Michael J. BeheReseñas

Behe is an advocate of intelligent design. He goes out of his way to explain that intelligent design is not a synonym for creationism. He believes in evolutionary theory, just not by "Darwinian mechanisms" - that is, not by random mutation and natural selection. He believes the earth is billions of years old (there were a few references in the book to this that were left un-cited, which was annoying).

It's critical to keep in mind that the concept of purposeful design is logically entirely separate from the idea of common descent - the idea that all organisms living today are descended from organisms that lived in the distant past. Some religious groups are opposed in principle to the idea of common descent. I am not... I think the evidence supporting descent is strong, and I have no reason to doubt it... the design argument here is not that one higher [than family] category cannot descend from another through intermediates. Rather, the argument is that one higher category cannot descend from another by means of an unplanned process such as Darwin's mechanism. (p 157, emphasis original)

I learned a few things but, while Behe claimed to write this book so it would be accessible to as many people as possible, I am here to declare that it is too technical for many readers. I like science, biology in particular, and I had a hard time with all the scientific terms and such.

I also simply disagree with his beliefs. I believe in a literal six-day creation (by God), and a young earth. While much of the information in his book regarding DNA was really interesting, none of it could prove that the evolutionary theory - by any means - is true. Granted, he wasn't really arguing that in this book. So I think that he did just fine with showing that it's not possible for random mutation and natural selection to have played a part in creating the world, but the book still didn't hold enough truth in it for me to rate it higher.

I did like one more thing he said:

Gratuitous affirmations of a dominant theory can mesmerize the unwary. They lull people into assuming that objectively difficult problems don't really matter. That they've been solved already. Or will be solved soon. Or are unimportant. Or something. They actively distract readers from noticing an idea's shortcomings. "Of course," students are effectively prompted, "everyone knows what happened here - right? You'd be blind not to see it - right?" But the complacency isn't the fruit of data or experiments. It comes from the powerful social force of everyone in the group nodding back, "Of course!" (p 25)

These are my criticisms of Darwin’s Black Box:

1) It turns out that many of the systems the author uses as examples of irreducible complexity are not, in fact, irreducibly complex, and have been proven so by numerous scientists. This is the most prolific avenue of criticism against the book in the years since it was published.

2) The author assumes that the current function of a given complex system must also be the original function of that system in its preceding iterations. But that isn’t always true. For example: We know from the fossil record and the anatomy of other animals that our vocal chords didn’t originally evolve as a system for generating modulated sound. Their original purpose– and a function that they still fulfill – was to anchor and coordinate the work of the musculature of our necks, shoulders, and upper torso. Sound-generation was a secondary characteristic that came into being at some point as the system evolved that ended up superseding the original function. Simplify a complex eye, and it may not function as an eye anymore – but that doesn’t mean it might not function perfectly well as something else. Systems gain additional functionality as complexity increases. We can’t always discern with certainty what, of all a complex system’s current functions, was its original. Therefore, the entire premise of "irreducible complexity" as it's put forth in this book becomes meaningless. Simpler antecedent versions of systems don't have to possess the same function as their more complex descendents at all.

3) The author doesn’t do nearly enough to account for the synergistic effects of formerly discrete systems co-evolving and combining together into new systems. As the newly combined system evolves, it eventually reaches a level of such cohesion that we can no longer discern the original discrete systems that combined to create it. Such a system will appear irreducibly complex to us, even though it did, in fact, evolve from preceding systems.

4) The author’s entire understanding of evolution is premised on the belief that simple systems must precede complex systems in evolutionary processes. This is generally the way things go – but it’s not an inviolate rule. It’s not, in fact, a necessary requisite for evolution. Surprisingly complex systems can spontaneously generate (for that matter, the author doesn’t seem to acknowledge that spontaneous generation happens). Not all preceding systems are necessarily simpler, just as not all evolved systems are necessarily more complex. His argument loses significant leverage when we recognize that the process of evolution isn’t nearly as regular and predicable as he makes it out to be.

One of the biggest misunderstandings of Darwin’s theory is the role of random mutation in the process. It’s not possible to systematically observe random mutation, nor to test it through controlled scientific experimentation, and so we don’t really talk about it. But Darwin himself acknowledged random mutation as one of the main ways that characteristics come into being in a species. Irreducible complexity really only works as a criticism of evolution if we exist in a world where all factors can be known and accounted for. The world simply doesn't work that way.

As I read this book, I got tired of the same old attitude I see in too many of the arguments that people make against the Theory of Evolution – namely, the belief that the theory as a whole must be wrong simply because it doesn’t explain everything.

Darwin’s theory of evolution never claimed to explain everything. Darwin himself never shied away from pointing out that his theory needed more development, that it fails to explain some key issues. There have always been questions left unanswered by it – there’s absolutely nothing insightful about pointing that out. It’s legitimate and important to ask those unanswered questions, and to seek for answers to them, but the mere presence of those unanswered questions isn’t enough to disprove the whole theory.

If Darwin’s Black Box had simply raised some of those unanswered questions and explored them, I would consider it one of the most important popular science books written in the past few decades. But that’s not what the book turns out to be – in the end, the author falls into the intellectually lax pitfall of unsupported logic that allows him to leap from the statement, “There are some things that evolution doesn’t explain” to, “The Theory of Evolution fails!” You need a whole lot more than a few unanswered questions to support a conclusion that big.

If you believe in Intelligent Design, in any of its many forms, that’s fine. Argue for it on its own merits. You can’t claim to have proven it simply by pointing out that our current understanding of evolution leaves some questions unanswered.

The creation/evolution debate is one I find interesting, but not that interesting. I've said in the past that I'd like to read more on evolution, but the truth is, I haven't. And this book, well, I've heard about it for years, but it wasn't until I picked up a copy of it at a book sale that I actually got around to reading it. At one point I checked the copyright date and saw that it was first published in 1996. Oy! I am a master of procrastination! Anyway, I digress. In Darwin's Black Box, Professor Behe examines Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection in light of the findings of (then) current biochemistry. He offers a number of examples showing that biological systems are incredibly complex mechanisms and could not have developed piecemeal from random mutations. I found it an fascinating read. Oh, not his arguments about evolution. This book has been in print so long that I've heard most of them before in other media. What I really enjoyed was his examples--descriptions of some natural wonders that are happening all around us. It took me back to childhood days when I'd pore over science books from the library.
--J.

Great book, challenging evolution - but written by a secular scientist not just Biblical creationist.½

Interesting and had to be answered but by now discredited. He did evolution a favor though by making it stronger and we should appreciate him for that.

I think my review of this excellent and solidly researched book is most easily adduced by the complete opposite of the review written by miketroll in this collection. It is fascinating that a book which puts forward a hypothesis based on experiment (rather than Darwinian evolution which is not) can create so much posturing and bigotry amongst scientists and the faithful alike.
I am a scientist; I have always found any religion an indicator of personal inadequacy but I realise that scientists can also treat ideas as a matter of faith independent of the evidence for or against (cf global warming, global cooling, the Piltdown Man, phrenology, phlogiston and so on back to the dawn of thinking). Behe manages to make the astoundingly complex biochemical interactions which power the body at least accessible if not understandable. In the process he presents a solidly researched body of evidence which suggests that these molecules and their interactions could not have been the result of "gradual evolution" because it is not possible to show any intermediate steps which might have led to the function. Indeed, in many of his examples, any intermediate steps which could be imagined would have been counter evolutionary in that they would have selected against the target process.
And now back to miketroll. He says that the "true spirit of science is argument in search of truth". This is a common mistake made by the scientifically naive. Without even dipping into concepts regarding the philosophy of truth or the existential nature of reality, he and some other reviewers entirely miss the point. Science is about hypothesis - proposing a theory which matches observational data and can be tested by experiment and, most importantly, being prepared to modify or discard that theory if a better match comes along. Behe devotes a well reasoned book to the suggestion that Darwinian evolution may not be the (whole) answer and, in the process, puts forward some ideas about what might have happened. Just because these may not be very palatable doesn't mean that they are "cheap debating points" I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have

The argument for Intelligent Design based on the irreducible complexity of the cellular components of organisms. In other words, trial-and-error wouldn't work at the biochemical level of being, even though species evolution is perfectly plausible. Behe introduces the complexity needed to support his thesis while keeping the explanation simple enough for a well-educated layman to understand.
Although rebutted by evolutionists, I find his arguments and evidence worth consideration.
(See also Ridley's "Genome" for more insight into human biology.)
See also Stephen Meyer, "Darwin's Doubts" published 2019; David Gelernter's review in Clairmont, and Jerry Coyle's rebuttal on Quillette.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/giving-up-darwin/
https://quillette.com/2019/09/09/david-gelernter-is-wrong-about-ditching-darwin/

An able argument in favor of intelligent design. Although the subject matter is biochemistry (and I didn't do that well in that class), Behe makes a profound case in a very absorbing and readable fashion. The thesis is that living cells contain very complex, "irreducibly complex" chemical systems, that work in ways that do not seem to allow any reasonable pathway for a Darwin-style, step-by-step evolution. Behe beats that drum until the reader does not want to hear any more, but the reason is that he is trying to build an unassailable fortress of arguments against those who, he knows, will attack any hint of intelligent design talk in the hallowed halls of science.

I feel it is important to understand both sides of the argument. This side gets an A for effort. There's nothing wrong with the biochemistry here but what shocks me is the incredible leap taken to explain its origins. The problem here is a lack of understanding of evolutionary theory and a refusal to accept it for very unscientific reasons. In other words, a refusal to really look at both sides. Since this is a scientific argument, let's ignore for a moment the religious implications and just focus on the fact that the biggest claim made here is really that evolutionary biology has not yet found evidence of every intermediate biochemical structure and system leading up to the present form. Rather than ask why and continue the research, we dismiss the theory of evolution all together? That's ridiculous and I don't even really think that's what this book is saying but there is an eagerness to make that what this book is saying. This book ends up saying that evolution as a system exists but only after the complex building blocks were laid out by a designer (not even necessarily the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God). I do think this book needs to be read and given a chance if only to criticize the content for its lack of understanding of the idea it claims to disprove and its frustrating lack of curiosity at what explanations may arise with future research in the field of biochemistry.
Oh and if you found this to be a difficult read in any way, I wouldn't go quoting its arguments as fact without having properly understood them and for that matter, properly understanding what evolutionary theory is.

Plausible argumentation, and easy to read for a non-scientist. I would wish he would update the book as this is from the 90's.

This is a thought-provoking book; I urge everyone to read it! Nevertheless, after having just previously read David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution for Everyone", I found myself wondering: Has Behe missed some possible explanations for "larger steps" made in evolution? Do some complex-systems "self-organize" in ways that go beyond the molecular level in ways that we have not yet discovered?

I also found it interesting that while Behe is very critical of evolutionists supposed inability to presently explain large steps in evolution, Behe himself did not explain how his agent of "intelligent design" did either of the initial encoding of all future combinations of genetic permutations nor how an agent might have later effected large changes.

This questioning led me to do some googling of Behe and this book. I've discovered evidence that he did miss some discoveries that contradict some of the tenets of this book. However, I think this book is worth reading as a counterpoint to present ideas about evolution and that is what matters: Science is at its best when challenged. I am a fan of peer-review, even with its complications.

Behe gives some powerful arguments against evolution being able to account for all of life that we can see. He concentrates on the evolution of malaria and human malaria defenses to make his case. He maintains that given the rate of evolution of those two opposing forces, evolution would not be able to explain the complexity of life. He does not attribute things to God, but to an intelligent designer. My main problem with the book is that the math and biology are complex enough that I have to confess I cannot fully evaluate whether he is correct or not.

What a joy is was for me to be reading Appendix A and the explanations of various cellular functions and structures. Endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi bodies, chemical cascades - it has been so long since I even thought about them and it was like discovering old friends.

Behe does a wonderful job of handling his descriptions of cellular structures and activities. He goes into a lot (although not exhaustive) detail in order to impress upon the reader just how complex these things are. The explanations are helpfully set off by symbols, so that the reader can skim, if they are content to just take in that yes, these are VERY complicated. Behe's love for the topic shines through and when he is on these topics he writes with clarity and affable charm.

A raspberry to his publisher for the notes, however. As is far too commmon, if one wants to look up notes, the chapter is identified on the page only by name, but in the notes only by number. The reader has to keep flipping back to the beginning of the chapter for the number. Either include the number in the running title or the title in the notes!! How hard is that? Off the soap box.

I'm not a biochemist, so I will take Behe's word for it that the origin of these microstructures and biochemical processes is poorly understood. He goes to a great deal of trouble to establish this. He's right that it is a challenge to Darwinism - will they be able to include explanations in the current theory, will Darwinism be retained for multicellular animals but require an extension (like Einstein's extension of Newton), or will it be replaced by a new unified theory? I don't know. I am not convinced that Behe has proven his hypothesis though. I think that he should have taken a lesson from the Darwin/Dawkins discussion of the evolution of the eye. True, that explanation does not cover the biochemical and microbiological aspects, but it does answer the question on the level that it was posed. The anatomy of the eye was once considered to be irreducibly complex and clearly it is not. Whether or not one believes in Darwinism, it remains that eyes more primitive than ours work just fine for their owners. I think that it is early days to assume that no-one will ever be able to explain his "black box" without a designer.

It is not clear to me what Behe means to say about Darwinism. He starts off on the wrong foot with me in the preface by saying that "for over a century" most scientists have accepted evolution by natural selection, when in fact Darwin's ideas have stood up to extremely harsh scientific criticism, and around 1900 were pretty much considered to be dead. This is one of the things that gives me confidence in the theory.

Large sections of the book, especially Chapter 10 & 11 leave me rather baffled as to their point. I couldn't say by the end whether Behe opposes Darwinism or grants it limited acceptance. Behe takes strong exception to Richard Dickerson's somewhat lighthearted remarks on science, and I really cannot understand why. Perhaps Behe should explain his view of science.

I am quite puzzled as to what Behe means to say about Intelligent Design, he hems and haws. Would he consider both a personal god and experimenters from another planet to qualify equally as possible designers? In both cases, one closes the issue of the origin of life on earth only to open the even more problematic case of the origin of the designer. I'm willing to accept it as a hypothesis, although I freely admit I think it's unlikely. Behe is quite right when he says that it needs to be developed and researched rigorously if it is to be taken seriously, but I can't square that with his assertion that it is already proven. He fudges on the issue of examining the Designer(s) "under the microscope", claiming that we can't put our ancestors under the microscopes. Ah, but we do, both directly (examining fossils and bones) and indirectly (comparing biochemistry). He can insist all he likes that design is the only sensible solution, but that's not proof. Science has discarded lots of hypotheses that once seemed sensible. Proving that Darwinism doesn't work at this level does not, in and of itself, prove that Intelligent Design is correct. It needs to stand by its own positive evidence.

I have embarked on a program of reading books on the creation/evolution controversies; this is number 3. (I already read a lot on evolution, including all of Dawkins' books.) This is definitely superior to Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial.

Readers may be interested to know that Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God includes an interview with Behe. Kenneth R. Miller, a fellow biochemist, undertakes a very spirited criticism of Behe in his Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. I also recommend Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism by Robert T. Pennock, which contains some criticism of this book, and Mark Perakh's somewhat vituperous Unintelligent Design, especially as a guide to other sources, including websites, discussing Behe's work.

Though Behe does not approach the issue of evolution from a perspective of faith, he comes to the conclusion that evolution could not possibly have brought about such biochemical marvels as the bacterial flagellum and blood clotting. In Darwin's day, they thought the cell was practically a blob of goo. The more we learn, the more impossible it is for evolutionists to show how their hypothesis could have brought such intricate design about. Defections from the evolutionary camp, among secular scientists, are quite interesting to read into.½

This book should really be classified under fiction.

This promised to be an informed critique of Darwinist theory from the viewpoint of a trained biochemist. Behe goes straight for the jugular by claiming that Darwinian evolutionary theory is plain wrong; it fails to explain what is happening at the molecular level. Behe's analogy is an explanation of how a car works that doesn't even mention the engine. Realising this analogy was plain wrong, I set the book aside to read later, perhaps...

Later I rediscovered Behe as a recurrent target of censure in scientific journals for his specious argumentation in favour of Intelligent Design. OMG, Behe is a Fundie! Indeed, he devotes some 50 pages to Intelligent Design. Sorry, that's pseudo-science!

Behe is the scientific equivalent of David Irving, the academic Holocaust denier. Idiots may believe it, but he doesn't have the excuse of ignorance. He knows when his arguments are wrong, but uses them all the same. I really despise intelligent people who put the truth second. The true spirit of science is argument in search of truth. But Behe doesn't want an adult discussion, he justs wants to "win" by fair means or foul, scoring cheap debating points in favour of his preconceived notions.½

This excellent book uses the principle of "irreducible complexity" to show how evolution is not possible at the molecular biology level .

In 10th grade this was one of my book reports. Shows the bankruptcy of the current paradigm.

i believe anyone who considers themselves to have a scientific mind should have questions about evolution. this book has questions and proposes answers, but most of all it provokes thought about evolution and its possible limitations.

This book has ruffled not just a few feathers! It is worth a thorough reading for careful consideration.

Review from Publishers Weekly
Charles Darwin's theory of life's evolution through natural selection and random mutation fails to account for the origin of astonishingly complex biomolecular systems, argues Behe, associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University. In this spirited, witty critique of neo-Darwinian thinking, he focuses on five phenomena: blood clotting; cilia, oar-like bundles of fibers; the human immune system; transport of materials within the cell; and the synthesis of nucleotides, building blocks of DNA. In each case, he finds systems that are irreducibly complex?no gradual, step-by-step, Darwinian route led to their creation. As an alternative explanation, Behe infers that complex biochemical systems (i.e., life) were designed by an intelligent agent, whether God, extraterrestrials or a universal force. He notes that Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's double-helix structure, proposed that life began when aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed Earth. Perhaps Behe's plea for incorporating a "theory of intelligent design" into mainstream biology will spark interest. Illustrated. Translation and U.K. rights: Simon & Schuster.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.