Product Description
When Michael J. Behe's first book, Darwin's Black Box, was published in 1996, it launched the intelligent design movement. Critics howled, yet hundreds of thousands of readers -- and a growing number of scientists -- were intrigued by Behe's claim that Darwinism could not explain the complex machinery of the cell.

Now, in his long-awaited follow-up, Behe presents far more than a challenge to Darwinism: He presents the evidence of the genetics revolution -- the first direct evidence of nature's mutational pathways -- to radically redefine the debate about Darwinism.

How much of life does Darwin's theory explain? Most scientists believe it accounts for everything from the machinery of the cell to the history of life on earth. Darwin's ideas have been applied to law, culture, and politics.

But Darwin's theory has been proven only in one sense: There is little question that all species on earth descended from a common ancestor. Overwhelming anatomical, genetic, and fossil evidence exists for that claim. But the crucial question remains: How did it happen? Darwin's proposed mechanism -- random mutation and natural selection -- has been accepted largely as a matter of faith and deduction or, at best, circumstantial evidence. Only now, thanks to genetics, does science allow us to seek direct evidence. The genomes of many organisms have been sequenced, and the machinery of the cell has been analyzed in great detail. The evolutionary responses of microorganisms to antibiotics and humans to parasitic infections have been traced over tens of thousands of generations.

As a result, for the first time in history Darwin's theory can be rigorously evaluated. The results are shocking. Although it can explain marginal changes in evolutionary history, random mutation and natural selection explain very little of the basic machinery of life. The "edge" of evolution, a line that defines the border between random and nonrandom mutation, lies very far from where Darwin pointed. Behe argues convincingly that most of the mutations that have defined the history of life on earth have been nonrandom.

Although it will be controversial and stunning, this finding actually fits a general pattern discovered by other branches of science in recent decades: The universe as a whole was fine-tuned for life. From physics to cosmology to chemistry to biology, life on earth stands revealed as depending upon an endless series of unlikely events. The clear conclusion: The universe was designed for life.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 96 reviews)

Behe no longer honest or a scientist.

Michael Behe,
Why, after all the honest hard work it must have taken to get your education as a scientist, would you have sacrificed your integrity for a fleeting moment in the spotlight? In doing so you have betrayed generations of scientists who have devoted their lives to discover the truths of the universe. You have allowed personal bias to bleed into the edges of your scientific framework to the point where you have metamorphosed from an honest biochemist to an arm-waving creationist frontman. Can you truly believe that the scientific method requires an injection of the supernatural? Does our best method of answering important questions require an ethereal fingerprint? Scientists have been finding the real answers to life's questions for thousands of years without invoking supernatural explanations in the process. History has shown that the individuals who conclude the tough questions are better left for God are sadly out of touch every time their successors pursue the same questions and solve the mystery. That, Michael, is the wonder of science. The passion people have for finding the answers to complex and frustrating questions, the passion that consumes generations of time and effort, that passion is the quest for truth. Real truth. It is the desire to pull away the veil, open the innards of the machine and finally understand something new and beautiful. Maybe you had this desire once. Unfortunately, it is apparent you are no longer a scientist. You are a god-fearing anti-intellect with a book deal.

And the book is rubbish, by the way. There is currently no better explanation for life on Earth than biological evolution as first proposed by Darwin and Wallace.
November 28, 2008

Evidence for design

Detailed information outlining evidence against random events and therefore pro-design in the universe.
The author demonstrates the limits of Darwinian evolution.
October 03, 2008

Behe Is a Creationist in Disguise

This book has NO scientific merit whatsoever. I'd give it zero stars if possible, but it's not. As Behe himself admitted at the famed Dover trial, "intelligent design" has no working scientific theory to build off of, as evolution does. Intelligent design cannot be tested, ID proponents do not submit their "research" for peer review (gee, I wonder why) and no one in the actual scientific community acknowledges it as a working theory. Instead, it is merely creationism in disguise as was manifested in the Dover trial by the reading of the original draft of the book "Of Pandas and People" which showed that the new edition had switched out, multiple times, the word creation for "intelligent design."

Unfortunately this book will appeal to creationists who don't understand the fact of evolution, which is sad. I would recommend reading "Only a Theory" if you're interested in understanding why ID is merely a bankrupt idea being pushed by a movement (led by Behe) that seeks to undermine the rational, empirical institution of science that has made this country great.

Books like this will have the whole world laughing at the magnitude of our ignorance, which is warranted considering that America now comes out second only to backward, superstitious Turkey with a majority of people not believing in evolution.

The disenlightenment is here. Be very afraid.
September 28, 2008

The Soul and Intelligent Design

In the United States, the public face of the science of intelligent design (ID) is an advocacy movement to change the way evolution is taught. Michael Behe is one of the leaders of the movement because of his concept of the irreducible complexity of molecular machinery (Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution). In this latest book he distances himself from this movement to a certain extent:

"...I spend the bulk of the chapters drawing on molecular evidence, genomic research, and--above all--crucial long-term studies of evolutionary changes in single-celled organisms to test Darwinism without regard to conclusions of design. ... As I will argue, mathematical probabilities and biochemical structures cannot support Darwinism's randomness, except at the margins of evolution. Still, as we seek to find the line marking the edge of randomness, there is no need to infer design." (p. 8)

The organisms are malaria and the HIV virus, which have evolved defenses against man-made drugs. Despite the huge numbers of organisms and cell divisions observed, there has been no build-up of molecular machinery. Behe likens these observations to the famous experiment in 1887 proving that light propagated in a vacuum, not a luminiferous ether. The ether had to behave like a solid for electric fields and behave like a gas for planets, but it was a good theory at the time.

The book makes the case against Darwinian evolution so strongly that biologist will have to come to grips with ID someway. Biology has been able to avoid the question of the evolution of the human soul because it is understood that evolution only applies to the bodies of human beings. This cannot be explicitly stated because the very concept of the "body of a human being" is an existential or metaphysical concept, not a scientific concept. The following quote by a famous authority on evolution and an outspoken secular humanist proves this point:

"Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew that I had no problem with this statement, for whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious issue." (Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History, March 1997, 13th paragraph)

Gould is mistaken in calling the soul a "religious issue." That God will save our souls is a religious belief, but that we have souls is a metaphysical or existential truth. The statement that human beings do not have souls is also a metaphysical statement, not a scientific statement. (I sure Gould's "private beliefs" don't make any sense. Humans have souls because they are embodied spirits. Humans are embodied spirits because they are indefinabilities. Humans are indefinabilities because free will and conscious knowledge can't be defined. Of course, Gould may think free will is an illusion, but he knows that this point of view would make him look foolish in some circles.)

However, biologists cannot continue to ignore the observations about the evolution of malaria and the complexity of multicellular life. The solution can't be to consider the possibility of a designer because this would fail to keep science separate from existentialism. But the time has come for biologist to incorporate the concept of design and William Dembski's concept of specified complexity (The Design Revolution: Answering The Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design) into their understanding of evolution.
September 13, 2008

Can you see the forest?

This book makes clear that huge population numbers must be present for even marginally beneficial mutations to occur. Behe does this primarily by following the "war" between man and malaria. The best pure Darwinian evolution has done for man is to break some human functionality in order to stymie this disease. Of course, purist evolutionists (primarily atheists) will continue to argue that random mutations are responsible for all the diversity of life that exists on our grand cosmic "mistake", which will eventually go down as the worst case of not seeing the forests through the trees in human history. Behe lays out the forest quite well, but critics will complain about a few missing or misplaced trees.
September 02, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe

The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine
by Alister E. McGrath, Joanna Collicutt Mcgrath

There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
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Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain
by Geoffrey Simmons

The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions
by David Berlinski