Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe’s book The Edge of Evolution (2007) has sparked spirited debate about the limits of Darwinian mechanisms to produce significant biological change. Read about the continuing debate and Behe’s responses to it in the articles below.
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An interesting paper appeared recently in an issue of the journal Genetics, “Waiting for Two Mutations: With Applications to Regulatory Sequence Evolution and the Limits of Darwinian Evolution” (Durrett, R & Schmidt, D. 2008. Genetics 180: 1501-1509). As the title implies, it concerns the time one would have to wait for Darwinian processes to produce some helpful biological feature (here, Read More ›
The Dutch biologist Gert Korthof maintains a website devoted to in-depth reviews of many books on evolution. Aside from often-insightful remarks, a delightful feature of his site is that he can write with great strength of feeling and yet not engage in insults or ad hominem remarks. He has posted an extensive review of The Edge of Evolution. He makes two main points. Read More ›
Dear Readers, This is the third in a series of responses I’m posting this week. In “Evolution of the Bacterial Flagellum” (Microbe Magazine, July 2007), Wong et al seek to counter arguments of intelligent design proponents such as myself that the flagellum did not evolve by random mutation and natural selection. Unfortunately, their otherwise-fine review misunderstands design reasoning and so Read More ›
Dear Readers, This is the second in a series of responses I’m posting this week, this one regarding the Darwinian website The Panda’s Thumb, where a woman named Abbie Smith questioned whether results from HIV research actually square with the claims I made that little fundamental change has occurred in the virus, even though it attains enormous populations sizes and has a much Read More ›
Dear Readers, As I wrote in The Edge of Evolution, Darwinism is a multifaceted theory, and to properly evaluate the theory one has to be very careful not to confuse its different aspects. Unfortunately, stories in the news and on the internet regularly confuse the facets of Darwinism, ignore distinctions made in The Edge of Evolution, or misstate the arguments of intelligent Read More ›
Dear Readers, As I wrote in The Edge of Evolution, Darwinism is a multifaceted theory, and to properly evaluate the theory one has to be very careful not to confuse its different aspects. Common descent, natural selection, and random mutation are separate concepts; the first two are well supported, but the power of random mutation is not. I argued that evolution Read More ›
Dear Readers, Here I respond briefly to Richard Dawkins’ review of The Edge of Evolution in the New York Times. I must admit I was surprised that he agreed to do it. In the past Dawkins has said that on principle he would not interact with proponents of intelligent design, because that would give us publicity. I guess when the New York Times offers writing Read More ›
Yesterday, in the first part of my response to Kenneth Miller’s review, in which I addressed his substantive points, I ended by showing that a reference he cited did not contain the evidence he claimed it did. In this final part, I more closely examine Miller’s tendentious style of argumentation. Speaking of throwing around irrelevant references, Miller writes: Telling his readers that Read More ›
Dear Readers, Here I respond to the unfavorable review of The Edge of Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller in Nature. Like Sean Carroll, whose review in Science I discussed earlier, he employs much bluster. But Miller goes well beyond simple bluster. I overlooked Carroll’s rhetoric and dealt only with his substantial arguments. This time I’ll do things differently. Today I’ll respond to Miller’s substantive points. Read More ›