Michael J. Behe

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture

Archives

Michael Behe on the Growth of ID via the Growth of Science

Michael Behe
December 2, 2020
On this ID the Future, Michael Behe continues discussing A Mousetrap for Darwin, his newest book. Understanding of the cell has grown “by leaps and bounds” since the 1990s, when Behe’s first book appeared. Fresh discoveries have revealed ever more complex structures inside the cell. As Behe explains, it isn’t just the bacterial flagellum that’s irreducibly complex; the “hook” region inside the flagellum is, too. Evolution’s proper place of study has moved from gross anatomy and population genetics to biochemistry. In his conversation with host Eric Anderson, Behe says that intelligent design theory’s predictions are coming true over time, while for every step of increasing knowledge, it gets “worse and worse” for the theory of evolution by undirected unintelligent …

A Mousetrap for Darwin: The Interview, Pt. 1

Michael Behe
November 25, 2020
On this ID the Future, Eric Anderson interviews Michael Behe about Behe’s new book, A Mousetrap for Darwin. In this episode, Behe explains that he was spurred to build this collection of essays by a review in the journal Science claiming he had never answered his critics on key points. That annoyed Behe, because he had, multiple times. A Mousetrap for Darwin compiles more than a hundred of his responses, some of them from difficult-to-access places. The book also contains fresh material from Dr. Behe, including some lively behind-the-scenes details about his interactions with colleagues and critics. In this episode, the Lehigh University biochemist answers misconceptions about irreducible complexity, responds to the claim that “molecular machines” is a misnomer, relates the …

Michael Behe Reads from His New Book

Michael Behe
November 18, 2020
On this ID the Future, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe reads from A Mousetrap for Darwin, his latest book making the case against blind evolution and for intelligent design. The volume contains some brand new material alongside a substantial collection of essays he’s written over the years in response to critics of his three previous intelligent design books. His pro-Darwin critics have jumped all over Behe. Some have even claimed he’s ignored their objections. A Mousetrap for Darwin gives the lie to that charge. Behe has answered his critics, and done so decisively, in everything from the New York Times and prominent blogs to major science journals. Listen in as he lays the groundwork for his fourth fascinating book, in his inimitably clear and winsome …

Michael Behe Answers Your Questions

Michael Behe
August 5, 2020
This episode of ID the Future features Darwin Devolves author Michael Behe. The Lehigh University biologist and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow sat down to answer some of the most common questions put to him about evolution and intelligent design, and here we collect his answers to three of those questions: (1) What are some new examples of irreducibly complex systems? (2) What are some objections to ID from well-known critics? And (3) Why aren’t you convinced by theistic evolution …

Michael Behe on E. Coli and a Citrate Death Spiral

Michael Behe
July 1, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe reviews the Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State, where Richard Lenski’s team was initially excited to see what they thought was a new species forming in their flasks of E. coli. As Behe has written at Evolution News, one flask of E. coli in Lenski’s experiment evolved the ability to metabolize (“eat”) citrate in the presence of oxygen. But along with it came multiple mutations breaking genes, degrading genetic information, and ultimately increasing the bacteria’s death rates. It all goes to support Behe’s thesis in Darwin Devolves: evolution is good at creating niche advantages by breaking things; it isn’t good at building fundamentally novel form, the very thing the grand narrative of modern …

Citrate Death Spiral

Michael Behe
June 17, 2020
Michigan State University biologist Richard Lenski and collaborators have just published a terrific new paper.

Michael Behe on COVID-19, Chloroquine, Malaria and the Edge of Evolution

Michael Behe
March 30, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe and host Andrew McDiarmid discuss the anti-malarial drug chloroquine, now being investigated as a treatment for COVID-19, and how it may work on the cellular level against the coronavirus. The same drug was featured in Behe’s 2007 book The Edge of Evolution, as part of his demonstration that evolution has strict limits: It can do adaptive work for organisms with single mutations, but if just two coordinated mutations are required at once, evolution’s random processes have great difficulty even with natural selection helping them along. In cases where population sizes are enormous, as with malaria, it can eventually overcome the need for two simultaneous and coordinated mutations, but only just barely. Because the odds go up …

Michael Behe on COVID-19 and ‘Why Are There Viruses, Anyway?’

Michael Behe
March 16, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid and biochemist Michael Behe discuss the pandemic coronavirus known as COVID-19. The two move through a series of questions, some straightforward, others more speculative. What is a virus and where did this one come from? Why is it so much worse than other coronavirus strains? What sort of evolution is involved here? Does the human species have any ancient, shared genetic relationship with viruses? And why are there viruses in the first place? …

Michael Behe on the Design Idea That Won’t Go Away (and Shouldn’t)

Michael Behe
February 10, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, Jonathan Witt caught up with Darwin’s Black Box author and biochemist Michael Behe at the 2020 Dallas Science and Faith conference, where the two discuss an idea that many wish would just go away, but hasn’t. Charles Darwin himself told us how his evolutionary theory could be overturned: identify a biological system that couldn’t possibly have evolved by “numerous success successive slight modifications.” It’s to Darwin’s credit that he put his theory in “empirical harm’s way,” to quote philosopher Del Ratzsch, but as Witt and Behe note, Darwin also cleverly placed the burden of proof on his opponents, an arguably dubious maneuver given that his proposed evolutionary mechanism has never once been observed to generate a …

Honoring Phillip Johnson, Pt. 3: Michael Behe

Michael Behe
January 27, 2020
On this ID the Future we continue a series of messages from a November 2019 symposium in Berkeley, California, presented in honor of the late Phillip Johnson, who played a crucial role in the flowering of the intelligent design movement. On today’s episode Lehigh University biology professor Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, The Edge of Evolution, and Darwin Devolves, tells about his earliest memories of Phillip Johnson and speaks on the long history of science: how ancient science pointed to purposeful design in life, and how current science is coming full circle, so that the conclusion of design is as strong or stronger than it’s ever been. …

Michael Behe Opens a Black Box for Christmas

Michael Behe
December 9, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe discusses the closing sections of his new book Darwin Devolves: The New Science about DNA That Challenges Evolution. He compares evolutionary biology in Darwin’s time and today to the world of astronomy before and after the telescope was invented. The cell was a black box to Darwin and his contemporaries. Today we can explore that black box like never before, much better even than even two decades ago, allowing us to observe what evolution can actually do at the molecular level. According to Behe, the answer is, not much. Evolution can create niche advantages by breaking certain things, but it doesn’t build fundamentally new structures or new machines. That’s because it can’t do what mind can do. It …

Behe Barnstorms Brazil

Michael Behe
November 11, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Darwin Devolves author and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe sits down with host Rob Crowther to discuss Behe’s recent speaking trip to Brazil, and on where he sees the Darwinism/design debate heading in the next few years.