The Edge of Reason - Behe's new book...

So, I don't know if anyone (I know you will, RRen, heh) knew that Behe has been scribbling away for a while and has produced a new book.

"The Edge of Evolution"



Well, reviews of the book are coming in and make for interesting reading. Anyway, thought Sean Carroll's and Nick Matzke's reviews are worth investing the time to read. I reckon you try to pick it up from some second-hand bookstore, the people who bought may well deserve to get some sort of refund.

Sean Carroll

"The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands."

Those are the words that Thomas Huxley, Darwin's confidant and staunchest ally, purportedly murmured to a colleague as he rose to turn Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's own words to his advantage and rebut the bishop's critique of Darwin's theory at their legendary 1860 Oxford debate. They are also the first words that popped into my head as I read Michael J. Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. In it, Behe makes a new set of explicit claims about the limits of Darwinian evolution, claims that are so poorly conceived and readily dispatched that he has unwittingly done his critics a great favor in stating them.

continued...

www.sciencemag.org...

Nick Matzke:

Oh, I almost forgot the best part: Which apicomplexan critter is it that builds cilia despite Behe's declaration that "a functioning cilium requires a working IFT"? Why, it's Plasmodium falciparum, aka malaria, aka Behe's own biggest running example used throughout The Edge of Evolution. Yes, it's the very critter about which Behe wrote on page 237,

"Here's something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts."

But not, apparently, the parts which Behe thought were required for cilium construction. If there is an Intelligent Designer up there, I suspect He's having a bit of a chuckle right now.

www.pandasthumb.org...

Apart from the quite fine fisking that Matzke provides, it's interesting to note that Behe suggests that one of the biggest killers in the world was designed by some intelligent character. Nice to know. I assume the Devil's....sorry I mean not so beneficient disembodied telic entity's fingerprints are in the DNA somewhere.

I reckon it should be renamed as 'malevolent design'.





[edit on 9-6-2007 by melatonin]

i love it how some make behe out to be some sort of rival to dawkins.. when that is the most false comparison that can be drawn.

for the record, as many (including dawkins) have stated before me: there is no actual controversy surrounding the theory of evolution in the academic field

I just love you AlGore types. "The scientific argument is over" and Dawkins "There is no actual controversy surrounding the theory of evolution in the academic field." Makes me want to lose interest in scientific inquiry and go buy a Wii and spend my life playing video games. What else is out there to do? Behe is asking legitimate questions that no biochemist is answering in the literature. He is asking Darwinists to get off their laurels and quit relying on descriptions of phenotypes, and to investigate the chemistry and provide the statistical analysis of the probability that random mutation produced life on earth. You guys remind me of the sissy that slaps the face of his rival and then uses a stand in for the duel. Your faith in Darwinism is just that until you can answer Behe's challange. Quit inuendo and ad hominum attacks and use biological investigations and mathmatics to refute Behe if you can. Now that would keep me away from video games! My favorite read - "The Deniers". Another book you guys need to read.

Melatonin, I know that you are a reasonable person. However, I can give you just one example of a situation that Dawkins glosses over with great panache and misses out the fine details. It is the detection of light in the eye.

To detect light, you need a system to convert the light energy into chemical potential energy, trigger an appropriate electrical impulse and then to regenerate the original light detection molecule. The regeneration of many molecules in the body requires energy in the form of a high energy triphosphate molecule (which behaves like a portable power supply). Such a triphosphate is needed to regenerate light detection pigment in a mammalian eye.

Let's put aside irreducible complexity of light detection for a minute. Can you come up with a plausible model for how gradualism or gene duplication and divergence can provide an organism with an ability to detect light?

Additionally, can you come up with a plausible explanation on how light detection and predator evasion could be linked either by a gradualistic or punctuated equilibrium model.

I personally find Behe's explanation on this particular matter compelling reading.

Dawkins is not a molecular biologist otherewise he would pause before making sweeping asertions on how complex systens could provide a selective pressure on a variety of the same species. Moreover, I think Hollwood11 would pose some very awkward questions for him and for other evolutionists. The stage was set for a battle on the stage of molecular genetics and it is significant that Hollwood has very few replies to his posts.

Anyhoo, hope you are well.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
Moreover, I think Hollwood11 would pose some very awkward questions for him and for other evolutionists. The stage was set for a battle on the stage of molecular genetics and it is significant that Hollwood has very few replies to his posts.

Either hollywood is the guy from other forums, or just someone C&Ping many of his wacky posts, but he has replies to most of his ramblings on infidels and RDnet. I can't be bothered with him.

If you find his ideas compelling - oh well, another one bites the dust.

I'm well, hero. Hope you're too.

cheers.

[edit on 4-6-2008 by melatonin]

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


no, behe isn't asking any of that. according to him, to make ID a scientific theory you'd have to make astrology a scientific theory, as both rely on exactly the same sort of "science"

there's nothing there, there's no scientific controversy, it's all a controversy of culture.

some people with religious motivations want to throw evolution out because it doesn't fit with their worldview.