Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.42 You Save: $8.57 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.12 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
Book Review: Who was the supposed designer?
Summary: 5 Stars
Hold on folks, let's simplify: 1. As for evolution theory itself, Behe "accepts the idea that species have been differentiated by the mechanism of natural selection from a common ancestor." Evolution is a valid but obviously dynamic area of inquiry. This is not only good for the theory but exciting in the extreme. 2. If current evolutionary theories are found wanting or break down at the biochemical level, the overall theory will be modified in much the same way that Newtonian physics were modified by relativity. 3. As to the origin of life and the development of these "irreducible complexities", I see two possible causes: completely natural processes which are as yet unexplained and undiscovered, or maybe this IS evidence of intelligent design. 4. If these be natural processes, the "God of the Gaps" is discredited as was theological meteorology when Ben Franklin flew that kite of his. 5. If this be design, then WHO WAS THE DESIGNER? Behe points out that although molecular biochemistry is in its infancy, humans now posses the ability to alter cells chemically. If we can do this, could not some advanced race have perpetrated a collosal biology experiment on the Earth? Is it possible that our biological creator is a gray-skinned creature with large cranium and large almond shaped eyes? Personally, I would dearly love to see the hand of God, for if it is design and the possibility exists that God wasn't our creator but some other species instead, what does it all really say about humankind? This is to me a frightening prospect. How can we know? And again, if the design was not God's, then where did this hypothetical advanced race come from? 6. This is not the end of evolution theory. The creationists still do not have a solid leg to stand on and their celebrations are quite premature. I see nothing but more questions at this point and they in no way diminish what we know by way of evolution theory. We need to keep up the quest and only hard science will provide the definitive answers. What a delightful "can of worms" Behe has opened!Book Review: Good ammunition for religionist apologists, fundamentalists!
Summary: 2 Stars
Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference by Michael J. Behe ...a paper originally presented in the Summer of 1994 at the meeting ofthe C.S. Lewis Society, Cambridge University. I suppose this, of Behe's conclusion ,is the meat: "The conclusion of design flows naturally from the data; we should not shrink from it; we should embrace it and build on it. In concluding, it is important to realize that we are not inferring design from what we do not know, but from what we do know. We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box. A man from a primitive culture who sees an automobile might guess that it was powered by the wind or by an antelope hidden under the car, but when he opens up the hood and sees the engine he immediately realizes that it was designed. In the same way biochemistry has opened up the cell to examine what makes it run and we see that it, too, was designed." Behe claims that "The conclusion of design flows naturally from the data" -- but he gives no reason why that's so! He merely re-states what's known about molecules -- his 'open box' and infers the existence of a deity from that. But Behe is smarter than most religionist apologists who so glibly employ the old 'ad ignoratum' to trick us into believing his way. Usually the argument goes something like this: We don't know how life works, therefore there must be a creator who made living things. Of course, not knowing how "X" works says absolutely nothing about the existence of gods. Many find this convincing, though, when the "X" is a difficult question, like the cell, the Big Bang, or the particle-wave duality of matter. But this kind of argument should not fool anyone. Simply not knowing says nothing about the existence of creators. Behe prepares us for this trap, by cleverly telling us to ignore it. Here is the language in which he ensconced the trap: "We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box." To convince us further, he assumes that the so-called "primitive man", when confronted for the first time with an auto-mobile would immediately lift up the hood in order to discover its motive force. Why not the door or the trunk? Would it not seem that the wheels are the prime candidates of first inspection? How can this primitive skeptic "immediately realize" from looking at the engine that it was designed? I don't think Henry Ford or Gottlieb Daimler had this design in mind! The modern automobile is much more a product of evolution than of design, Mr. Behe. In fact, automobiles reproduce very much like some biological systems -- retroviruses, for example. Cars are made in places called factories, with organelles called parts, assembly lines, designers and salesmen. AIDS viruses are made in factories called T-cells whose reproductive machinery is employed to make more viruses. I don't think viruses were made by Gods. Self assembling systems do not require designers. Molecules are the building blocks of self assembling systems, and their environment "votes" whether they are allowed to self-assemble more of the same. Mr. Behe does not play fair in the exposition of his god-theory; here is a good example that shows to what lengths religionist apologists will go in order to avoid the great paradigm shift, for many, that god is not needed to explain how thing work. Fundamentalist religionists, however gravitate to this view in the faith that they have found a man of science who supports them.Book Review: Behe 1, Myth 0
Summary: 5 Stars
When I read one critic after another summarizing a book with remarks that easily fit onto a bumper-sticker, I know that something is up. I don't doubt that if Behe's critics could come up with something better than trying to hang a "God of the Gaps" label on his argument, they'd do so. Their failure to come up with anything more specific than hand-waving and fuzzy philosophy speaks volumes. If the febrile critics of Behe's book were consistent, they'd still be arguing for geocentrism and epicycles. After all, just because we don't know HOW the universe operates with the sun at the center doesn't mean that it DOESN'T. That is what their sniffing dismissals of Behe's analysis amount to. Like the Queen in "Alice in Wonderland," their claim is, "Sentence first, verdict afterwards." It's fortunate that doctrinaire evolutionists aren't permitted to subject the rest of us to heresy trials, else we'd not dare to be seen reading a book that so intelligently and powerfully questions the prevailing wisdom.Book Review: More trouble for the Church of Darwin
Summary: 5 Stars
Behe's book reminds us that we need to confront the uncomfortable questions that pop up during the course of scientific investigation, even if they contradict our cherished personal beliefs. His argument relentlessly exposes the absurdity of believing in heretofore unobserved and, indeed, unimaginable natural pathways or processes that might produce his examples of biological irreducible complexity. Behe "confesses" to his Catholicism; would that other writers honestly admit to their own sources of possible bias and unreason.The more I re-read Behe's book the more I agree it has joined the ranks of such calmly presented, tightly-reasoned, and impeccably-researched works as Bird's "Origin of Species Revisited", Denton's "Evolution: a Theory in Crisis", Lubenow's "Bones of Contention", Johnson's "Darwin on Trial", and Cremo and Thompson's "Forbidden Archaeology". I am looking forward to reading ReMine's "The Biotic Message" as another example of a new wave of books that challenge scientists - on their own turf - to open their minds, to look beyond current dogma and "(neo-?)Darwinistically correct" thought, to think critically and objectively, even if it may mean finally discarding the "dead hand of Darwinism".
At the risk of the deafening sound of minds snapping shut, may I also recommend "Cracking the Bible Code" by Satinover - a foil to the reckless treatment by Drosnin.
Book Review: Is Darwinism just a form of Fundementalism?
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Behe has apparently written a heretical work, theatening to the "faith" of many modern Darwinists. When I read the book, about a year ago, it struck me as a well-argued, well-thought out book that would stir things up... he asks the kind of questions that are occasionally needed to keep a science (or any other field of study) from becoming a stagnant, self-statisfied orthodoxy. Reading some "amazon" reviews, with their fretting about "fundementalism" and such, I'm a bit concerned that there may be a significant number of people that think that science is only good when it "supports" their political or social causes... or, at least doesn't support the "opposition". This the kind of attitude that helps neither society nor science.
It seems like a fair number of the reviewers dismiss Behe as "falling back on his religion". The problem is, if they had read the book they'd know that he's a Catholic. The Catholic Church has *never* taught that evolution is wrong. Or right for that matter.
On to the book: it is quite accessible to the layman, and Behe does a good job of describing the mechanisms of the biochemical systems that he presents as examples. Reading "Darwin's Black Box", I found myself regretting that I stopped at lower-division Organic Chemistry back in college.
Behe, having described each of his examples in "just enough" detail, goes on to show that each "mechanism" is made of several components, none of which gives any particular evolutionary advantage in and of itself, even being a "side effect" of some other mechanism. He points out that none of these example (or countless other biochemical systems) have been explained with a plausible model of how they evolved. But they are widely "known" to have evolved. (Here I'm over-simplifying to be brief -- READ THE BOOK for the argument.)
It might be best for those with emotional attachments to evolution as Great Explanaition For Everything to focus on this aspect of the book. They should ask themselves if maybe, if there's no evidence for evolution of these systems at a biochemical level should we *insist* that it *must* be evolution?
Why can't Science occasionally just shrug it's shoulders and say, "Dunno" if there isn't enough evidence?