You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
7 reviews for:
Darwin Devolves : The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution
Michael J. Behe
3.07 AVERAGE
7 reviews for:
Darwin Devolves : The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution
Michael J. Behe
3.07 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
I gotta be pretty close to the target audience for this book. I share Behe's profound dissatisfaction with the vague and convenient claims about the abilities of standard evolutionary mechanisms to overcome obstacles and create extraordinarily complex and strikingly teleological wonders. I share Behe's habitance in the spectrum between extremes, persuaded by compelling evidence for deep time and yet quite suspecting that God must have had something to do with it. So I wondered what "new" things he might have to say in his third book. I was quite intrigued by Behe's scientific descriptions of genetic mutations that benefit organisms in changed environments by breaking things. I was less impressed by his somewhat hasty conclusions that this is the only viable evolutionary mechanism in town. And I remain as baffled as ever about what exactly Behe believes actually happened instead.
In the last decade or two, genome sequencing has exploded in availability and affordability. We are now learning about the molecular details behind biological differences at an exponential rate. Behe devotes a lot of time to a particularly fascinating and recurring pattern where mutations that break things can actually be beneficial, and thus selected, if the organism's environment has changed such that it can actually survive better or reproduce faster without that broken function. Darwin's famous finches apparently evolved shorter beaks to eat different things by breaking genes involved in beak growth. Polar bears got white by breaking the genes for coloration. And on and on. Behe argues that we should expect random mutations that cause such beneficial destructions to be far more common than random mutations that build new stuff, simply because any random mutation on an existing protein is far more likely to do the former than the latter. These variations may help species diverge a bit and adapt a bit to changing conditions, but like a generalist "stick" that molds into specific uses as a "hammer" or a "fishing rod," these broken genes lock species into specialized corners they can't back out of by further random mutation. I found the genetic examples interesting, and the principle is one I will keep in mind - for example, when reading claims about the repeated loss of flight in birds settling on islands with open niches. But is that really all evolution can do on its own?
After arguing for the inadequacy of random mutation and natural selection to explain life's complexity, Behe describes a variety of "alternative" mechanisms that have been put forward in recent years by various evolutionary defenders. He uses their very existence as supplementary evidence for his own claims while dismissing them as equally inadequate. Behe is perhaps least dismissive of James Shapiro's "natural engineering" tools, but argues that even if such tools could create new functions, that still doesn't explain where the tools came from in the first place, and he's not impressed by the evidential lack of such tool use in, say, the famous long-running E. coli experiment. To Behe, purposeful complex functions can only come from a mind, and taking the finches and a couple other examples as illustrative, he draws a somewhat arbitrary line at the level of biological "family" for what evolutionary mechanisms can change.
But Behe doesn't offer anything more specific than that, and therein lies my greatest disappointment with the book. Mind is not a mechanism. If anything, it's a category for grouping mechanisms. And twenty years and three books later, he still hasn't proposed any, really. I understand exactly the model proposed by the young-earth creationists, as well as the godless Darwinists. But what is Behe's model for life having common ancestry but not going about it "randomly"? Does he imagine God as some kind of scienctist-gardener, letting creatures adapt randomly in minor ways but every million years or so bringing creatures into his cosmic lab to add some fresh genes and spark some new biological families or orders? Could the angels be involved? Or does the cosmic mind just sort of disseminate quantum effects on dividing cells in some woo-woo way to tilt base pairs in just the right way at just the right time? I do not ask these things in jest. I genuinely want to know what Behe thinks happened, or even just one possibility of what might have happened, on a practical and specific level. Especially if he's going to dismiss "alternative" natural explanations for not being practical or specific enough. Is that too much to ask?
Unfortunately, Behe seems to think dismissing everyone else and saying "therefore, mind" is good enough. But I don't find that any more satisfying than his opponents, and I'm not sure he's thinking clearly in his rush to get to his conclusions. For example, if Shapiro's tools can create new functions, could a mind create those original tools, as Perry Marshall seems to believe, and let life use them to evolve new things at higher levels than mere random mutation? Some of Behe's metaphors are also a bit counterproductive, conflating the building of complex things with their design. Centuries past, you used to be able to argue that complex things must have been built by humans, and not unintelligent or undirected processes; but now we have factories that can churn out widgets without human labor, and we know that our own cells are constantly dividing and building incredibly complex machinery with nothing more than the right starting conditions, the right energy inputs, and the laws of physics. Now those factories themselves were still designed by intelligent minds, and so perhaps the cells were too, but you're muddying the waters when you argue by analogy that it's impossible "to explain how unintelligent processes could make a building out of bricks and wood and pipes and wiring". Even Behe's conflation of mind and intelligence in the final section could use a bit of clarity to distinguish between animal intelligence and our own, or now the existence of artificial "intelligence" that can indeed arrange things in purposeful orders without possessing any sort of "mind".
So I learned some interesting things, but I still don't understand how Behe thinks we all got here. Maybe one day he'll explain it all in book number four...
In the last decade or two, genome sequencing has exploded in availability and affordability. We are now learning about the molecular details behind biological differences at an exponential rate. Behe devotes a lot of time to a particularly fascinating and recurring pattern where mutations that break things can actually be beneficial, and thus selected, if the organism's environment has changed such that it can actually survive better or reproduce faster without that broken function. Darwin's famous finches apparently evolved shorter beaks to eat different things by breaking genes involved in beak growth. Polar bears got white by breaking the genes for coloration. And on and on. Behe argues that we should expect random mutations that cause such beneficial destructions to be far more common than random mutations that build new stuff, simply because any random mutation on an existing protein is far more likely to do the former than the latter. These variations may help species diverge a bit and adapt a bit to changing conditions, but like a generalist "stick" that molds into specific uses as a "hammer" or a "fishing rod," these broken genes lock species into specialized corners they can't back out of by further random mutation. I found the genetic examples interesting, and the principle is one I will keep in mind - for example, when reading claims about the repeated loss of flight in birds settling on islands with open niches. But is that really all evolution can do on its own?
After arguing for the inadequacy of random mutation and natural selection to explain life's complexity, Behe describes a variety of "alternative" mechanisms that have been put forward in recent years by various evolutionary defenders. He uses their very existence as supplementary evidence for his own claims while dismissing them as equally inadequate. Behe is perhaps least dismissive of James Shapiro's "natural engineering" tools, but argues that even if such tools could create new functions, that still doesn't explain where the tools came from in the first place, and he's not impressed by the evidential lack of such tool use in, say, the famous long-running E. coli experiment. To Behe, purposeful complex functions can only come from a mind, and taking the finches and a couple other examples as illustrative, he draws a somewhat arbitrary line at the level of biological "family" for what evolutionary mechanisms can change.
But Behe doesn't offer anything more specific than that, and therein lies my greatest disappointment with the book. Mind is not a mechanism. If anything, it's a category for grouping mechanisms. And twenty years and three books later, he still hasn't proposed any, really. I understand exactly the model proposed by the young-earth creationists, as well as the godless Darwinists. But what is Behe's model for life having common ancestry but not going about it "randomly"? Does he imagine God as some kind of scienctist-gardener, letting creatures adapt randomly in minor ways but every million years or so bringing creatures into his cosmic lab to add some fresh genes and spark some new biological families or orders? Could the angels be involved? Or does the cosmic mind just sort of disseminate quantum effects on dividing cells in some woo-woo way to tilt base pairs in just the right way at just the right time? I do not ask these things in jest. I genuinely want to know what Behe thinks happened, or even just one possibility of what might have happened, on a practical and specific level. Especially if he's going to dismiss "alternative" natural explanations for not being practical or specific enough. Is that too much to ask?
Unfortunately, Behe seems to think dismissing everyone else and saying "therefore, mind" is good enough. But I don't find that any more satisfying than his opponents, and I'm not sure he's thinking clearly in his rush to get to his conclusions. For example, if Shapiro's tools can create new functions, could a mind create those original tools, as Perry Marshall seems to believe, and let life use them to evolve new things at higher levels than mere random mutation? Some of Behe's metaphors are also a bit counterproductive, conflating the building of complex things with their design. Centuries past, you used to be able to argue that complex things must have been built by humans, and not unintelligent or undirected processes; but now we have factories that can churn out widgets without human labor, and we know that our own cells are constantly dividing and building incredibly complex machinery with nothing more than the right starting conditions, the right energy inputs, and the laws of physics. Now those factories themselves were still designed by intelligent minds, and so perhaps the cells were too, but you're muddying the waters when you argue by analogy that it's impossible "to explain how unintelligent processes could make a building out of bricks and wood and pipes and wiring". Even Behe's conflation of mind and intelligence in the final section could use a bit of clarity to distinguish between animal intelligence and our own, or now the existence of artificial "intelligence" that can indeed arrange things in purposeful orders without possessing any sort of "mind".
So I learned some interesting things, but I still don't understand how Behe thinks we all got here. Maybe one day he'll explain it all in book number four...
The title is a little bit of a misnomer. DNA science challenges evolution as we understood it from Darwin. As it turns out, evolution is not about survival of the species but survival of the individual gene. Further, since the gene is not readily concerned about its host, the host could experience detrimental effects of the gene attempt to perpetuate itself.
As a book refuting darwinism and naturalism, this does swell. But like every other Intelligent design book, the fire power is always on those two things as a worldview and they never look at the science itself and the data that has been acquired. So I was hoping for that in this book based on the subtitle, but per usual it's just about Darwin himself and darwinism as a whole. Nevermind both sides of the debate have disregarded the majority of what Darwin thought and believed, seeing as his understanding was sophomoric due to his time and place in history. Attacking those rudimentary beliefs really doesn't get the engines started for the discussion. Maybe one day we'll see a book such as this that simply tries to refute the past 20 years of scientific findings concerning evolutionarily theory.
informative
medium-paced
Remember that time the supporters of Intelligent Design were found in contempt of court because they shredded boxes of documents which the court ordered they present?
What's surprising is dribble like this still gets published. Read it if you want to learn how moronic creationism is.
What's surprising is dribble like this still gets published. Read it if you want to learn how moronic creationism is.
Sell Me A Bridge!
Although it pretends to be something else, this is a book about metaphysics - our fundamental presumptions about the way the world is. Unfortunately it isn’t a very good one. The Ancient Greek philosophers started the genre when they made the distinction between cause and purpose. Everything has a prior cause but for some things that cause is an intention, which is, they thought, it’s own cause.
Eventually the opposing ideas cause/effect and purpose ripened into what we now call mechanism and teleology. And we’re still trying to work out the relationship between them. Behe’s book continues the battle between cause and purpose as the way the world ‘really’ is and how the process of evolution takes place as a consequence.
Behe has chosen to opt for a teleological view of the world. This hasn’t been popular among philosophers (or evolutionary scientists) for the last century or so. Arguably, the last well-known thinkers to adopt a teleological approach to evolution include two Frenchmen, Henri Bergson (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1927) and Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit palaeontologist).
Both these men thought that the universe was pursuing a goal rather than following the strictly random progression of cause and effect. Bergson identified this purposefulness with the élan vital or creative impulse of human beings as the source of spontaneous innovation. Teilhard suggested that the entire cosmos was headed toward not a grim heat death but what he called the Omega Point, essentially a reuniting of all things, or, less euphemistically: God.
The teleological pot never quite stopped simmering for the remainder of the 20th century - it was kept barely going by, of all things, American Pragmatism, a philosophy which is implicitly teleological. But the world at large became dominated by the physical mechanics of evolution sparked by the discovery of DNA.
DNA, it was presumed, was the missing mechanical link in Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was the molecular locus at which things happened and through which all life from bacteria to human beings was generated. And DNA was the substance whose random mutations could account for the mechanical progression from one form of life to another, and from species to species within those forms.
But, according to Behe, scientific results aren’t turning out as expected. While he recognises that DNA is “an elaborate molecular code expressed through the intricate actions of hugely complicated molecular machines,” he doesn’t buy the implication that the process of evolution is ultimately without some more general purpose. His evidence for this conclusion is precisely that provided by other theoreticians as evidence for the opposition, essentially junk DNA.
In Behe’s view, evolved life forms, during the process of progressively adapting to their environment actually devolve. That is to say, their genes are degraded from those of their ancestors as they sacrifice long term development for short term gain. Human beings in fact have mostly bits and pieces of now inoperative DNA in their chromosomes, suggesting some really massive ‘fall’ from a previous superior state. Darwinian evolution is wasteful and its destructive!
For someone committed to purposeful cosmic development this waste and destruction is intolerable. Darwin must be wrong. His theory, because it is about destruction, cannot account, Behe says, for that first positive productive spark of life, that first molecular occurrence of DNA. We must look at the bigger picture to understand what’s happening here. And that bigger picture means recognising that there is a design that we haven’t yet grasped, a quite literal Deus ex machina.
Forget the origins of the Big Bang, it’s that first molecule which must have been inserted into the soup of creation which is the core of the problem. And, of course, if there is such an insertion, there must be a design; and if there is a design, there must be a designer. And the traditional name for this designer is God. And thanks to theologians like Thomas Aquinas, it is clear that the designer-God that best fits the needs of the universe and its orderly development is that described by Christianity.
As usual, a metaphysical choice apparently has found its own confirmation. If purpose is presumed then purpose will be found. But the flaw in Behe’s argument is not in his metaphysics but in what might be called his post-metaphysical analysis. This analysis is largely cultural and has much more to do with Behe’s Roman Catholic background than either his metaphysics or science.
I don’t begrudge Behe’s metaphysical stance. On the contrary, to the extent that his metaphysics conforms to that of Bergson, Teilhard, and many of the American Pragmatists, I am right there with him. And for the sake of argument, I’m even willing to accept his claims about intelligent design. Who am I after all to contradict Aquinas. But at that point we part company.
Christian thinking did not spawn the idea of intelligent design. Before Christianity, the Gnostics of Persia and their forebears had already thought through the issue of reconciling a God of creation with the apparent waste and destruction that is apparent, not just in molecular DNA but in a dog eat dog world of aggression, violence, injustice and death.
The God of gnosticism is neither the rather distant Ancient of Days of Judaism nor the supposedly benign and co-suffering triune God of followers of Jesus. The Gnostic God is evil. The purpose this God had in mind is precisely what we can observe and experience around us - a world of unrelieved suffering, overwhelming desire to escape through myth, universal grasping for power, and a general disappointment with the way things have turned out.
Gnosticism invaded Christian thought at an early stage and pops its head up periodically in sectarian enthusiasms - strict Calvinism, Jansenism, and some Anabaptist cults for example. But in Roman Catholicism, gnosticism is formally a heresy. According to doctrine, creation is good, as is the God who/which established its existence.
So it is obvious that what Behe is pushing is not science, not even metaphysics, but religion - his religion against what he believes are heretics. He wants us to believe that there is not just intention behind the cosmos but good intention. He believes this as an article of Faith and wants to rest of us to accept it as a methodological principle.
As they say in New York City: “Sell me a bridge!”
Although it pretends to be something else, this is a book about metaphysics - our fundamental presumptions about the way the world is. Unfortunately it isn’t a very good one. The Ancient Greek philosophers started the genre when they made the distinction between cause and purpose. Everything has a prior cause but for some things that cause is an intention, which is, they thought, it’s own cause.
Eventually the opposing ideas cause/effect and purpose ripened into what we now call mechanism and teleology. And we’re still trying to work out the relationship between them. Behe’s book continues the battle between cause and purpose as the way the world ‘really’ is and how the process of evolution takes place as a consequence.
Behe has chosen to opt for a teleological view of the world. This hasn’t been popular among philosophers (or evolutionary scientists) for the last century or so. Arguably, the last well-known thinkers to adopt a teleological approach to evolution include two Frenchmen, Henri Bergson (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1927) and Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit palaeontologist).
Both these men thought that the universe was pursuing a goal rather than following the strictly random progression of cause and effect. Bergson identified this purposefulness with the élan vital or creative impulse of human beings as the source of spontaneous innovation. Teilhard suggested that the entire cosmos was headed toward not a grim heat death but what he called the Omega Point, essentially a reuniting of all things, or, less euphemistically: God.
The teleological pot never quite stopped simmering for the remainder of the 20th century - it was kept barely going by, of all things, American Pragmatism, a philosophy which is implicitly teleological. But the world at large became dominated by the physical mechanics of evolution sparked by the discovery of DNA.
DNA, it was presumed, was the missing mechanical link in Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was the molecular locus at which things happened and through which all life from bacteria to human beings was generated. And DNA was the substance whose random mutations could account for the mechanical progression from one form of life to another, and from species to species within those forms.
But, according to Behe, scientific results aren’t turning out as expected. While he recognises that DNA is “an elaborate molecular code expressed through the intricate actions of hugely complicated molecular machines,” he doesn’t buy the implication that the process of evolution is ultimately without some more general purpose. His evidence for this conclusion is precisely that provided by other theoreticians as evidence for the opposition, essentially junk DNA.
In Behe’s view, evolved life forms, during the process of progressively adapting to their environment actually devolve. That is to say, their genes are degraded from those of their ancestors as they sacrifice long term development for short term gain. Human beings in fact have mostly bits and pieces of now inoperative DNA in their chromosomes, suggesting some really massive ‘fall’ from a previous superior state. Darwinian evolution is wasteful and its destructive!
For someone committed to purposeful cosmic development this waste and destruction is intolerable. Darwin must be wrong. His theory, because it is about destruction, cannot account, Behe says, for that first positive productive spark of life, that first molecular occurrence of DNA. We must look at the bigger picture to understand what’s happening here. And that bigger picture means recognising that there is a design that we haven’t yet grasped, a quite literal Deus ex machina.
Forget the origins of the Big Bang, it’s that first molecule which must have been inserted into the soup of creation which is the core of the problem. And, of course, if there is such an insertion, there must be a design; and if there is a design, there must be a designer. And the traditional name for this designer is God. And thanks to theologians like Thomas Aquinas, it is clear that the designer-God that best fits the needs of the universe and its orderly development is that described by Christianity.
As usual, a metaphysical choice apparently has found its own confirmation. If purpose is presumed then purpose will be found. But the flaw in Behe’s argument is not in his metaphysics but in what might be called his post-metaphysical analysis. This analysis is largely cultural and has much more to do with Behe’s Roman Catholic background than either his metaphysics or science.
I don’t begrudge Behe’s metaphysical stance. On the contrary, to the extent that his metaphysics conforms to that of Bergson, Teilhard, and many of the American Pragmatists, I am right there with him. And for the sake of argument, I’m even willing to accept his claims about intelligent design. Who am I after all to contradict Aquinas. But at that point we part company.
Christian thinking did not spawn the idea of intelligent design. Before Christianity, the Gnostics of Persia and their forebears had already thought through the issue of reconciling a God of creation with the apparent waste and destruction that is apparent, not just in molecular DNA but in a dog eat dog world of aggression, violence, injustice and death.
The God of gnosticism is neither the rather distant Ancient of Days of Judaism nor the supposedly benign and co-suffering triune God of followers of Jesus. The Gnostic God is evil. The purpose this God had in mind is precisely what we can observe and experience around us - a world of unrelieved suffering, overwhelming desire to escape through myth, universal grasping for power, and a general disappointment with the way things have turned out.
Gnosticism invaded Christian thought at an early stage and pops its head up periodically in sectarian enthusiasms - strict Calvinism, Jansenism, and some Anabaptist cults for example. But in Roman Catholicism, gnosticism is formally a heresy. According to doctrine, creation is good, as is the God who/which established its existence.
So it is obvious that what Behe is pushing is not science, not even metaphysics, but religion - his religion against what he believes are heretics. He wants us to believe that there is not just intention behind the cosmos but good intention. He believes this as an article of Faith and wants to rest of us to accept it as a methodological principle.
As they say in New York City: “Sell me a bridge!”