Latest | Page 6

Dear Readers, The latest issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE) carries a tediously disdainful review (1) of The Edge of Evolution which revisits the blunders of previous reviews while adding new ones. This is the first of a three part series concerning the review. (References will be attached to the third part.) Like almost all reviews by Darwinists, this one begins with a genuflection to the Dover trial, where a former-head-of-the-Pennsylvania-Liquor-Control-Boa rd-appointed-judge, showing no evidence he actually understood the academic arguments of either side, copied almost word for word the document handed to him at the end of the trial by the lawyers for the complainant. This was his “decision.” For signing off on a document castigating intelligent design the apparently Read More ›

(This is the third of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) I think the reason for Miller’s deep disdain of a relatively minor difference in our positions on evolution is not scientific. Rather, it’s theological. It’s called the problem of evil. Briefly stated, if God is responsible for designing not only the lovely parts of biology, but also the dangerous and nasty parts as well, then we have a theological problem on our hands. What kind of a God designs not only pretty flowers, but deadly malaria, too? Is God actually malicious? On the other hand, if God simply designed a process like Darwinism that He knew would lead to life, then, the thinking goes, He Read More ›

(This is the second of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) Let me emphasize the last point of my previous post: Miller and I are only quibbling over the extent of design in the universe. Thefact of design, the principle of design, we agree on. Now, let’s look a little closer at where Ken Miller draws the limits of design (the edge of evolution, one might say). Although they are clearly necessary, is there reason to suppose that the bare laws and constants of the universe — even if properly tuned — are sufficient to assure life occurs in our universe, as Miller supposes? The answer is no — many other features than just the bare laws of the universe have to be gotten Read More ›

(This is the first of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller has penned a second review of The Edge of Evolution, this one for the Catholic magazine Commonweal (subscription required). In the new review Miller alludes to some scientific points from his first review inNature. (I refer readers to my previous rejoinder to that on this blog.) But much of the second review turns on the theological implications of the book. In the new review Miller seems truly astounded that I argue that common descent is very strongly supported: Those hoping that Behe would argue for a biblical version of human origins will be shocked. Indeed, Behe tells his readers that there must be “no Read More ›

The current edition of The New Criterion carries a lengthy reviewof The Edge of Evolution (subscription required) by the biochemist Paul Gross. Unfortunately, although he is commendably civil and kindly praises my writing and speaking abilities, Gross offers little of actual substance other than to declare the book’s arguments wrong. He quotes Ken Miller saying that the malaria calculations are wrong, and alludes to Sean Carroll’s declaration that, why, there is a vast number of (unspecified) papers showing how protein binding sites can evolve. For rejoinders to those claims, I refer readers to my comments on this blog concerning Carroll’s and Miller’s reviews.

Science has published a letter by myself responding to Sean Carroll’s earlier review of The Edge of Evolution. In my letter I note that: In his unfavorable review of my book, The Edge of Evolution, Sean Carroll writes that “Behe’s chief error is minimizing the power of natural selection to act cumulatively,” and implies that I fail to discuss “pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites … –a notable omission given Behe’s extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance. But, I demurred, I did write about pyrimethamine. Carroll admitted in Science right after my published letter that, well, yes, I did discuss pyrimethamine resistance, but his real concern was that I didn’t give it the spin he wanted: Behe did indeed discuss pyrimethamine resistance on pages 75 and 76 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. First, that while I profess to believe in both common descent and intelligent design, he sees an internal contradiction — there cannot be, he thinks, common descent if there is intelligent design, and vice versa. The second point is that he thinks I contradict what I wrote in Darwin’s Black Box concerning the status of pseudogenes as evidence of common descent. I’ll 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 fails to engage that issue. The critical passage from Wong et al is the first paragraph: Proponents of the intelligent design (ID) explanation for how organisms developed claim that the bacterial flagellum (BF) is irreducibly complex. They argue that this structure is so complicated that it could not have emerged through random selection but had to be designed by an Read More ›

Dear Readers, This is the second in a series of responses I’m posting this week, this one regardingthe 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 increased mutation rate. Although she calls herself a “pre-grad student,” the tone of the post is decidedly junior high, the tone of someone who is trying hard to compete with all the other Mean Girls on that unpleasant website. I’ll pass over all that and try to stick to the substance. Her post mainly concerns a small protein coded for 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 design. The disregard for critical distinctions blurs the issues badly. Over the next few days I will briefly respond to four separate stories ************************ 1) A few months ago an interesting paper in Science, “Adaptive mutations in bacteria: high rate and small effects”, by the group of Isabel Gordo demonstrated that beneficial mutations in E. coli were more frequent than had been thought. In fact, Read More ›