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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #393667 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Original language: English
• 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.
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Review
"Until the past decade and the genomics revolution, Darwin's theory rested on indirect evidence and reasonable speculation. Now, however, we have begun to scratch the surface of direct evidence, of which this book offers the best possible treatment. Though many critics won't want to admit it, The Edge of Evolution is very balanced, careful, and devastating. A tremendously important book."

-- Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University, and member of the National Academy of Sciences

Review
"With this book, Michael Behe shows that he is truly an independent thinker of the first order. He carefully examines the data of evolution, along the way making an argument for universal common descent that will make him no friends among young-earth creationists, and draws in new facts, especially the data on malaria, that have not been part of the public debate at all up to now. This book will take the intelligent design debate into new territory and represents a unique contribution to the longstanding question of philosophy: Can observation of the physical world guide our thinking about religious questions?"

-- Professor David Snoke, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh

"In The Edge of Evolution Michael Behe carefully assesses the evidence of what Darwin's mechanism of random mutation and selection can achieve in well documented cases, and shows that even in those cases that maximize its power as a creative force it has only been able to generate very trivial examples of evolutionary change. Could such an apparently impotent and mindless force really have built the sophisticated molecular devices found throughout nature? The answer, he insists, is no. The only common-sense explanation is intelligent design."

-- Michael Denton, M.D., Ph.D., author of Nature's Destiny

"In crystal-clear prose Behe systematically shreds the central dogma of atheistic science, the doctrine of the random universe. This book, like the natural phenomena it so elegantly describes, shows the unmistakable signs of a very deep intelligence at work."

-- JEffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., Research Psychiatrist, UCLA, and author of The Mind & The Brain

"Until the past decade and the genomics revolution, Darwin's theory rested on indirect evidence and reasonable speculation. Now, however, we have begun to scratch the surface of direct evidence, of which this book offers the best possible treatment. Though many critics won't want to admit it, The Edge of Evolution is very balanced, careful, ¬and devastating. A tremendously important book."

-- Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University, and member of the National Academy of Sciences

"With this book, Michael Behe shows that he is truly an independent thinker of the first order. In a day when the media present all issues in the football metaphor as two teams fighting, the intelligent design debate is presented simplistically as authors who are lapdogs for young-earth creationists versus evolutionists who are lapdogs for atheists. Michael Behe is no lapdog. He carefully examines the data of evolution, along the way making an argument for universal common descent that will make him no friends among young-earth creationists, and draws in new facts, especially the data on malaria, that have not been part of the public debate at all up to now. This book will take the intelligent design debate into new territory and represents a unique contribution on the longstanding question of philosophy: can observation of the physical world guide our thinking about religious questions?"

- Professor David Snoke, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh

"Until the past decade and the genomics revolution, Darwin's theory rested on indirect evidence and reasonable speculation. Now, however, we have begun to scratch the surface of direct evidence, of which this book offers the best possible treatment. Though many critics won't want to admit it, The Edge of Evolution is very balanced, careful, and devastating. A tremendously important book."

-- Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University, and member of the National Academy of Sciences

Customer Reviews

Mostly dreadful, but some good points.
In the Debacle in Dover, testifying about biochemistry, his main area of expertise, Behe frequently looked like a complete ID-iot. In EOE, Behe spends substantial time discussing areas outside his main ariea of expertise: zoology, astrophysics, developmental biology, etc. Question: If Behe couldn't survive cross-examination in his main area of expertise, then why should we trust him about other areas?

Besides that troubling, general question, there are several specific items that indicate that Behe simply cannot be trusted to get his facts straight. While some reviewers have identified some fairly esoteric errors, I would like to highlight more basic errors, errors so fundamental that a reasonably knowledgeable high school student would catch them.

Behe claims that his previous book, "Darwin's Black Box" (DBB), showed that irreducibly complex (IC) systems could not possibly have evolved in a step-by-step manner, but in reality DBB never said any such thing. DBB argued only that "direct" evolution was highly unlikely. Not only does that still leave the door open for "indirect" evolution, but "highly unlikely" is obviously not the same thing as "impossible." A reasonably sharp high school student would recognize both of those serious errors.

Behe also has a nasty habit of moving the goalposts on an ad hoc basis. In DBB, Behe claimed that IC systems met the standard set by Darwin himself: "could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications." Under that standard, which Behe freely accepted, merely plausible evolutionary pathways would be effective rebuttals of Behe's IC claims; but whenever biologists mention the numerous, plausible pathways that exist, Behe suddenly changes the standard to "rigorous, detailed explanations." Even a high school student would recognize that "rigorous, detailed explanations" is a radically different standard from "plausible." Such glaring inconsistency on such a key point seems to imply deliberate deception.

Some of Behe's statistical arguments assume that evolutionary success involves finding a needle in a haystack, i.e., a single, specific combination of mutations. In reality, as Behe himself implies in discussing the "Red Queen" effect, there is frequently a large, possibly enormous, number of potentially beneficial combinations available; so evolution is not searching for a needle, rather it is searching for a haystack; and therefore the odds of success are enormously greater than Behe's statistics imply. Any reasonably sharp high school student would recognize the glaring flaw in Behe's deceptive statistics.

Creationists with limited math abilities seem greatly impressed even by math arguments as obviously stupid as Behe's. I think it's worthwhile to point out that the most influential statistician of the 20th century was probably Sir Ronald Fisher, who, in addition to his spectacular achievements in statistics, also happens to have been one of the most influential evolutionists of the 20th century, having been one of the principal proponents of the "modern synthesis." So when ID-iots like Behe start bloviating about statistics, just remember that the real expert in statistics, Sir Ronald Fisher, was an evolutionist.

Finally, in another key argument, Behe simply assumes that "fitness landscapes" never change, but anyone with even a high school level knowledge of earth science knows that physical landscapes change all the time, due to floods, earthquakes, erosion, etc. Is Behe really so clueless that he doesn't realize that if physical landscapes change, then "fitness landscapes" must change too? Behe's idea of an organism "trapped on a fitness peak," forever barred from crossing even a shallow valley and thereby potentially gaining access to a even higher peak is so obviously stupid that any reasonably knowledgeable high school student would reject it.

I fully realize that not everyone can catch every error. Even major errors, like some of those pointed out by other critics, might slip by if they involve obscure or highly technical details. But it is really baffling that five-star reviewers blithely overlook numerous, major blunders that any knowledgeable high school student would catch. How in God's name could that happen?

Read it with an open mind.
Just as a massive star bends light, so emotion warps thought when we approach the question of origins. An eminent professor who takes the wrong position on this subject can lose tenure. A less eminent researcher may lose his job. Depite his forty-some peer-reviewed articles and a tenured faculty position, and the careful, measured tone in which he writes, Michael Behe will be called an "ID-iot," his honesty disputed, and anyone who agrees with him dismissed as an ignorant, red-neck hick who can barely muster the cognitive powers of a good high school student.

In such an environment (and if you doubt my appraisal, read some of the reviews below), it takes conscious intent to ignore manipulative appeals to the "argument from sociology" and attend to substance.

For the record, Behe is not an "ID-iot." He is a sharp and thoughtful biologist who doesn't think evolution can work on its own. In this book he argues for common descent, but argues that naturalistic evolution is limitted. He thinks the mechanisms suggested for powering the massive creativity and innovation in nature could not come from mutations alone.

His primary tool for advancing this argument is the evolution of the malaria bug, and of human immune defenses against it, over the past several thousand years. Behe shows that while microbes can and do evolve resistances to medicine, they generally do so by breaking down in some way, as does the human body. Touching briefly on the evolution of e coli and HIV, then on other critters, he makes the case that bugs that evolve rapidly, and through huge communities, demonstrate the limits to naturalistic evolution. The mathematical arguments he brings in to explain and support his more theoretical argument against the power of mutations, which some reviewers take issue with below, are not his main line of persuasion, nor, I admit, do they seem fully persuasive as developed here.

This book is not about Irreducible Complexity (IC). Behe defends the concept, and his examples of it, briefly, but that is not the main line of discussion, critics to the contrary. He's offered a lenghthier defense of IC elsewhere. (While I've read some of his Dover testimony, and some of the summary given in a critic's book, and agree he could have done better at some points, I think carefully considered written articles provide a better forum for ideas than a courtroom drama. As someone who has been known to stutter himself in interviews, I'm not inclined to judge a person's intelligence or argument on how well he holds up against hours of verbal examination by a well-prepared and clever attorney. In Debating Design, he seems to me to do well vs. Kenneth Miller and his famous Type III Secretory System.) But here Behe comes at the question from below, rather from above, looking at the actual known history of recent evolution among well-studied microorganisms. The book is, therefore, a good compliment to Darwin's Black Box.

Read it, and the discussion that will follow (both sides), and make up your own mind. Don't let the raw emotions so in evidence sway you. Behe is right or he is wrong, but he is not a fool. For me, the primary issue remains the frequency and character of beneficial and creative mutations. Looking into the question a bit myself recently, I found a pattern very like what Behe describes. Ironically, it seems to me the best argument against the position Behe stakes out here that I have seen so far is theological. Why would God create the malaria bug? I am still not satisfied that anyone really has the history of life pegged.

The Edge of Inanity: The Search for the Limits of Credulity
Behe's all dog no pony Irreducible Complexity (IC) tour is back in town - fresh from a Dover, PA appearance where he literally brought down the house of Intelligent Design (ID) cards with a slapstick vaudeville routine that confusingly conflated astrology with astronomy, dismissed reams (literally) of research into the evolution of the blood clotting cascade, and routinely produced 'oh dear' deer in the headlights stares while under cross examination.

Much of "The Edge of Evolution" centers on the purported inability of evolutionary mechanisms to account for parasites such as malaria. Behe's preferred instrument of faith-based flagellation - the flagellum - stages an encore performance as the malarial cilium; which to Behe's doe eyes looks even more IC than it did before.

Research is cited to show that the production of cilium in eukaryotic cells depends upon the availability of another cellular system known as intraflagellar transport (IFT). Behe then asserts (as in provides no supporting evidence) that both the cilium and IFT are irreducibly complex - in fact he christens this section "Irreducible Complexity Squared" (note to the Discovery Institute: get that trademark application in soon, how about IC2). Behe writes on page 94:

"IFT exponentially increases the difficulty of explaining the irreducibly complex cilium. It is clear from careful experimental work with all ciliated cells that have been examined, from alga to mice, that a functioning cilium requires a working IFT. The problem of the origin of the cilium is now intimately connected to the problem of the origin of IFT. Before its discovery we could be forgiven for overlooking the problem of how a cilium was built. Biologists could vaguely wave off the problem, knowing that some proteins fold by themselves and associate in the cell without help. Just as a century ago Haeckel thought it would be easy for life to originate, a few decades ago one could have been excused for thinking it was probably easy to put a cilium together; the piece could probably just glom together on their own. But now that the elegant complexity of IFT has been uncovered, we can ignore the question no longer."

IC2 states that you can't have/build/produce cilia without a functioning IFT mechanism - evolutionary (natural) causations must explain the apparently choreographed origin of IFT and the origin of cilia - quod erat demonstrum. Unfortunately this claim is false. In the real world eukaryotes exist which have cilia but lack IFT.

One of these organisms belongs to a group called Apicomplexans. These protozoa are obligatory intracellular parasites that must spend part, if not all, of their life cycle in a host animal. The specific apicomplexan in question is Plasmodium falciparum. You probably know it better by its street name: malaria. The organism that Behe touts throughout as being an intelligently designed exemplar of irreducibly complex systems completely demolishes his entire claim that cilia and IFT constitute an irreducible system - squared or not.

Compounding the Plasmodium falciparum debacle is Behe's rubber-band reality utilization of fitness landscape arguments in a chapter that should have been titled "The Mathematical Limits of Beheism" since it only manages to showcase his profligate innumeracy. Here's how Behe turned a fitness landscape into a swamp (with thanks to Mark Chu-Carroll):

1. Restrict evolution to a static and unchanging fitness landscape - unfortunately in the real world fitness landscapes are never static. 2. Constrain the fitness landscape to a smooth surface made up of hills and valleys where a local minimum or maximum in any dimension is a local minimum or maximum in all dimensions - and ignore that a valley in one dimension can be a peak in another. 3. Assert that fitness function mapping from a genome to a point of the fitness landscape is monotonically increasing - in spite of the fact that things don't always go in a single direction - for example a virus may decrease in fitness over time but increase in transmissibility. 4. Define the fitness function as smoothly continuous, with infinitesimally small changes (single point base changes) mapping to equally small changes in position on the fitness landscape - in spite of experimental evidence that even a single base pair change (in a viral quasispecies for example) can eliminate one peak while creating another (and also ignore the consequences of gene duplication, recombination, insertional mutations, transposition, and translocation).

As Mark points out Behe doesn't even understand that he is making these assumptions - you can wade through his mathematics without getting your ankles wet. He then traipses into quicksand of his own design by basing all of his arguments on the flawed fitness landscape and straightjacketed search results they produce. William Dembski acted as an advisor to Behe - and it shows. The master of obscurantist pseudomathematics has found a willing apprentice.

Transmuting lush fitness landscapes into malarial swamps is quite a trick but Behe, ever the prankster, isn't finished yet. Behe accepts common descent and admits that overwhelming evidence links closely related species (e.g. humans and chimpanzees) to shared ancestors, but flatly asserts that evolution by natural means is incapable of facilitating genus or taxa level differentiation such as the emergence of tetrapods from Sarcopterygian fish. The horns of this dilemma should be obvious, even to Behe; how can all species be linked by common descent if evolution above the species level is impossible?

Behe never resolves this disconnect - no mechanism is ever offered. No hint of a hypothesis. No suggested experimental avenues. This logical lacuna can't be bridged by incessant appeals to 'design.' Behe further muddies the waters by surreptitiously substituting a concept much closer to creationist 'baramin' (created kinds) for biological species - created kinds and common descent are irreconcilable concepts.

Ultimately Behe's colleagues at Lehigh University are ideally positioned to comment on his work. The Department of Biological Sciences has posted the following statement on their website concerning Behe:

"The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others."

"The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of 'intelligent design.' While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."

Behe's book is one long train wreck. Unlike Darwin who eloquently elucidated one long argument, Behe tosses off sloppy seconds as research, recycles sophomoric (and rejected) fitness landscape arguments, confusingly conflates or redefines common terms and proffers puerile probability assessments - standard creationist (excuse me, I meant to say IDist) fare.

Thanks to Nick Matzke for uncovering Behe's monumentally grotesque Plasmodium falciparum gaffe.

Special thanks as well to Behe's dysfunctional advisory team: Lydia and Tim McGrew, Peter and Paul Nelson, George Hunter, David DeWitt, Doug Axe, Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Tony Jelsma, Neil Manson, Jay Richards, Guillermo Gonzalez, Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, John West, and Rob Crowther - a veritable bestiary of methodological supernaturalists operating at the edge of inanity - and only one 's' away from insanity.