book as a whole is of the third type. Time and again, he repeats that we have much more scientific information available today that we did a century and a half ago, and even than we did twenty years ago. For instance, in the final chapter, Behe states:
Darwin did not show that apparently purposeful systems could be built by natural selection acting on random variation. Rather, he just proposed that they might. His theory had yet to be tested at the profound depths of life. In fact, no one then even realized life had such depths. Darwin built a case with the best science available in the nineteenth century. The case was pretty strong for a few of his theory’s multiple aspects, including the descent of modern organisms from earlier ones. It was extremely weak for his proposed mechanism of evolution. A major reason for its weakness is that the science of Darwin’s day had no understanding of the molecular foundation of life. Only now, only within the past twenty years has science advanced sufficiently to examine life in the molecular detail necessary to rigorously test Darwin’s ideas. (pp. 255-256)
So, that is exactly what Behe the biochemist sets out to do:
1. Note Darwin’s assumptions about the capabilities of random mutation and natural selection to account for the origin of new biological species.
2. Use the incredible advances of today’s science in the understanding of life’s molecular processes to evaluate what random mutation and natural selection can actually accomplish.
3. Compare the evidence of science with Darwin’s assumptions and draw conclusions about the real explanatory power of Darwin’s evolutionary mechanism.
So, first of all, what were Darwin’s assumptions (chapter 3)?
Darwin’s last theory—call it the ‘theory of natural coherence’—is the presumption that repeated rounds of random variation and natural selection would, by a succession of separate steps, build elegant compound interactive biological systems. (p. 89)
The important thing to note about this assumption is that Darwin makes evolution out to be a process that perfects in a cumulative fashion. It has successive stages that build on one another. It is not just a question of one change happening here and another disconnected change happening over there. Rather, it is change built upon change built upon change, over long periods of time, that progressively produces the panorama of living things.
Before using modern science to see whether these expectations of Darwin can be squared with biological reality, Behe first spends two chapters considering how other scientists have attempted to reconcile today’s knowledge with a century-and-a-half-old theory. All of these scientists realize that they have an extremely tough job on their hands, and they give it their best shot.
Chapter 4 speaks of neutral theory, which speculates that mutations that are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous pave the way for later advantageous mutations and so bring about new biological features; web of life theory, which opines that species of microorganisms might pass genes among themselves and so the long history of life has just been a constant interchange of genetic material that originated because we are part of an infinite multiverse in which everything possible happens an infinite number of times (not a joke!); and self-organization theory, which holds as a possibility that living things have the built-in capacity, under the right conditions, to organize themselves into other more complex living things.
Chapter 5 considers attempted improvements to neo-Darwinism that are classified as being part of an extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The proponents of EES posit various mechanisms as being capable of enhancing the chances for Darwin’s theory to be plausible, such as:
� master genes: perhaps random changes in those genes could cause the development of new and complex features
� inclusive inheritance: perhaps traits that are not coded in DNA and are passed on to successive generations can cause more variations for natural selection to choose from
� niche construction: perhaps the way that animals interact with their environment causes genetic changes in animals
� developmental plasticity: perhaps plants and animals, in adjusting to their environments, alter their behavior so that they survive and, in doing so, pass on those alterations to the next generation
All of these ideas that are meant to help modern Darwinists to the explanatory finish line suffer from the same defect:
[N]either neutral theory nor complexity theory, neither the ideas of the extended evolutionary synthesis nor the latest Darwinian innovations—none of them even try to account for the sophisticated machinery of life. None even try to account for the purposeful arrangement of parts. (p. 137)
That is the million-dollar question to which Behe continually returns: where did ancestral plants and animals get their traits, and how did their lineages come to differ? EES does not attempt to answer that question and so is not able to really boost evolution’s explanatory power.
This leaves us with classic random mutation and natural selection. Are they able to account for the origin of species, as Darwin thought they could? Based on what we know today, the answer is: certainly not.
In chapter 6, Behe showcases various field studies that help us determine the reach of random mutation. Peter and Rosemary Grant did exhaustive investigations of the Galapagos finches and, using newly-developed techniques, sequenced the genomes of 120 of them, enabling them to determine which genes cause variation in the finches� beak size. Similar studies were done on hundreds of species of cichlid fish in African lakes, with differences being traced all the way down to the level of the genome. In those cases and others cited by Behe, the changes were quite small and they were never sufficient to introduce a new biological family into the world (in the Linnaean system of taxonomical classification, species is the lowest level, then genus, then family).
We reach the heart of the book in chapter 7, as it provides the new information about random mutation that Darwin could not know:
The amazing but in retrospect unsurprising fact established by the diligent work of many investigators in laboratory evolution over decades is that the great majority of even beneficial positively selected mutations damage an organism’s genetic information—either degrading or outright destroying functional coded elements. (p. 183)
In other words, when random mutation provides a benefit to a plant or animal, it almost always does so by damaging its genetic material. Just as throwing cargo overboard can sometimes make for the survival of the crew, so too, in the world of life, the destruction of certain functions has sometimes provided lifeforms with a survival advantage. When it does, natural selection steps in to conserve the damaged genetic material. The plants or animals with certain debilitated functions are the ones that survive. Knowing this, we arrive at the shocking realization that the mechanism which Darwin hoped would cause an evolution actually causes a devolution.
Chapter 8 tracks what happens from there. After a random mutation that destroys functionality causes a survival advantage, the damaged genetic material spreads throughout a population. Once that takes place, there is no getting the good genes back again. You throw the cargo overboard in order to obtain a temporary advantage, but you have to suffer the long-term consequences: there is no way to retrieve the cargo.
Degrading machinery can be useful for some purposes—perhaps because its function is unneeded at the time, and so the scrapped machine doesn’t waste energy; or because in changed circumstances the product the machine made is now detrimental; or some other reason. But natural selection can’t build a coherent new system. (p. 201)
Natural selection preserves the degradation, and it cannot reconstruct the missing function. The reason is that natural selection is blind. Behe explains that it is a mere metaphor; there is no actual selection taking place. If there were, the selector could note that damaged animals might have a temporary survival advantage, but retaining them in the population would not be good in the long run. Since natural selection is blind—since it is simply a term saying that those who survive in nature are the ones more apt to survive—it “will favor the increase in the number of organisms that do better in their environment for any reason, regardless of the basis of the variation� (p. 203). And, as we have seen, in the vast majority of cases, the basis for doing better is a damaging of the genome.
What we have learned, then, through a more detailed knowledge of the molecular basis of life, is that the little variation that we are able to observe in nature as being caused by random mutation and natural selection—the appearance of new species and genera—is actually the result of loss of function and so devolution, reduces the possibility of any further change by restricting the variability of the genome, and provides no explanation for any notable feature of the biological world.
To emphasize just how inadequate empirical data has shown the Darwinian mechanism to be, Behe revisits his famous notion of “irreducible complexity� in chapter 9. There, he shows that we not only have no reasonable expectation that random mutation and natural selection can build systems that need all parts to be present for them to be functional (irreducibly complex systems), we can’t even expect it to be able to build the parts of those parts in anything close to the time needed (mini-irreducibly complex systems).
Behe is extremely kind to evolutionists throughout the book—including some vociferous opponents of his science—but be he ever so kind, or be he ever so Behe, he does have to ask the question: why are so many 21st century scientists sold on an idea that their own science has shown definitively to be utterly inadequate? Effectively, he believes it is due to two reasons (p. 218): a) they are believers in outdated mathematical studies that did not take into account biological reality as we know it today; b) they are unable to see the real problem that they have to solve, which is also the hardest problem, the million-dollar question mentioned above. Quoting Chesterton, he notes that they are “in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea� (p. 245).
The obsession with Darwinism leads some scientists to come up with the craziest of proposals—that mind is just the product of neural impulses, that our free will and desires do not really exist, and that reality is just a computer simulation. Besides the fact that these ideas, which Behe treats in chapter 10, destroy all scientific endeavor, they also manifest how humans can sometimes be willing to sacrifice their very rationality in order to hold on to a cherished idea.
It has been obvious to most everyone in the history of the world that the purposeful arrangement of parts that is manifest in every member of the biological world is the product of mind. Atheists like Richard Dawkins were hoping that random mutation and natural selection could prove that lifeforms are only apparently designed. People of common sense knew all along that they were building castles in the air. But now that Darwin’s mechanism has been tested at the molecular level of life, we can definitively show its utter inadequacy to account for anything of real moment in the world around us.
I highly recommend Darwin Devolves for an authentic 21st century scientific account of the explanatory power of Darwin’s theory. And while Behe does engage in some geek-talk occasionally, overall the book is extremely readable. It is loaded with the analogies for which Behe has a gift, movie references, and helpful diagrams and tables. Even for someone who is not conversant with the literature treating evolution, Darwin Devolves promises to be an interesting read.
February 26, 2019
Remember that time the supporters of Intelligent Design were found in contempt of court because they shredded boxes of documents which the court ordered they present?
What's surprising is dribble like this still gets published. Read it if you want to learn how moronic creationism is.
What's surprising is dribble like this still gets published. Read it if you want to learn how moronic creationism is.
March 21, 2019
An excellent read. Not quite as technical as I would have liked, but his other book "The Edge of Evolution" provides much more technical evidence for his position. His position is simply this: the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection only degrades genes and can't produce anything new. The last 20 years of experimental science have verified this claim.
Behe feels that there is strong genetic evidence for common decent, but that common decent does not prove Darwin's mechanism. In the past, evolution may have been considered evidence for materialism; but in the present, the only reason an honest person would hold on to the theory of evolution is a presupposed commitment to materialism. In this case, one would have to accept evolution despite its extreme lack of evidence because it is the only game in town. If you are a committed materialist, you must be committed to evolution because there are no other proposed materialistic option. The evidence is no longer silent, but going strongly against the idea that random variation and natural selection can form new complex species.
In my estimation, honest scientist ought to reject materialism on the scientific grounds that there is no evidence for it. The purposeful arrangement of parts that we see everywhere in our universe cries out that there is purposeful design. As a Christian, I do believe the designer is the God of the Bible, but this is not a necessary conclusion of the Intelligent Design position.
Behe feels that there is strong genetic evidence for common decent, but that common decent does not prove Darwin's mechanism. In the past, evolution may have been considered evidence for materialism; but in the present, the only reason an honest person would hold on to the theory of evolution is a presupposed commitment to materialism. In this case, one would have to accept evolution despite its extreme lack of evidence because it is the only game in town. If you are a committed materialist, you must be committed to evolution because there are no other proposed materialistic option. The evidence is no longer silent, but going strongly against the idea that random variation and natural selection can form new complex species.
In my estimation, honest scientist ought to reject materialism on the scientific grounds that there is no evidence for it. The purposeful arrangement of parts that we see everywhere in our universe cries out that there is purposeful design. As a Christian, I do believe the designer is the God of the Bible, but this is not a necessary conclusion of the Intelligent Design position.
February 19, 2020
Another book on Intelligent Design (ID) recommended by a friend & a store. Challenging the mechanisms of evolution is fine, but this is just bad science that is obviously agenda-driven. The only good reviews of this book come from religious sites while the sites devoted to science have negative ones.
Behe apparently maintains that mutations can only break things and an intelligent intervention is required for innovation. That's ridiculous. Anyone who has ever raised bacteria in a pan with an antibiotic or mild poison in it can watch the refutation over a few weeks. There's a 2 minute YouTube video showing this , but it's easy enough to do even in a high school classroom or at home.
How a college professor can spout such nonsense is beyond me. shows where he's cherry-picked data to make his point, a heinous crime. detailing his assertions & why they're wrong.
Do not bother reading this or any other book by Behe. He's obviously a charlatan slightly slicker than since he hasn't gotten sacked yet. Hopefully soon.
Standard Disclaimer
Look at what shelves this book is on. If it is 'did-not-finish' then I tried it & didn't like it. No, I do not have to finish a book to give it a star rating or a review. If you don't like that, tough. Have a nice day.
If the book is on my 'do-not-read' shelf then it was shoved under my nose or something about it made me think I might want to read it. I did some research & found that it was crap. I'll post why I think so & might even rate it with 1 star if it is really bad. If you disagree & want to discuss in the comments, you need to prove that it isn't with solid evidence. That means peer reviewed science, not anecdotes, opinions, or sites that are biased. Read the which is & follow its guidelines for providing proof. I'm willing to look at good evidence. I've been wrong before.
Comments that don't adhere to the above will be deleted. We're not going to change our minds if you just want to troll. If you repeatedly troll, your comment will be flagged & support will spank you. I may block you, too.
Behe apparently maintains that mutations can only break things and an intelligent intervention is required for innovation. That's ridiculous. Anyone who has ever raised bacteria in a pan with an antibiotic or mild poison in it can watch the refutation over a few weeks. There's a 2 minute YouTube video showing this , but it's easy enough to do even in a high school classroom or at home.
How a college professor can spout such nonsense is beyond me. shows where he's cherry-picked data to make his point, a heinous crime. detailing his assertions & why they're wrong.
Do not bother reading this or any other book by Behe. He's obviously a charlatan slightly slicker than since he hasn't gotten sacked yet. Hopefully soon.
Standard Disclaimer
Look at what shelves this book is on. If it is 'did-not-finish' then I tried it & didn't like it. No, I do not have to finish a book to give it a star rating or a review. If you don't like that, tough. Have a nice day.
If the book is on my 'do-not-read' shelf then it was shoved under my nose or something about it made me think I might want to read it. I did some research & found that it was crap. I'll post why I think so & might even rate it with 1 star if it is really bad. If you disagree & want to discuss in the comments, you need to prove that it isn't with solid evidence. That means peer reviewed science, not anecdotes, opinions, or sites that are biased. Read the which is & follow its guidelines for providing proof. I'm willing to look at good evidence. I've been wrong before.
Comments that don't adhere to the above will be deleted. We're not going to change our minds if you just want to troll. If you repeatedly troll, your comment will be flagged & support will spank you. I may block you, too.
February 26, 2019
Evolution is dying quickly nowadays. The offended evolutionists feel the pressure, easy to see while reading their ad personam/numerum arguments.
The Intelligent Design holds very well!
The Intelligent Design holds very well!
April 22, 2019
What new science?! This is a devolved book! When a paradigm shift happens, such as Darwinism, we continue to learn about the ramifications and retrain our brains for centuries to come. Yes, Darwin's theories are still evolving - - we understand trees are not necessarily as useful as we thought to represent evolution, DNA is more complicated than simple survival of the fittest, epigenetic modifications take place, . . . Einstein’s theories were paradigm shifts; experts still struggle to wrap all the packages in Einsteinian ribbons. We expect to have a lot of authentic give and take as we learn more on a major theory. I am an open-minded person and will read all types of extreme edge material to see what makes sense and what thoughts are triggered. The arguments of this author are painfully shallow, too shallow to even make a healthy primordial soup. For example, he presents as gratuitous the use of the term “evolved,� as in, to paraphrase, “the birds evolved a unique mating dance.� Cheap shot to his colleagues. He implies that the use of the word, “evolved,� is brainwashing, assumptive, or mistaken. In the examples he gives of the mechanical aspects of bacteria, however, he flips the model. He uses mechanical terms and physical shapes to impart the implication that “intelligent design� is evident. Don’t use “mechanical� if you condemn others for using “evolved.� Seems hypocritical to me. I wish I could return this book. There is nothing new here. Nothing evolved. Not an intelligently designed recipe. Send this soup back to the kitchen.
Want to read
March 25, 2019Hmm, lookie what we have here.
I'm all for scientific books with interesting and groundbreaking discussions, but I'm feeling a little sceptical about this one. From my understanding, Micheal J. Behe is arguing that natural selection is the aftermath of the creation of life. Or in other words, that evolution only arises from reactions to new environments and stimuli after God or another God-like entity has created the first "initial batch" of organisms. Unlike other books of this nature that tries to disprove evolution, Micheal J. Behe is an actual scientist, a biochemist to be exact, so I'd be willing to read his book to see what he has to say without bias. As an athiest and a firm believer of evolution, it would be interesting to see things from a different perspective.
I'm all for scientific books with interesting and groundbreaking discussions, but I'm feeling a little sceptical about this one. From my understanding, Micheal J. Behe is arguing that natural selection is the aftermath of the creation of life. Or in other words, that evolution only arises from reactions to new environments and stimuli after God or another God-like entity has created the first "initial batch" of organisms. Unlike other books of this nature that tries to disprove evolution, Micheal J. Behe is an actual scientist, a biochemist to be exact, so I'd be willing to read his book to see what he has to say without bias. As an athiest and a firm believer of evolution, it would be interesting to see things from a different perspective.
March 25, 2019
Another brilliant book by Behe.
Behe is probably the most attacked scientist of our time, yet he is ever the gentleman--never taking pot shots--allowing the science to speak for him.
Behe is probably the most attacked scientist of our time, yet he is ever the gentleman--never taking pot shots--allowing the science to speak for him.
April 6, 2019
Eloquent excellence
A coherent well thought out book that challenges Neo Darwinian Evolution. Many excellent examples of genius throughout. It is very thorough and logical . The recent scientific evidence supports Dr. Behe's argument. However as always it is best to read Dawkins , Gould , Ridley , Carey and other evolutionists in order to make a balanced decision on this matter .
A coherent well thought out book that challenges Neo Darwinian Evolution. Many excellent examples of genius throughout. It is very thorough and logical . The recent scientific evidence supports Dr. Behe's argument. However as always it is best to read Dawkins , Gould , Ridley , Carey and other evolutionists in order to make a balanced decision on this matter .
March 24, 2019
The third of the authors books, this time where he delves into the latest scientific research in genetics and Darwinian processes� inability to produce complexity.
November 8, 2020
This was a great book, and I would highly recommend it to anybody interested in evolution and theism. It does require some background knowledge of biology though. Some similar books spend a lot of time explaining basic concepts, but Behe didn’t spend time on introductory material in this book. I found this quite good, but if you do not already have background knowledge it might be hard to understand.
The middle section of the book was the best where he went over some of the modern experiments that have shown the inability of natural selection and random mutation to produce the new protein structures for the evolution of higher-level taxonomic classes.
One of the best things that I learnt was how he distinguished the difference between common descent and evolution via natural selection and random mutations. Behe claims that species could descend from common ancestors, but that the evidence for random mutations and natural selection being able to bring about the changes in taxonomic groups insufficient. Maybe God intelligently designed new high-level taxonomic groups and dictated the times they would diverge from other groups by changing their genomes in specific ways to allow the taxonomic groups to emerge with all the new proteins and machinery it needs. I found this distinction between descent from a common ancestor and the neo-Darwinian mechanism that is claimed to account for all the complexity within nature very useful in navigating/understanding evidence for evolution. This is because it helps one to recognise that if you are presented with evidence for common descent (which there are plentiful amounts of) that this is not sufficient to account for the design we see in nature and that such design/purposeful arrangements of parts is still good evidence for an intelligent mind/designer.
The end of the book was a bit disappointing. He was addressing some of the arguments against the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting system. I felt that he suggested an argument against his concept of irreducible complexity but did not proceed to give any reason why this idea was wrong. Other than that, the book was excellent and I would highly recommend it.
The middle section of the book was the best where he went over some of the modern experiments that have shown the inability of natural selection and random mutation to produce the new protein structures for the evolution of higher-level taxonomic classes.
One of the best things that I learnt was how he distinguished the difference between common descent and evolution via natural selection and random mutations. Behe claims that species could descend from common ancestors, but that the evidence for random mutations and natural selection being able to bring about the changes in taxonomic groups insufficient. Maybe God intelligently designed new high-level taxonomic groups and dictated the times they would diverge from other groups by changing their genomes in specific ways to allow the taxonomic groups to emerge with all the new proteins and machinery it needs. I found this distinction between descent from a common ancestor and the neo-Darwinian mechanism that is claimed to account for all the complexity within nature very useful in navigating/understanding evidence for evolution. This is because it helps one to recognise that if you are presented with evidence for common descent (which there are plentiful amounts of) that this is not sufficient to account for the design we see in nature and that such design/purposeful arrangements of parts is still good evidence for an intelligent mind/designer.
The end of the book was a bit disappointing. He was addressing some of the arguments against the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting system. I felt that he suggested an argument against his concept of irreducible complexity but did not proceed to give any reason why this idea was wrong. Other than that, the book was excellent and I would highly recommend it.
April 8, 2019
Very confusing - not logically organized
December 20, 2019
Behe is an advocate of intelligent design. He goes out of his way to explain that intelligent design is not a synonym for creationism. He believes in evolutionary theory, just not by "Darwinian mechanisms" - that is, not by random mutation and natural selection. He believes the earth is billions of years old (there were a few references in the book to this that were left un-cited, which was annoying).
I also simply disagree with his beliefs. I believe in a literal six-day creation (by God), and a young earth. While much of the information in his book regarding DNA was really interesting, none of it could prove that the evolutionary theory - by any means - is true. Granted, he wasn't really arguing that in this book. So I think that he did just fine with showing that it's not possible for random mutation and natural selection to have played a part in creating the world, but the book still didn't hold enough truth in it for me to rate it higher.
I did like one more thing he said:
It's critical to keep in mind that the concept of purposeful design is logically entirely separate from the idea of common descent - the idea that all organisms living today are descended from organisms that lived in the distant past. Some religious groups are opposed in principle to the idea of common descent. I am not... I think the evidence supporting descent is strong, and I have no reason to doubt it... the design argument here is not that one higher [than family] category cannot descend from another through intermediates. Rather, the argument is that one higher category cannot descend from another by means of an unplanned process such as Darwin's mechanism. (p 157, emphasis original)I learned a few things but, while Behe claimed to write this book so it would be accessible to as many people as possible, I am here to declare that it is too technical for many readers. I like science, biology in particular, and I had a hard time with all the scientific terms and such.
I also simply disagree with his beliefs. I believe in a literal six-day creation (by God), and a young earth. While much of the information in his book regarding DNA was really interesting, none of it could prove that the evolutionary theory - by any means - is true. Granted, he wasn't really arguing that in this book. So I think that he did just fine with showing that it's not possible for random mutation and natural selection to have played a part in creating the world, but the book still didn't hold enough truth in it for me to rate it higher.
I did like one more thing he said:
Gratuitous affirmations of a dominant theory can mesmerize the unwary. They lull people into assuming that objectively difficult problems don't really matter. That they've been solved already. Or will be solved soon. Or are unimportant. Or something. They actively distract readers from noticing an idea's shortcomings. "Of course," students are effectively prompted, "everyone knows what happened here - right? You'd be blind not to see it - right?" But the complacency isn't the fruit of data or experiments. It comes from the powerful social force of everyone in the group nodding back, "Of course!" (p 25)
Read
March 18, 2024Biochemist Michael Behe asks important questions, makes some pithy observations, and raises relevant points. All in an elegant and clear writing style with interesting and novel examples illustrating fairly recent discoveries in biochemistry and biology. This book is not as technical as Darwin's Black Box, which is also interesting if you want more biochemistry. Thoroughly enjoyable, even if you don't agree with his conclusion.
NOTE: What I found particularly refreshing and pleasant about this book, is that Behe does not insult, denigrate or otherwise attack his detractors when discussing their work (even though the same can't be said for them!)
NOTE: What I found particularly refreshing and pleasant about this book, is that Behe does not insult, denigrate or otherwise attack his detractors when discussing their work (even though the same can't be said for them!)
October 28, 2022
It is hard to believe that it's been 20 years since Darwin's Blackbox was published, which was the first time I learned of irreducible complexity. In Devolves, what I found interesting was his account of all that has been accomplished to refute his concept (not much), and this alone make his latest book worth reading. Now, add another new idea, that most positive adaptive change results from a loss of genetic information rather than gain, essentially rendering species even more prone to extinction, and Behe once again makes a credible case for ID.
As one who, at least to some extent, follows the developments of creationists and ID proponents as they make their assertions, and then observe as they get flogged by a barrage of gate-keepers who, for the sake of good science, see it as their moral obligation to protect the masses, I know Behe is a popular target. Why? Because he actually makes good arguments - otherwise there wouldn’t be a fuss.
However, I must confess there is one part I didn't buy into regarding mineralocorticoid and glucocoticoid receptors. Mutational variation in any receptor impacts affinity for both natural ligands and drug molecules, which can result in resistance for a drug class. This is due to poor genomic fidelity. True, higher or lower affinity especially for the natural ligand (a steroid) will have a phenotypic expression that can be selected for/against by environmental factors. However, it doesn't strike me that this one-way direction (Dollo's Law) stacks up as evidence for genetic loss. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't refute there is genetic loss. This is a case, however, of genetic variation. The receptor is still there, albeit its affinity for ligands is somewhat different. One cannot say more. Mutations are sometimes neutral - they don’t affect the receptor, but they are predominantly deleterious when they do. Positive modulation? Rare indeed!
Resistance can be overcome by searching for drug candidates that bind to the modified (mutated) receptor with high affinity. My point is that this is not a case of lost genetic information. Additional genetic modification can continue to occur and resistance to the new drug class will result. Receptor binding should be classified in terms of genetic variation rather than genetic loss.
A better argument for devolution is to ask whether it is likely to see regain of function in the case of gene knockouts. I would think not.
As one who, at least to some extent, follows the developments of creationists and ID proponents as they make their assertions, and then observe as they get flogged by a barrage of gate-keepers who, for the sake of good science, see it as their moral obligation to protect the masses, I know Behe is a popular target. Why? Because he actually makes good arguments - otherwise there wouldn’t be a fuss.
However, I must confess there is one part I didn't buy into regarding mineralocorticoid and glucocoticoid receptors. Mutational variation in any receptor impacts affinity for both natural ligands and drug molecules, which can result in resistance for a drug class. This is due to poor genomic fidelity. True, higher or lower affinity especially for the natural ligand (a steroid) will have a phenotypic expression that can be selected for/against by environmental factors. However, it doesn't strike me that this one-way direction (Dollo's Law) stacks up as evidence for genetic loss. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't refute there is genetic loss. This is a case, however, of genetic variation. The receptor is still there, albeit its affinity for ligands is somewhat different. One cannot say more. Mutations are sometimes neutral - they don’t affect the receptor, but they are predominantly deleterious when they do. Positive modulation? Rare indeed!
Resistance can be overcome by searching for drug candidates that bind to the modified (mutated) receptor with high affinity. My point is that this is not a case of lost genetic information. Additional genetic modification can continue to occur and resistance to the new drug class will result. Receptor binding should be classified in terms of genetic variation rather than genetic loss.
A better argument for devolution is to ask whether it is likely to see regain of function in the case of gene knockouts. I would think not.
April 19, 2019
Excellent book that covers the latest information about what's going on in cells and how it relates to Darwin's theory of evolution. I persevered through the parts that were over my head, because Behe is a good writer, giving analogies and explanations to help the average non-scientific reader understand. Some basic key points were: evolution is happening within species to help them adapt to their environments, but these changes typically result in loss of information. These changes do not add to DNA or produce variations above the level of family. Natural selection of traits could not produce something as complex as the cell, much less the ways the parts work in sync to do their jobs. (Lots of information about proteins related to this topic!) Here's a quote to this effect: "Classic full-blown irreducible complexity effectively prohibits the development of intricate molecular machinery by mutation and selection."
"Random mutation, natural selection, irreducible complexity—they supply variation, sharpen a system's function, and allow for the existence of true machinery. Yet in the same way and by the same mechanisms, they also break things, ossify a system, and greatly or indefinitely delay the appearance of a feature."
Behe is not a shrill or snarky anti-Darwinist; he is even-handed in his approach and genuinely welcomes the process by which the scientific community works together to tackle problems and uncover truth. However, as he points out in his book, Darwinism continues to be accepted uncritically by most scientists who overlook key difficulties in favor of supporting the prevailing doctrine.
"Random mutation, natural selection, irreducible complexity—they supply variation, sharpen a system's function, and allow for the existence of true machinery. Yet in the same way and by the same mechanisms, they also break things, ossify a system, and greatly or indefinitely delay the appearance of a feature."
Behe is not a shrill or snarky anti-Darwinist; he is even-handed in his approach and genuinely welcomes the process by which the scientific community works together to tackle problems and uncover truth. However, as he points out in his book, Darwinism continues to be accepted uncritically by most scientists who overlook key difficulties in favor of supporting the prevailing doctrine.
April 26, 2020
There are problems I cannot go in details here. There is a unity in being, philosophy cannot be separated from science, I believe the author is not well versed in the knowledge of universal principles, and in the science of being. He recognizes this in some point of the book, I believe when dealing with evil. For example, the author discovers by means of the empirical sciences something he could have known by metaphysical principles alone: Contrary to the principles of identity, of contradiction and of causality, to become is for itself its proper reason, without a superior cause. In this ascending creative evolution, the more perfect is always produced by the less perfect, which is evidently impossible. It is the universal confusion of being with non-being in becoming without cause, confusion of the true with the false, of the good with the evil, of the just with the unjust.
One cannot imagine a greater absurdity than saying that the intellect of the greatest geniuses and the goodness of the major saints originates from a material and blind fatality, or from a confused and senseless idea, which would be the lowest grade of intellectual life" Quoted from Reginald G. L.
However, I cannot deny that this book has illuminated my mind a lot. I will someday attempt to write a book in which this book will be a useful resource.
One cannot imagine a greater absurdity than saying that the intellect of the greatest geniuses and the goodness of the major saints originates from a material and blind fatality, or from a confused and senseless idea, which would be the lowest grade of intellectual life" Quoted from Reginald G. L.
However, I cannot deny that this book has illuminated my mind a lot. I will someday attempt to write a book in which this book will be a useful resource.
January 21, 2020
Reading this purely out of interest. I know it's not going to convince me. The theory of evolution is well established and has mountains of evidence to support its validity. Will be interesting to see if this guy comes up with any new arguments for the existence of God instead of the usual rehashed nonsense.
1. just because you want it to be true does not make it so. Stating that evolution is nihilistic doesn't mean a higher power must exist.
I'm surprised by the number of people on here stating that the book was heavy on science and scientific jargon, and therefore did not fully understand much of what Behe writes, but know that he has made a sound and strong argument for design. How does one arrive at such a conclusion having not fully understood the material? I suppose if these people read a bit deeper in their religious texts they'd be forced to face a harsh reality, not understanding is a tool used by religious organisations.
1. just because you want it to be true does not make it so. Stating that evolution is nihilistic doesn't mean a higher power must exist.
I'm surprised by the number of people on here stating that the book was heavy on science and scientific jargon, and therefore did not fully understand much of what Behe writes, but know that he has made a sound and strong argument for design. How does one arrive at such a conclusion having not fully understood the material? I suppose if these people read a bit deeper in their religious texts they'd be forced to face a harsh reality, not understanding is a tool used by religious organisations.
February 5, 2021
Challenging current theories is great for making further scientific breakthrough, however, claiming creationism is a logical explanation for the development of life is unscientific as it lacks an answer to the fundamental question on the way the creator was created.
April 13, 2019
I find the concept of Intelligent Design to be wonderful support of my other discoveries with all the spiritual reading I am doing.
I Read Michael’s first Book Darwin’s Black Box in June 2016, This was my first introduction to Intelligent Design, and I then went and read a number of other books which support the idea of Intelligent Design.
Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer
Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer
The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies
Dissent over descent by Steve Fuller
Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall
Undeniable by Douglas Axe
Darwin’s house of cards by Tom Bethell
Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells
Zombie Science by Jonathan Wells
All these books are great reads.
In his book, Darwin Devolves Michael Behe puts forward the idea that Darwin’s mechanisms of evolution can only devolve or degrade genetic material. That is DNA mostly gets damaged by random mutation, (there are many more ways for a mutation to damage DNA than to improve it) and if the damaged DNA provides an animal with a benefit the process of Natural Selection will choose the animals with the Damaged DNA.
An example of this is quoted early in the book is of Polar bears. Polar bears are closely related to brown bears. Polar bears have a damaged LYST gene, which is associated with pigmentation, and changes in it are probably responsible for the blanching of the ancestors� brown fur.
This is in the first chapter of the book, which was made publicly available to entice readers, and sparked off an online debate between Evolution supporters and Intelligent Design supporters. You can follow some of this interesting debate at .
The Intelligent Design (ID) supporting scientists have been very careful not to link an Intelligent Designer to any specific entity like God. Some Anti ID supporters have suggested that maybe the Intelligent Designers were Aliens who seeded Earth with DNA very early on. They like this idea because one of the biggest questions that Supporters of Evolution have never been able to answer is where/how did life start. If life was started by Aliens seeding earth with DNA, then the question of how did life start is avoided. (Obviously, smart people will ask the question of how did the Alien life get started, but Evolutionists have a tenancy to overlook this question.) If Michael Behe’s idea that “Evolution is Broken� is correct then the Alien seeding idea has less support as an Intelligent Designer has been needed to help life along, as Evolution is not able to produce the abundance and variety of life we observe on earth.
In Michael Behe’s first book Darwin’s Black Box one of his main messages was the challenge to Evolution that of irreducibly complex organs like the eye, and his famous example the Bacterial Flagellum, cannot be shown to be produced by the step process of Evolution. In the close of this book, Darwin Devolves Michael highlighted that in the 23 years since Darwin’s Black Box was published no convincing arguments against his ideas about Irreducible complexity have been published.
I highly recommend anyone on a Spiritual journey who wants additional support in their beliefs, the whole Intelligent Design movement is worth reading about.
View this review on my blog
I Read Michael’s first Book Darwin’s Black Box in June 2016, This was my first introduction to Intelligent Design, and I then went and read a number of other books which support the idea of Intelligent Design.
Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer
Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer
The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies
Dissent over descent by Steve Fuller
Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall
Undeniable by Douglas Axe
Darwin’s house of cards by Tom Bethell
Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells
Zombie Science by Jonathan Wells
All these books are great reads.
In his book, Darwin Devolves Michael Behe puts forward the idea that Darwin’s mechanisms of evolution can only devolve or degrade genetic material. That is DNA mostly gets damaged by random mutation, (there are many more ways for a mutation to damage DNA than to improve it) and if the damaged DNA provides an animal with a benefit the process of Natural Selection will choose the animals with the Damaged DNA.
An example of this is quoted early in the book is of Polar bears. Polar bears are closely related to brown bears. Polar bears have a damaged LYST gene, which is associated with pigmentation, and changes in it are probably responsible for the blanching of the ancestors� brown fur.
This is in the first chapter of the book, which was made publicly available to entice readers, and sparked off an online debate between Evolution supporters and Intelligent Design supporters. You can follow some of this interesting debate at .
The Intelligent Design (ID) supporting scientists have been very careful not to link an Intelligent Designer to any specific entity like God. Some Anti ID supporters have suggested that maybe the Intelligent Designers were Aliens who seeded Earth with DNA very early on. They like this idea because one of the biggest questions that Supporters of Evolution have never been able to answer is where/how did life start. If life was started by Aliens seeding earth with DNA, then the question of how did life start is avoided. (Obviously, smart people will ask the question of how did the Alien life get started, but Evolutionists have a tenancy to overlook this question.) If Michael Behe’s idea that “Evolution is Broken� is correct then the Alien seeding idea has less support as an Intelligent Designer has been needed to help life along, as Evolution is not able to produce the abundance and variety of life we observe on earth.
In Michael Behe’s first book Darwin’s Black Box one of his main messages was the challenge to Evolution that of irreducibly complex organs like the eye, and his famous example the Bacterial Flagellum, cannot be shown to be produced by the step process of Evolution. In the close of this book, Darwin Devolves Michael highlighted that in the 23 years since Darwin’s Black Box was published no convincing arguments against his ideas about Irreducible complexity have been published.
I highly recommend anyone on a Spiritual journey who wants additional support in their beliefs, the whole Intelligent Design movement is worth reading about.
View this review on my blog
December 2, 2019
Michael Behe continues to awe me by his progress in advancing the science of Intelligent Design (ID).
He sets up what follows with example after example of the commitment to neo-Darwinism in the face of its failure to account for any of life's functional complexities. My favorite example is the complete lack of progress after more than 20 years to overcome major transitions. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry wrote "The Major Transitions in Evolution". He lists the transitions and details how little progress was made on any of them. Yet shows the excitement in the evolution community. Smith incorporated "Game Theory" into his plan to overcome the complete lack of progress in how these transitions could happen.
My three favorite examples of the impotence of neo-Darwinism (there are many more in the book) are (1) Darwin's Finches, (2) African Cichlids, and (3) Polar Bears. After discussing Darwin's Finches, Behe draws the line of how much evolution can actually accomplish. "From the wonderful research on Darwin's finches and other work I'll discuss in this book, it now seems reasonable to draw the line between the levels of family and genus." (p. 155) This means that evolution can only produce new species and genera, not families, orders, classes, or phyla. Why? Because change is produced through genetic information loss rather than information gain. Behe dubs this "Devolution".
If you are interested the current state of neo-Darwinian evolution and the impact of ID, you must read this book. Your knowledge, particularly at the Biochemistry level, will increase dramatically. You will be challenged to investigate further outside the book. That is what makes a science book like "Darwin Devolves" awesome.
He sets up what follows with example after example of the commitment to neo-Darwinism in the face of its failure to account for any of life's functional complexities. My favorite example is the complete lack of progress after more than 20 years to overcome major transitions. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry wrote "The Major Transitions in Evolution". He lists the transitions and details how little progress was made on any of them. Yet shows the excitement in the evolution community. Smith incorporated "Game Theory" into his plan to overcome the complete lack of progress in how these transitions could happen.
My three favorite examples of the impotence of neo-Darwinism (there are many more in the book) are (1) Darwin's Finches, (2) African Cichlids, and (3) Polar Bears. After discussing Darwin's Finches, Behe draws the line of how much evolution can actually accomplish. "From the wonderful research on Darwin's finches and other work I'll discuss in this book, it now seems reasonable to draw the line between the levels of family and genus." (p. 155) This means that evolution can only produce new species and genera, not families, orders, classes, or phyla. Why? Because change is produced through genetic information loss rather than information gain. Behe dubs this "Devolution".
If you are interested the current state of neo-Darwinian evolution and the impact of ID, you must read this book. Your knowledge, particularly at the Biochemistry level, will increase dramatically. You will be challenged to investigate further outside the book. That is what makes a science book like "Darwin Devolves" awesome.
November 21, 2019
In many ways, this is a great book. it is not an easy read. It has some pretty complex science. I certainly did not understand it all but I understand enough of it to know that the author deals a heavy blow to the idea that evolution can explain the development of complex biological systems that we see everywhere in living creatures. In fact, it shows how often the opposite of evolution happens. He also deals a heavy blow to materialism showing how the rejection of anything nonmaterial is not even good science. It is a long and complicated book and I can't in a short review (and I seldom read long ones) explain its contents.
It has some aspects that I really strongly disagree with. He seems to accept the Big Bang Cosmology but he does not explain why. He says that he is a theist and believes that God is the mind behind the creation of the complexities in nature but he devotes almost no time discussing that. He states that in one sentence in the final chapter. It is my prayer that if it can cause some committed evolutionists to seek an alternative explanation for the complexity, perhaps they will find the Creator God of the Bible
It has some aspects that I really strongly disagree with. He seems to accept the Big Bang Cosmology but he does not explain why. He says that he is a theist and believes that God is the mind behind the creation of the complexities in nature but he devotes almost no time discussing that. He states that in one sentence in the final chapter. It is my prayer that if it can cause some committed evolutionists to seek an alternative explanation for the complexity, perhaps they will find the Creator God of the Bible
April 26, 2021
Mr. Behe does what he purports to do: show that Darwinian evolution (adaptation) works by breaking and degrading genes. Because degrading genes is mathematically much more likely to happen than upgrading genes, natural selection favors the breaking of genes instead of improving them.
Though this book bounces around a bit haphazardly - it could do with some rearranging and cutting out of some redundancies - Mr. Behe systematically walks through the major tenets of Darwinian evolution to show, through scientific research, how effective Darwinian evolution is at creating a diversity of species and how ineffective it is at creating new families of animals. In short, Darwinian evolution explains why there are so many varieties of fish, but it cannot explain why fish are different from mammals.
So effective is Mr. Behe at his critique of Darwinian evolution, one is left to concur with his final conclusion that most scientists rabidly support Darwinian evolution and attack intelligent design on theological rather than scientific grounds. Telling, this is.
Humble and clear throughout, Darwin Devolves is interesting, well-written, compelling, and thought provoking. This book is well worth the read!
Though this book bounces around a bit haphazardly - it could do with some rearranging and cutting out of some redundancies - Mr. Behe systematically walks through the major tenets of Darwinian evolution to show, through scientific research, how effective Darwinian evolution is at creating a diversity of species and how ineffective it is at creating new families of animals. In short, Darwinian evolution explains why there are so many varieties of fish, but it cannot explain why fish are different from mammals.
So effective is Mr. Behe at his critique of Darwinian evolution, one is left to concur with his final conclusion that most scientists rabidly support Darwinian evolution and attack intelligent design on theological rather than scientific grounds. Telling, this is.
Humble and clear throughout, Darwin Devolves is interesting, well-written, compelling, and thought provoking. This book is well worth the read!
September 7, 2019
Good book. There was quite a bit that was above my head in regards to biology, but the author did a good job breaking it down to smaller bite size pieces except this wasn’t always the case. During more science based approaches he did caveat that at times it would be more difficult to follow. I enjoyed the content and the perspective very much.
October 8, 2019
Well-organized and very well-argued.
I wish I was more technically trained to dive into the higher level studies and writings that he often cites, but he did a great job of making the arguments accessible to a broad audience without becoming over-simplistic.
Thankful for his contribution to scientific study.
I wish I was more technically trained to dive into the higher level studies and writings that he often cites, but he did a great job of making the arguments accessible to a broad audience without becoming over-simplistic.
Thankful for his contribution to scientific study.
July 26, 2019
this is Behe's best book so far. Especially loved the last chapter. He's very effective at showing how all the previous challenges to his observations of irreduceable complexity are not convincing.
December 8, 2019
Water-tight
January 22, 2025
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Is ID for IDiots?
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“Discussion of the enigma of where nature came from goes back as far as there are written historical records and…has continued strongly up to the present. Yet despite the long and varied history of discourse, all particular positions on the topic can be considered elaborations on either of just two general mutually exclusive views:
(1) Contemporary nature, including people, is an accident; and
(2) Contemporary nature, especially people, is largely intended—the product of a pre-existing reasoning mind.
I will argue in this book that recent progress in our understanding of the molecular foundation of life decisively supports the latter view.�
The above quotation (in italics) comes from this book by Michael Behe. He is a biochemist, an intelligent design advocate, and the author of the intelligent design books “Darwin’s Black Box� (1996) & “The Edge of Evolution� (2007). Behe is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University (in Pennsylvania) and a founding senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (Seattle, Washington’s intelligent design organization).
Before I begin this review in earnest, I discovered something about this book by accident when examining the endorsements (there are five of them) on its back cover. Two of these endorsements (the one from the "New York Times" and the one from "The New Yorker") are also endorsements on the back cover of Behe's first book that was published in 1996! This book was published in 2019.
When you have to use the endorsements from a previous book that was published over twenty years ago, you know something is wrong and there is. Read on.
Charles Darwin’s (1809 to 1882) theory of evolution states that all species of plants and animals on Earth developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of random mutations (or slight variations) in successive generations of offspring, and that natural selection determines which forms will survive. (Natural selection is the undirected differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in observable traits of an organism.)
Intelligent Design (ID) claims that certain features of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause and not by an undirected cause or process such as natural selection. It is, thus, a creationist theory.
In his third ID book, Behe claims that evolution is “self-limiting.� Why? Because two features of evolution—its reliance on random mutation and on natural selection (both mentioned above)—makes evolution actually wind down, preventing further change in a species (“devolution�) and thus requiring a designer to step in and guide evolution.
According to Behe, mutation causes evolution to wind down because most genes that fuel adaptive change have been “broken� or damaged and inactivated by mutations. Thus a designer has to make special non-random designer mutations to rectify this dire situation. (Genes are any of the units occurring at specific points on the chromosomes, by which hereditary characteristics are transmitted and determined.)
Behe selectively gives some examples in part three of his book, in which mutations have produced broken and inactivated genes but he predictably IGNORES the large number of mutations that DO NOT inactivate genes.
The FACT is that as long as a substantial number of mutations don’t break genes (which obviously seems to be the case), evolution can work effectively.
Like all creationists, Behe devoted his time NOT to giving evidence for ID but to bashing evolutionary biology. But Behe’s theory does demand evidence or else there are questions such as:
(1) Who, exactly, is the designer? Who created the designer?
(2) What evidence is there that the designer makes non-random mutations?
(3) What is an example of a designed mutation?
(4) Is it a coincidence that “ID� is the first two letters of the word “IDIOT?�
Finally, there is MUCH more that can be said about this book. Overall, this book misses its mark, not so much for all that it says, but for all that it doesn’t.
In conclusion, ID has been discredited as science and is, in fact, disguised religion since there is no evidence for it. Therefore, it seem appropriate that this book was published by “Harper One,� the religious and spiritual section of Harper Collins publishers.
I leave you with the last two sentences that the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University (where Behe is employed) has posted on there website:
"While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and in no way endorsed by the department. It is our own collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."
XXXXX
(2019; introduction; 4 parts or 10 chapters; main narrative 280 pages; appendix; acknowledgments; notes; credits; index)
XXXXX
Is ID for IDiots?
XXXXX
“Discussion of the enigma of where nature came from goes back as far as there are written historical records and…has continued strongly up to the present. Yet despite the long and varied history of discourse, all particular positions on the topic can be considered elaborations on either of just two general mutually exclusive views:
(1) Contemporary nature, including people, is an accident; and
(2) Contemporary nature, especially people, is largely intended—the product of a pre-existing reasoning mind.
I will argue in this book that recent progress in our understanding of the molecular foundation of life decisively supports the latter view.�
The above quotation (in italics) comes from this book by Michael Behe. He is a biochemist, an intelligent design advocate, and the author of the intelligent design books “Darwin’s Black Box� (1996) & “The Edge of Evolution� (2007). Behe is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University (in Pennsylvania) and a founding senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (Seattle, Washington’s intelligent design organization).
Before I begin this review in earnest, I discovered something about this book by accident when examining the endorsements (there are five of them) on its back cover. Two of these endorsements (the one from the "New York Times" and the one from "The New Yorker") are also endorsements on the back cover of Behe's first book that was published in 1996! This book was published in 2019.
When you have to use the endorsements from a previous book that was published over twenty years ago, you know something is wrong and there is. Read on.
Charles Darwin’s (1809 to 1882) theory of evolution states that all species of plants and animals on Earth developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of random mutations (or slight variations) in successive generations of offspring, and that natural selection determines which forms will survive. (Natural selection is the undirected differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in observable traits of an organism.)
Intelligent Design (ID) claims that certain features of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause and not by an undirected cause or process such as natural selection. It is, thus, a creationist theory.
In his third ID book, Behe claims that evolution is “self-limiting.� Why? Because two features of evolution—its reliance on random mutation and on natural selection (both mentioned above)—makes evolution actually wind down, preventing further change in a species (“devolution�) and thus requiring a designer to step in and guide evolution.
According to Behe, mutation causes evolution to wind down because most genes that fuel adaptive change have been “broken� or damaged and inactivated by mutations. Thus a designer has to make special non-random designer mutations to rectify this dire situation. (Genes are any of the units occurring at specific points on the chromosomes, by which hereditary characteristics are transmitted and determined.)
Behe selectively gives some examples in part three of his book, in which mutations have produced broken and inactivated genes but he predictably IGNORES the large number of mutations that DO NOT inactivate genes.
The FACT is that as long as a substantial number of mutations don’t break genes (which obviously seems to be the case), evolution can work effectively.
Like all creationists, Behe devoted his time NOT to giving evidence for ID but to bashing evolutionary biology. But Behe’s theory does demand evidence or else there are questions such as:
(1) Who, exactly, is the designer? Who created the designer?
(2) What evidence is there that the designer makes non-random mutations?
(3) What is an example of a designed mutation?
(4) Is it a coincidence that “ID� is the first two letters of the word “IDIOT?�
Finally, there is MUCH more that can be said about this book. Overall, this book misses its mark, not so much for all that it says, but for all that it doesn’t.
In conclusion, ID has been discredited as science and is, in fact, disguised religion since there is no evidence for it. Therefore, it seem appropriate that this book was published by “Harper One,� the religious and spiritual section of Harper Collins publishers.
I leave you with the last two sentences that the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University (where Behe is employed) has posted on there website:
"While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and in no way endorsed by the department. It is our own collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."
XXXXX
(2019; introduction; 4 parts or 10 chapters; main narrative 280 pages; appendix; acknowledgments; notes; credits; index)
XXXXX
June 1, 2024
BEHE SUGGESTS THAT “DEVOLUTION� (LOSS OF INFORMATION) CAUSES MUCH ADAPTATION
Michael J. Behe (born 1952) is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design (ID) advocate. He is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
He wrote in the introduction of this 2019 book, “Discussion of the enigma of where nature comes from � has continued strongly up to the present. Yet � all PARTICULAR positions on the topic can be considered � on either of just two general mutually exclusive views: (1) contemporary nature� is an accident; and (2) contemporary nature, especially people, in largely intended---the product of a preexisting reasoning mind. I will argue in this book that recent progress in our understanding of the molecular foundation of life decisively support the latter view.� (Pg. 1-2) He adds, “I will contend that, for any� whose mind is open on the question, those twentieth-century advances� should DEFINITIVELY settle the broad basic issue in favor of design.� (Pg. 5) In the first chapter, he states, “Despite its impressive abilities, rather than evolving, [the polar bear] has adapted predominantly by DEvolving. What that portends for our conception of evolution is the principal topic of this book.� (Pg. 17)
He outlines, “let’s� examine three bright-red danger flags that alert us to claims of evolutionary biology that are just make-believe understanding.� (Pg. 22) �(1) the frequent gratuitous attribution of elegant, complex, unexplained biology to � ‘evolution�; (2) the posing of a ‘united front� by scientists affirming Darwinian claims to the public, even though many biologists express doubts in private and in technical scientific publications; and (3) the fact that biological studies of topics such as contemporary human nutrition� run into intractable problems. The first two flags show that social pressure is often used to promote Darwinian conclusions well beyond what the scientific data warrant.� (Pg. 29)
He explains, “This book� concentrates on completely unexpected, devastating new problems that could only have come to light after major recent advances in technical methods for probing the molecular level of life� it turns out that� Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by DAMAGING or BREAKING genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes HELPS survival. IN other words, the mechanism is powerfully DEvolutionary. It promotes the rapid LOSS of genetic information� Darwin’s mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain.� (Pg. 37-38)
He states, “The more we learn of life, the more we realize that ANY type of purposeful motion needs multiple complex well-coordinated parts. At first naïve glance under a basic microscope, twitching or gliding or spiraling of tiny bacteria may appear to be simple. Careful investigation, however, reveals a very different state of affairs. Anyone who is amazed at the planthopper’s leg gears should faint with shock at the sophisticated engineering of such humble bacteria.� (Pg. 58)
He points out, “an unstated yet fundamental premise of Darwin’s entire project---the contention of utter randomness---was based on a bald, simple-minded THEOLGOGICAL assumption: ‘God wouldn’t have done it that way.� A nice benign, indulgent creator wouldn’t set up the kind of world Darwin perceived� It’s strange but true that to a very large degree Charles Darwin insisted the variation that fed natural selection be completely random not because of any actual SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE it could suffice, but because of the THEOLOGICAL argument from evil.� (Pg. 85)
He acknowledges, “Although one has to take care in constructing a valid design argument and Paley overreaches in places in his watchmaker argument, his main point is exactly correct: we recognize design in the purposeful arrangement of parts.� (Pg. 88)
He argues, “Darwinian processes nicely account for changes at the species and genus levels of biological classification, but not for changes at the level of family or higher.� (Pg. 142-143) He continues, “fundamentally chance processes such as the Darwinian mechanism can affect only the pennies and dimes columns of life.� (Pg. 156) He also adds, “Darwinian evolution is self-limiting---the same factors that make it work well on a small scale ensure that it doesn’t go very far.� (Pg. 172)
He notes, “The amazing � fact established by � many investigators in laboratory evolution over decades is that the great majority of even beneficial positively selected mutations damage an organism’s genetic information---either degrading or outright destroying functional coded elements [FCT]. Why is that the case? The simple reason is that the targets for damaging mutations are just much more numerous than those for gain-of-FCT mutations, so they’ll be hit much more frequently.� (Pg. 183) He summarizes, “New life hasn’t evolved. Overwhelmingly it has DEvolved---whether or not it strikes us as more attractive or impressive or useful than its forebears.� (Pg. 197)
He observes, the Darwinian view “depends completely � on Darwin’s last theory� the entirely unjustified assumption that repeated rounds of mutation and selection will add coherently to form complex systems.. research now shows the premise is false. Human mutations that counter malaria� are all selected willy-nilly, regardless of whether they destroy a previously functioning system or not.� (Pg. 202-203)
He presents a 2009 research report that “address[ed] the question of the reversibility of molecular evolution� [admitting that “Although theirs is the first study� they are confident that the results will be quite general”], recalling, “I remember my reaction� my jaw dropped� The modern receptor could not give rise to a protein like the ancestral one by a Darwinian process, because the route is blocked by multiple small barriers that no one had any idea existed until now� the conclusion is that it is prohibitively unlikely to happen by an unplanned process...� (Pg. 208-209)
He states, “Recall that the thoroughly obvious problem of complex interactive structures such as the eye was pointed out by the biologist St. George Mivart soon after Charles Darwin wrote the ‘Origin of Species.� Darwin waved it away as a problem for the future. Well, the future has arrived� Mivart was more right than he knew: even the SLIGHTEST need for coordination� has the theory panting as heavily as if it had just tried to climb Mt. Everest.� (Pg. 244)
He summarizes, “Mind is perceived � in the purposeful arrangement of anything�. Intelligence is also perceived arrangement of physical pieces.� (Pg. 265) And “Any version of materialism undermines common sense� If materialism is true� then there is no such thing as a real mind. Confronted with that dilemma, there are two choices: either affirm materialism and deny your own mind, or affirm your own mind and deny materialism,� (Pg. 269)
He observes, “One big question of course is: just who is this mind that’s behind life? � most people, including myself, are theists and will naturally tend to ascribe the design to God. But I want to emphasize here that the idea of teleology behind nature is expansive; plenty of intellectual room remains for people of widely varying philosophical inclinations.� (Pg. 278) He concludes, “The reunion of science and purpose should come easily, because the chief problem that divided them---neo-Darwinian materialism---has dissipated� Rather than some cosmic accident� those of the public who agree that they have minds can now UNDERSTAND that nature is designed down to an intricate level of detail.� (Pg. 282)
This book will surely be as controversial as Behe’s other books---but it will also be “must reading� for those on ALL sides of the Intelligent Design/Evolution discussion.
Michael J. Behe (born 1952) is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design (ID) advocate. He is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
He wrote in the introduction of this 2019 book, “Discussion of the enigma of where nature comes from � has continued strongly up to the present. Yet � all PARTICULAR positions on the topic can be considered � on either of just two general mutually exclusive views: (1) contemporary nature� is an accident; and (2) contemporary nature, especially people, in largely intended---the product of a preexisting reasoning mind. I will argue in this book that recent progress in our understanding of the molecular foundation of life decisively support the latter view.� (Pg. 1-2) He adds, “I will contend that, for any� whose mind is open on the question, those twentieth-century advances� should DEFINITIVELY settle the broad basic issue in favor of design.� (Pg. 5) In the first chapter, he states, “Despite its impressive abilities, rather than evolving, [the polar bear] has adapted predominantly by DEvolving. What that portends for our conception of evolution is the principal topic of this book.� (Pg. 17)
He outlines, “let’s� examine three bright-red danger flags that alert us to claims of evolutionary biology that are just make-believe understanding.� (Pg. 22) �(1) the frequent gratuitous attribution of elegant, complex, unexplained biology to � ‘evolution�; (2) the posing of a ‘united front� by scientists affirming Darwinian claims to the public, even though many biologists express doubts in private and in technical scientific publications; and (3) the fact that biological studies of topics such as contemporary human nutrition� run into intractable problems. The first two flags show that social pressure is often used to promote Darwinian conclusions well beyond what the scientific data warrant.� (Pg. 29)
He explains, “This book� concentrates on completely unexpected, devastating new problems that could only have come to light after major recent advances in technical methods for probing the molecular level of life� it turns out that� Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by DAMAGING or BREAKING genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes HELPS survival. IN other words, the mechanism is powerfully DEvolutionary. It promotes the rapid LOSS of genetic information� Darwin’s mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain.� (Pg. 37-38)
He states, “The more we learn of life, the more we realize that ANY type of purposeful motion needs multiple complex well-coordinated parts. At first naïve glance under a basic microscope, twitching or gliding or spiraling of tiny bacteria may appear to be simple. Careful investigation, however, reveals a very different state of affairs. Anyone who is amazed at the planthopper’s leg gears should faint with shock at the sophisticated engineering of such humble bacteria.� (Pg. 58)
He points out, “an unstated yet fundamental premise of Darwin’s entire project---the contention of utter randomness---was based on a bald, simple-minded THEOLGOGICAL assumption: ‘God wouldn’t have done it that way.� A nice benign, indulgent creator wouldn’t set up the kind of world Darwin perceived� It’s strange but true that to a very large degree Charles Darwin insisted the variation that fed natural selection be completely random not because of any actual SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE it could suffice, but because of the THEOLOGICAL argument from evil.� (Pg. 85)
He acknowledges, “Although one has to take care in constructing a valid design argument and Paley overreaches in places in his watchmaker argument, his main point is exactly correct: we recognize design in the purposeful arrangement of parts.� (Pg. 88)
He argues, “Darwinian processes nicely account for changes at the species and genus levels of biological classification, but not for changes at the level of family or higher.� (Pg. 142-143) He continues, “fundamentally chance processes such as the Darwinian mechanism can affect only the pennies and dimes columns of life.� (Pg. 156) He also adds, “Darwinian evolution is self-limiting---the same factors that make it work well on a small scale ensure that it doesn’t go very far.� (Pg. 172)
He notes, “The amazing � fact established by � many investigators in laboratory evolution over decades is that the great majority of even beneficial positively selected mutations damage an organism’s genetic information---either degrading or outright destroying functional coded elements [FCT]. Why is that the case? The simple reason is that the targets for damaging mutations are just much more numerous than those for gain-of-FCT mutations, so they’ll be hit much more frequently.� (Pg. 183) He summarizes, “New life hasn’t evolved. Overwhelmingly it has DEvolved---whether or not it strikes us as more attractive or impressive or useful than its forebears.� (Pg. 197)
He observes, the Darwinian view “depends completely � on Darwin’s last theory� the entirely unjustified assumption that repeated rounds of mutation and selection will add coherently to form complex systems.. research now shows the premise is false. Human mutations that counter malaria� are all selected willy-nilly, regardless of whether they destroy a previously functioning system or not.� (Pg. 202-203)
He presents a 2009 research report that “address[ed] the question of the reversibility of molecular evolution� [admitting that “Although theirs is the first study� they are confident that the results will be quite general”], recalling, “I remember my reaction� my jaw dropped� The modern receptor could not give rise to a protein like the ancestral one by a Darwinian process, because the route is blocked by multiple small barriers that no one had any idea existed until now� the conclusion is that it is prohibitively unlikely to happen by an unplanned process...� (Pg. 208-209)
He states, “Recall that the thoroughly obvious problem of complex interactive structures such as the eye was pointed out by the biologist St. George Mivart soon after Charles Darwin wrote the ‘Origin of Species.� Darwin waved it away as a problem for the future. Well, the future has arrived� Mivart was more right than he knew: even the SLIGHTEST need for coordination� has the theory panting as heavily as if it had just tried to climb Mt. Everest.� (Pg. 244)
He summarizes, “Mind is perceived � in the purposeful arrangement of anything�. Intelligence is also perceived arrangement of physical pieces.� (Pg. 265) And “Any version of materialism undermines common sense� If materialism is true� then there is no such thing as a real mind. Confronted with that dilemma, there are two choices: either affirm materialism and deny your own mind, or affirm your own mind and deny materialism,� (Pg. 269)
He observes, “One big question of course is: just who is this mind that’s behind life? � most people, including myself, are theists and will naturally tend to ascribe the design to God. But I want to emphasize here that the idea of teleology behind nature is expansive; plenty of intellectual room remains for people of widely varying philosophical inclinations.� (Pg. 278) He concludes, “The reunion of science and purpose should come easily, because the chief problem that divided them---neo-Darwinian materialism---has dissipated� Rather than some cosmic accident� those of the public who agree that they have minds can now UNDERSTAND that nature is designed down to an intricate level of detail.� (Pg. 282)
This book will surely be as controversial as Behe’s other books---but it will also be “must reading� for those on ALL sides of the Intelligent Design/Evolution discussion.
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