In a review, one reviewer has decided to talk about what Michael Behe actually says in Darwin Devolves. For example, In a section called “The Blind Metaphor,” Behe notes: “The primary way by which natural selection makes evolution self-limiting is by promoting poison-pill mutations. Whatever genetic alterations that help an organism survive and reproduce better […]
Books of interest
Michael Behe responds to the hit pre-publication review at Science
The fact that the attack is incompetent is its strength, not its weakness. It shows the social power of Darwinism, irrespective of intellectual force. Most Science readers will probably go with social power. It gives them the right to sneer, right or wrong. Intellectual force requires a basis. Note: Social power is a form of living on capital. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Some thoughts on the hatchet review of Behe’s Darwin Devolves in Science
One wonders, do many biologists have independent ideas that Darwinism stifles? If so, they must be frustrated by the need to keep them under wraps or defend them from malign mediocrities for whom mere orthodoxy produces a living.
Swamidass et al’s hit review at Science on Behe’s forthcoming Darwin Devolves “borders on fraud”
Well, somebody out there must think Behe worth hearing. At 8:00 pm EST February 11, 2019, the book was #1 in Developmental Biology. Ships on February 26.
Science Mag’s hit on Michael Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves avoids his main point
In American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science, we read, In the grand scheme of evolution, mutations serve only to break structures and degrade functions, Behe argues. He allows that mutation and natural selection can explain species- and genus-level diversification, but only through the degradation of genes. Something else, he insists, is required for […]
Why neither weak nor strong scientism can ground ethics
Paul Copan: Science has built-in limitations, but some moderns have placed a burden on science that it cannot—and was never meant to—bear. Theology, philosophy, and other sources of knowledge not only help supplement what science can show, but they can also enrich our study of science.
Scientific quest for morality ends in moral nihilism
One outcome of morality becoming an uninspiring talkshop is that massive breaches of ethics are more difficult to address except in terms of the commotion they create, as opposed to the truths they violate or the individuals they harm.
Nature editor’s five best 2018 books include two of our favs
When Nature’s Books and Arts editor Barbara Kiser’stop five for 2018 came out, #s 1 and 2 were Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder on the troubled state of theoretical physics, of which Kiser says, Lost in Math is a firecracker of a book—a shot across the bows of theoretical physics. […]
Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne denounces Michael Behe’s forthcoming book unread
Of course, just now, one suspects that it is mainly the editors in Frisco who have pored over it. But now, Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne tells us,l Michael Behe, author of the intelligent-design (ID) creationist books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution, has a new book coming out next […]
A peek at Mike Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves
Here: While Stephen Colbert has called Michael J. Behe the “Father of Intelligent Design,” Behe’s arguments have been called, “close to heretical” by the New York Times Book Review, and Richard Dawkins has publicly taken him to task for his “maverick” views. Wherever he goes, Behe makes waves, but has remained singularly focused on doing […]
Jerry Coyne continues to be unhappy over David Quammen’s book on Carl Woese
Readers will remember science writer David Quammen’s new book, The Tangled Tree:A Radical New History of Life, a biography of Carl Woese, who first identified the Archaea (and doubted Darwinism). They will also doubtless remember Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who does not life Tangled Tree, and… Well, he still doesn’t like it and has […]
Mind of the Maker spotlights mathematics as evidence for design in nature
A recent book, Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God , by Melissa Cain Travis might be of interest. According to one of the Amazon reviews, One of the areas in the book that is unique and very interesting is the discussion about mathematics. The […]
New biography of the original ID guy, Alfred Russel Wallace
Klinghoffer: A spiritualist, libertarian socialist, women’s rights advocate, and critic of Victorian social convention, Alfred Russel Wallace was in every sense a rebel who challenged the emergent scientific certainties of Victorian England by arguing for a natural world imbued with purpose and spiritual significance.
Sociologist Steve Fuller’s new book on post-truth in science
Sociologist Steve Fuller, who has written competently about ID, has a new book out. From the publisher: ‘Steve Fuller takes the concept of post-truth to a new level of analysis, explaining the history of “meta” thinking about truth, the institutional structuring of truth through “rules of the game”, and the forms of knowledge that go […]
Review of Darwin’s Doubt slams ID theorists for not publishing in Darwinist-run journals
From Daniel Muth at Living Church, reviewing Steve Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt: I am fairly certain that there are thoughtful and potentially influential intellectual movements that have been subjected to more shameful and inexcusable misrepresentation and ill treatment than Intelligent Design (ID), but the list is not long (Roman Catholic teaching on artificial birth control comes […]