Darwin's Black Box: Background, Preface

First, a summary of Behe's experience.

Behe does not provide an author bio in my version. Wikipedia does, however. Gotta love those glasses. :) He has mainly a chemistry background. He does not support Young-Earth Creationism, rather he supports common descent of species and scientific consensus on the age of the earth. As far as I can tell, he has published only one peer-reviewed paper, which mathematically attempts to show evolution to be improbable.

The reviews listed on the back of the book are from a philosopher (David Berlinski), journalists (James Shreeve, Will St. John), a chemist (Robert Shapiro), and a biochemist (James Shapiro).

The 2-page preface sets the tone for the rest of the book, by first suggesting that there is scientific controversy over many fundamental concepts in biology and other fields, and then goes on to apologize for the complex details he will be presenting in the book, as his main audience is the public who has no background in biochemistry.

A couple grevious errors occur right away in the preface, which must be addressed.

Behe suggests that "the origin of the solar system (the question of how the sun, planets, and their moons formed in the first place) is still controversial." An endnote refers to a scientific paper in the "Notes" section in the back of the book.

First of all, it's important to note that all areas of science usually have some kind of controversy, and that is to be expected, because we don't know everything! Nor will we ever. There will always be unexplored details, new discoveries, and alternative hypotheses in some areas of every field. This is the not same, however, as implying that there is major disagreement over if something happened by natural means or supernatural miracles (which is what Behe seems to be implying here). It is certainly expected that there will be "controversy" or debate over what amount of angular momentum in the collapsing interstellar gas is necessary for formation of our primative solar nebula (one such topic reviewed in the paper Behe referred to).

Behe's second misstep is when he says that "evolution is a flexible word," with various meanings, and that Darwin and the scientific community use/used the word to mean "a process whereby life arose from nonliving matter and subsequently developed entirely by natural means."

That is not true. Interestingly, Behe does not give a reference for that particular definition, even though he claims Darwin used it in that sense.

In fact, Darwin did not define evolution, it was already an accepted concept in his day. He merely introduced the idea of HOW evolution occurs (through natural selection and small changes over geological time). In the Origin of Species, he does not address abiogenesis (how life itself arose) at all, only how species are related by common ancestors.

Some of my previous posts have explained how evolution is defined as "change over time," and how biologists separate microevolution from macroevolution. It certainly is not a concept that is used to explain how the first life arose on the planet...only how that life, once it existed, could speciate and be the common ancestor of all other life.

Additionally, Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection is constantly subjected to vigorous testing. In fact, when new species are studied in an evolutionary sense, the first step is to try to disprove that it is subject to evolutionary forces. And so far, the theory has withstood such attempts, and is now generally considered to be so probable it is considered as fact in the same sense that the theory of gravity is considered to be fact.

That is not to say that it is a closed chapter... there are many many details of how evolution occurs that we don't know... just like we don't know all the details of just how gravity works. Science continues to explore and refine!

That's all for now... more later! :)