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Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe

Stephen Andrew's review

Aug 01, 08

5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Stephen by: found it myself

Recommended for: anyone interested

Read in May, 2005

I have noticed that all the reviews of this book that are negative or refer to it as well debunked and (every scientist already knows this is crap). Not one can give a specific simple example of how behe can be challenged. simply stated they have no such answer. They can't. Because Behe is right. no matter whether you believe in creationism or design or evolution or what ever your stance, there simply is no well articulated answer to his argument. when someone points one out. not with some footnote, but a real explanation for how complexity of this order of magnitude can arise by darwinian mechanisms then ,...hooray but i havent seen it anywhere in any review or any analysis by some great scientist such as dawkins, wilson, dennet or any other. Because they simply dont have a rebuttal that makes sense in the darwinian mechanism. maybe there is some other mechanism that can be at work. I dont claim to be a creationist but scientists ought to look at their shortcomings with some guts, instead of just poo pooing what they've read. come on give us a real response that can really challenge what Behe has come up with. be brave. where are you???

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message 1: by Brian (new) - rated it 3 stars

Dec 02, 2008 02:53PM

You're right. Behe IS right, that when you look at certain biochemical processes, some things don't make sense. There are some things we don't know. There are some glaring things that science has not yet figured out. BUT, where Behe makes his mistake is when he jumps from "we don't know how this happens" to "it MUST BE Design." Sorry, that's not how science works. If we threw up our hands every time we didn't have an answer to something and said, "Oop, it must be God," we'd never figure ANYTHING out.

As I pointed out in my own review of this book, Behe does make some interesting points about certain gaps in the natural selection theory. If he had left it at that, I could have gone with him. It's when he says, "well we don't know what it is, but it LOOKS like this so it must be that," that he lost me.

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Stephen Andrew's Reviews > Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

Rate this book

1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe

Stephen Andrew's review

Aug 01, 08

5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Stephen by: found it myself

Recommended for: anyone interested

Read in May, 2005

I have noticed that all the reviews of this book that are negative or refer to it as well debunked and (every scientist already knows this is crap). Not one can give a specific simple example of how behe can be challenged. simply stated they have no such answer. They can't. Because Behe is right. no matter whether you believe in creationism or design or evolution or what ever your stance, there simply is no well articulated answer to his argument. when someone points one out. not with some footnote, but a real explanation for how complexity of this order of magnitude can arise by darwinian mechanisms then ,...hooray but i havent seen it anywhere in any review or any analysis by some great scientist such as dawkins, wilson, dennet or any other. Because they simply dont have a rebuttal that makes sense in the darwinian mechanism. maybe there is some other mechanism that can be at work. I dont claim to be a creationist but scientists ought to look at their shortcomings with some guts, instead of just poo pooing what they've read. come on give us a real response that can really challenge what Behe has come up with. be brave. where are you???

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Stephen Andrew's Reviews > Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

message 2: by Aldrea (new)

Dec 19, 2008 07:04AM

I found your review interesting. I haven't read this book yet, but I am curious what he has to say. As a molecular biologist, I have to state that simply because scientists have not yet been able to explain something yet, does not mean that it is unexplainable. Perhaps we have not yet progressed to a level of being able to explain certain things but will in the future. 20 years ago my particular specialty within my field did not even exist. Now we have the human genome mapped. Jumping right into - we can't explain it, so it must be God - is a cop out and not proof or evidence of the existence of a god or creator.
Note that I personally do believe in a God.
~Aldrea

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message 3: by Nullifidian (new)

Oct 25, 2011 02:44PM

There is a very simple challenge to what Behe has come up with: it's a fallacy.

Consider the logic of claiming that designed objects exhibit irreducible complexity, and we see irreducible complexity in biological organisms, therefore biological organisms are designed. It's like claiming that rain makes things wet, therefore when we see something that's wet we know it was rained on. Given the fallacy at the heart of Behe's logic, it doesn't matter how many examples of "IC systems" he comes up with, because they can never warrant the conclusion of design.

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message 4: by Adam (new) - added it

Jan 19, 2012 06:25PM

Stephen - I would recommend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller for a direct answer to the questions Behe poses. They have not gone unanswered.

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The following link is to a blog with a fair amount of ideological congruency with my own, but has much more density of information and more visually useful in its impact.

http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com/

All cartigraphers be warned. Decarte's demon may have been real

THE OPERATIVE PARAMETERS:  

1.  THE NORMALCY BIAS.
   
2.  LOST HISTORICAL EPOCHS AND HISTORICAL INACCURACY.

3.  CHANGE TOO RAPID FOR USEFUL ASSIMILATION BY HUMAN BEINGS.

4.  DISTRACTION,  SUGGESTIBILITY, CONSUMERISM.

5.  THE PREFABRICATED WORLD. 

6.  CAN ANY OF THE ABOVE BE ALTERED?  

My Coma

In May of 2007 I created this blog off the fly.  All I did was give it a name.  "Amnesiac America". Seven years later, I happened to be looking at the (usually dismal) stats on my blogs. It was then that I noticed the amazing fact that this blog ( the only one where I never wrote a single post ) had more page views by far than all my others combined many times over. I have a hypothesis as to why this happened. Nevertheless, I wondered what kind of stats might be attained if there were actual posts with content congruent with the title. This is the start of that trial.

No amnesia is identical.  It usually appears as a constellation of broad areas of no memory together with some idiosyncratic deficits.  This syndrome is unique in each case.  I use here the medical analogy; each person presenting a syndrome unique to the circumstances under which it occurred.  It's cause is physical, psychological, or both.  An analogy of course is always limited.  I probably will be unable to relate any physical parallel.  No literary device, that I know of, can be useful here, and if there were, I believe it would distract rather than clarify.  Also, there remains the question of refering to the whole of America or to a typical American, a distinction would appear to serve no purpose.  I would point out, however, that Americans are at this point in history  more similar as a group than ever before.  Some may disagree with this of course, yet this perspective facilitates my argument without removing any important individual character that we may possess.  Individuality may be an American ideal we cherish, but I believe we have forgotten its function, moreover, whether we know it or not it has become more a liability than a virtue.