Twenty years after publishing his seminal work, Darwin’s Black Box , Behe shows that new scientific discoveries point to a stunning fact: Darwin’s mechanism works by a process of devolution , not evolution. On the surface, evolution can help make something look and act different , but it doesn’t have the ability to build or create anything at the genetic level.
Critically analyzing the latest research, Behe gives a sweeping tour of how modern theories of evolution fall short and how the devolving nature of Darwin’s mechanism limits them even further. If we are to get a satisfactory answer to how the most complex, stunning life-forms arose, it’s time to acknowledge the conclusion that only an intelligent mind could have designed life.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
I don’t get how that reference relates to Behe’s book.
I thought that was the verse he was referring to without looking it up, as it seems lately every other YEC and ID comment is about how mutations cause loss of information, not gain, etc. and evolution is impossible because you cannot gain information, thus, same old argument.
What about the observed biological mechanisms that produce genetic changes in every generation, both in the lab and in the wild, and the mechanisms that influence how these changes are passed on? Are these not capable of producing evolution?
I don’t understand exactly how we inherit genes for characteristics we do not display, such as a parent with blue eyes having children with green, grey, and black eyes. Several anti-darwin articles I have read seem to say that offspring that inherit a mutation no longer have the original gene, so that evolution is a dead-end process. We have the example of the peppered moth, where the dark form predominated for a century, then when the air became cleaner, the original light form took over again. Evolution is not a one-way trip to oblivion.
Eye color is determined by how much melanin you produce in your iris. If you produce a lot then the light is absorbed and you have brownish eyes. If you produce a low amount of melanin then some of the light is absorbed while other light scatters. The light that scatters produces a blue color while the low amount of melanin produces brown, and they combine to make green. If you have really low melanin production in your iris then all you see is scattering light which produces the blue color. Strangely enough, no human eye has blue pigment.
That is another case of pigment production. If you have just one allele that produces a lot of melanin then you have a black moth. You can have one allele for low production and one for high production and you will have a black moth. However, if you have two alleles for low pigment production then you have a white moth. This means that these recessive alleles can hang around in black moth populations and result in white moths if an offspring inherits two of the white alleles.
Also with eye color, there are multiple expressions of several genes, so it is not just a blue or brown thing, Typically, though, blue being lack of pigment, so you can carry the gene for blue, and two carriers with brown eyes can have a blue eyed child, but two blue eyed people cannot have a brown eyed child without a new mutation or a brown eyed milkman.
Actually that is all over-simplified, here is a more complete account:
Unlikely, since Behe is not a Creationist. I know he believes that life today evolved over billions of years from primitive ancestors but that this could not have happened by purely natural processes; so I guess that makes him a theistic evolutionist.
Most anti-science propoganda is simply repeated, repackaged versions of previous arguments. No experiment can ever be done to change anyone’s mind it seems and papers are cherry picked that contain single phrases (taken out of context) to actually support the anti-evolution camp. I don’t see why anyone needs another book that cherry picks a few scientific results, probably misunderstands them or at least ignores vast swathes of other publications and experimental evidence. He did the same thing when the 2014 paper in chloroquine came out, claiming victory for his ideas but apparently misinterpreting the paper’s results as summarized by Ken Miller here: http://www.millerandlevine.com/evolution/behe-2014/Behe-1.html
You can carry a recessive copy of a gene. Remember we are diploids, and we get one copy of a gene from Mom, and another copy from Dad. If somebody inherits two copies of a recessive gene that gene will be expressed. In simple Mendelian genetics, anyway.
Remember Of Pandas and People? He’s a cdesign proponentsists. Anyway, I’d like to see this book reviewed. I usually look for reviews before I read a book.
