Book Review – The Edge of Evolution

In this week’s Science, Sean B. Carroll takes Michael Behe to task in a review of Behe’s latest book. Science has made this article available in their public access. Click on the cartoon to see the rest of the review or this link will also take you directly to the review.

EVOLUTION: God as Genetic Engineer

Sean B. Carroll

The Edge of Evolution
The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
by Michael J. Behe
Free Press, New York, 2007. 331 pp. $28, C$33.99. ISBN 9780743296205.

The continuing futile attacks by evolution’s opponents reminds me of another legendary confrontation, that between Arthur and the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight, like evolution’s challengers, continues to fight even as each of his limbs is hacked off, one by one. The “no transitional fossils” argument and the “designed genes” model have been cut clean off, the courts have debunked the “ID is science” claim, and the nonsense here about the edge of evolution is quickly sliced to pieces by well-established biochemistry. The knights of ID may profess these blows are “but a scratch” or “just a flesh wound,” but the argument for design has no scientific leg to stand on.

CREDIT: JOE SUTLIFF, AFTER MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

The reviewer, the author of The Making of the Fittest, is at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. E-mail: sbcarrol@wisc.edu

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