Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution Paperback – Illustrated, March 13, 2006

The power of Darwin’s Black Box rests in its persuasive and compelling argument against the explanation for the gradual development of life based on Darwinian evolution by natural selection. What the reader gets is a powerful, evidence-based, data-driven book that exposes Darwinian macroevolution as an archaic idea that lacks explanatory power and ultimately is scientifically bankrupt. Dr. Behe’s negative argument stands on its own, so even though he goes on to make a case for intelligent design, he never draws a conclusion of, “Therefore, it must be God.” Rather, after being educated on the falsity of Darwin’s theory, in the second part of the book the author makes an inference to the best explanation (design) while leaving the door open for science to make contributions in the future.As a biochemist, Dr. Behe clarifies that at a molecular level, life is not only astronomically complex but irreducibly complex, and thus any plausible explanation for life must have a clear and precise elucidation of how this complexity arose. Science triumphs because it provides an explanation for “How?” If something fails to clearly and specifically answer that question, then it fails to be scientific. (And no, exclusively critiquing alternatives will not suffice). Hence, Dr. Behe marvelously explains that (1) Darwin’s theory is deficient when it comes to explaining the “elegant complexity of molecular machinery,” (2) irreducible complexity forms an near-impregnable barrier to the notion that natural selection acts to facilitate evolution and (3) the more intensely we look at life (that is, at a molecular level, which is more scrupulous than biology) the harder life is to explain because of the appearance of design. The last point means that the more we discover about how life works (science) the demand placed on a Darwinian explanation astronomically increases.After laying the groundwork in Part I, each chapter in Part II of Darwin’s Black Box describes a unique system (e.g. the “cilium” or the swimming device that some cells use; the human blood-clotting cascade and the human immune system). Each chapter analyzes if the system could have developed in gradual Darwinian fashion. In addition there is a discussion about what the scientific community has said about the possible evolution of the system. Part III discusses why, in spite of evidence to the contrary, so many scientists invest in Darwin’s theory. There is also a discussion about intelligent design.The 10th Anniversary Edition is very helpful because in the “Afterword” Behe interacts with some of his most prominent critics in the decade after Darwin’s Black Box was published. Here, the author effectively counters a myriad of the objections evolutionists made to his work, particularly his discussion about irreducible complexity. The Appendix contains a brief summary of the biochemical principles involved in the operations of a cell.This book is tremendously well-written by an author who able to captivate his audience with language and analogies that whisks your biochemical imagination into shape. His use of comparison is so wonderfully executed that I wish I had Dr. Behe teaching me biochemistry in medical school. Even if you disagree with the author’s central thesis, what you are left with is a wonderful introduction to the beauty and wonder of life on a molecular scale.In the end, just because everyone believes something is true does not make it so. Consequently, in spite of a scientific consensus that evolution is true, Dr. Michael Behe is brave and courageous enough to ask, “Was Darwin wrong?” Darwin's Black Box is a soaring pillar of rational insight that shouts a resounding, “Yes!” with the proof to back it up.

It surprises me that this book is more than ten years old. I guess I let my mind run on automatic pilot with regard to "Intelligent Design" --- and the autopilot tended to assume that ID was going to be completely uninteresting, like the "ideas" of a flat earth, or young-earth creationism.This book, along with Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, has convinced me that my autopilot was completely mistaken. Intelligent Design is NOT "creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo." As Stephen Meyer has pointed out, the creationist movement grew out of the Bible --- it was born in Holy Writ. Intelligent Design comes out of science, most particularly the stunning discoveries about the nanotechnology in the living cell.What we have found in the cell is an amazing, very large group of molecular machines, which could be called a nanotechnology factory. Probably the most amazing thing about this factory is that it can duplicate itself, and perhaps the most inexplicable thing is that it runs using computer technology. The genetic code found in DNA is something we might never have understood without discovering computers first, and it's also something we NEVER would have comprehended if we hadn't found the "decoder ring" right there in the cell with the genetic code. Who would have dreamed that three letters of genetic code specified an amino acid, and that a sequence of hundreds of letters would specify all the amino acids needed to make a specific protein?The question asks itself: how did this come about? The Darwinian fundamentalists naturally think that it happened by "evolution," their one-word answer for everything, but they have yet to come up with even one plausible explanation of how this stuff evolved. The problem is "irreducible complexity," which is found when a machine needs all of its parts in order to function, and the different parts by themselves do nothing. A simple example of evolution (in our hands) might be scissors: we can see pretty easily how a stone tool became a metal knife (useful all the way), and how two metal knives were lashed together to make the first clumsy pair of scissors. But that sort of step-by-step evolution does NOT explain a mousetrap, much less DNA, messenger RNA, and the rest of the amazing stuff going on in a human cell. Compared with a cell, the Jacquard loom is downright primitive --- and that loom is what led to the "IBM card" (the Hollerith punch card) of distant memory.I guess there are two main books which explain Intelligent Design, this one and Stephen Meyer's book. Meyer's book is slightly more difficult and technical, while this one is a bit easier to read and has more humor. The choice is up to you, but I would strongly recommend looking at one of them.This is NOT creationism redux, it's the beginning of a paradigm shift. Darwinian evolution can explain a lot of things, but it can't explain the origin of the universe or the origin of life.As a final note, if these books get you to thinking about who the Designer might be, it's well to remember that he is not necessarily the God of any particular religion. You may be persuaded that The Great Spirit or The Force is probably there, but he or it remains completely mysterious --- aside from being incomprehensibly intelligent.

Well crafted, rational discussion on why Darwin got it wrong. I enjoyed Behe’s excellent exposition of a complex subject. His opponents, including some that have written reviews here, scream indignantly that this is rubbish, unscientific, ludicrous. But what has stayed with me since reading the book is that none of these people can offer a shred of proof that evolution is even possible. As Behe points out, the scientific community are silent on how life began, or how the steps of Darwinian belief take place. Their denial of Intelligent Design is an emotional response, because they cannot and will not have any possibility of God being in the mix. As Michael Denton said, Darwinism is a theory in crisis.