Responses to Criticisms of The Edge of Evolution
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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The Cell Declares His Handiwork
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations
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 ›
Korthof and Pseudogenes: Part 4
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 ›
Microbe Magazine and the Bacterial Flagellum: Part 3
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 ›
Science, E. coli, and the Edge of Evolution: Part 2
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 ›
Science, E. coli, and the Edge of Evolution
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 ›
Beyond the Edge of Evolution: The New York Times Story
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 ›
Response to Richard Dawkins
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 ›