Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17971 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With his first book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of "irreducible complexity." Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the sickle cell response in humans, Behe argues that genetic mutation results in only clumsy solutions to selective pressures. He goes on to conclude that the statistical possibility of certain evolutionary changes taking place is virtually nil. Although Behe writes with passion and clarity, his calculations of probability ignore biologists' rejection of the premise that evolution has been working toward producing any particular end product. Furthermore, he repeatedly refers to the shortcomings of "Darwin's theory-the power of natural selection coupled to random mutation," but current biological theory encompasses far more than this simplistic view. Most important, Behe reaches the controversial conclusion that the workings of an intelligent designer is the only reasonable alternative to evolution, even without affirmative evidence in its favor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Persuasive Evidence for Intelligent Design
This book was at times a challenge because Behe goes into minute and gory detail into the workings of cells, genes, proteins, amino acids, etc., something that I'd thought I'd never deal with again after dropping pre-med classes in college. Nevertheless, it is important for the reader to patiently wade though all the details because it is the complexity of the details that makes the case for intelligent design.

Behe provides persuasive evidence that random mutation and natural selection, the keystones of Darwin's theory of evolution, cannot logically, statistically or biologically be responsible for the vastly complex systems that scientists are more and more discovering make up the majority of life. Behe demostrates how, at most,random mutation and natural selection can provide relief for entities in dire situations, like the sickel cell that helped ward off malaria, or perhaps be responsbile for more cosmetic changes, like the color of butterfly wings, but that otherwise can not build new complex systems.

Darwinists and Creationists will both have a bone to pick with Behe, for obvious reasons for the former, and for the latter, because he gives evidence of common descent -i.e. that we all came from some common ancestor. Religious people should not be afraid to read the book, however. The case is convincing for intelligent design. Behe does not then take the next step and make a case for who the designer is, although he does mention that he believes in the traditional Roman Catholic explanation.

Read this book and you will be left with a sense of awe at how complex and intricate life really is.

The Best Argument for ID/Creationism
Behe puts the whole ID/Creationism theory together better than anyone has before. So if you wish to understand it, this is the place to start. However, there are several problems with his theory:

1. At the end of the day, Behe insists on a God or Intelligent Designer outside the natural world who individually created each one of the millions of species that have ever lived and did such a bad job that 99% of them failed and died out. And he kept on doing these failures for billions of years.It borders on blasphemy to describe the Creator as the incompetent Behe makes Him out to be.
2. Behe has no science to support his theory. He makes a straw men out of evolution and beats on it (see below) and then says"Aha! if Evolution isn't true, it must be ID/Creationism is!" That's as if someone said, "Aha! The Yankees lost today, therefore the Braves must have won!" It simply makes no sense.
3.The evolution that Behe beats up on is not the one science has established beyond any reasonable doubt. Kenneth Miller's book "Only a Theory:" takes each of Behe's arguments and in a few pages leaves no stone left upon stone. The Miller book is largely easy to read, clear and overwhelmingly convincing. Behe's response on Amazon is necessarily short but seems more designed to try to convince people not to read Miller than it is to rebut his meticulous arguments.

Metaphorical Clarity
I've read about 20 ID books now, and the two best that I have read are both by Behe. Not to say that several others weren't very good, but Black Box and now Edge stand as ID pillars.

A big part of writing scientific works for mass consumption, whether you're Hawking writing about black holes or John Muir writing about botany, is making them understandable to a non-expert without allowing them to lose their academic edge. One of Behe's strengths is his ability to make use of examples and allegories (the irreducibly complex mousetrap of Black Box comes to mind) to allow the reader to convert scientific jargon into concrete epiphanies. An odd phrase I'll admit, but you get my drift. The analogies are superb. And while analogies don't in and of themselves prove (or disprove) anything, they do clarify and hopefully illuminate, and Behe's do this in spades.

Another quality Behe has is the ability to synthesize cutting edge science and sense the ramifications that a lot of others either miss or at least do not write about. His central theme, that of discovering the limits of Darwinian Evolution would have been a Herculean if not impossible task a few years ago, but Behe has borrowed from the recent research of HIV, for example, and combined it with years of study of malaria to assimilate a very cogent and persuasive argument defining an upper boundary for Darwinian evolution.

Finally Behe is able to do something that is hard to describe, and hard for writers on either side of the debate to do. It reminds me a bit of C.S. Lewis, in that he has an ability to crystalize an idea that heretofore had been murky, and in such a manner that the reader almost feels that same joy of discovery the author must've felt. If that sounds a bit overblown, let me rein it in by just saying he's very good at explaining things.

He also takes opportunity to dispute some of his critics in this book, but he is not condescending or particularly argumentative, allowing his interpretations to speak for themselves.

I know for most people their evaluation of this book will be heavily influenced by their world-view, such is human nature- but judged strictly on how well it makes its case and how well it is written, regardless of whether or not you feel those conclusions strictly justified, it is hard to imagine giving this book any less than five stars and regarding it in any other fashion as a pivotal work in the study of design. And if that previous sentence wasn't long enough for you then you're awfully hard to please.