Michael Behe

After reviewing the effects of mutations upon Functional Coding ElemenTs (FCTs), Michael Behe’s recent review article in Quarterly Review of Biology, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” offers some conclusions. In particular, as the title suggests, Behe introduces a rule of thumb he calls the “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: “Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.” In essence, what Behe means is that mutations that cause loss-of-FCT are going to be far more likely and thus far more common than those which gain a functional coding element. In fact, he writes: “the rate of appearance of an adaptive mutation that would arise from the diminishment Read More ›

In my prior post, I noted that John Wise’s online response to Discovery Institute used invented quotes from Michael Behe’s Dover testimony. In one case, this was understandable since Wise was simply copying a misquote from Judge Jones (who copied it from the ACLU). But there’s another invented misquote from Behe’s Dover testimony whose origin is more puzzling. Wise stated: During the Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education trial, Prof. Michael Behe – a leading proponent of Intelligent Design, stated under oath that “under the broad definition of science that ID proponents prefer, astrology also qualifies as science”. I tried finding the words attributed to Behe in the Dover trial transcript, but could not. The quote Wise attributed to Behe Read More ›

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7 (This Article): Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Brown University biologist Ken Miller often attacks ID proponent Michael Behe, and in doing Read More ›

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6 (This Article): Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7: Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Another area where Ken Miller misrepresents irreducible complexity is the blood clotting cascade. With Read More ›

More than a thousand people attended the second day of the Legacy of Darwin ID Conference this weekend in Castle Rock, Colorado. Saturday morning started off with a strong talk by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, who synthesized the main points of his books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution. Behe, in his usual winsome and accessible style, drove home just how much empirical evidence has accumulated in recent years demonstrating the sharp limits to the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random mutations.

During the question period that followed, two people offered long-winded “questions” to Behe that seemed to come straight from the talking points of the National Center for Science Education.

Updated photo from Friday night: Castle Rock, Colorado — Despite the first major snowstorm of the season, and unrelenting efforts by malicious Darwinists to prevent people from registering, a huge crowd of around 1,000 people showed up Friday night to hear Dr. Stephen Meyer present the DNA evidence for intelligent design based on his new book Signature in the Cell. Meyer, Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and myself are in Colorado to speak at the Legacy of Darwin ID Conference sponsored by Shepherd Project Ministries. On Saturday, Michael Behe will present the evidence against modern Darwinism from his books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution; David Berlinski will talk about The Devil’s Delusion and The Deniable Darwin; and I Read More ›

Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, is being touted as a scathing rebuttal to intelligent design (ID), yet an actual response to mainstream ID thinking can hardly be found in the book. Though the book makes passing mention of “irreducible complexity” in a couple places, there are zero mentions of leading ID proponents like Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, or any other well-known ID proponent. Instead, Dawkins refers extensively to “creationists,” repeatedly attacking young earth creationism, while also making heavy use of fallacious (and dubious) “poor design” examples that rebut no argument made by a leading advocate of design since perhaps the 19th century. It seems that Dawkins didn’t have the stomach Read More ›