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Michael Behe, Darwin Slayer

This week’s WORLD Magazine features an interview (available here to subscribers) with biochemist Michael Behe, “Darwin Slayer” and author of this year’s The Edge of Evolution, his first book since the groundbreaking Darwin’s Black Box back in 1996. As Marvin Olasky writes, “[A] book once every decade or so is about as much as Darwinians can take. Behe’s new work shows that Darwinism’s random mutation and natural selection explain little about how one species has led to another.”


WORLD asks thoughtful questions and receives insightful answers, as seen in the following interchange:

WORLD: If macroevolution is like taking a gradual route to a distant pinnacle, why is it biologically unreasonable–given enough time–“to expect random mutation and natural selection to navigate a maze to get there”?
BEHE: Darwin’s most radical claim was that evolution is utterly blind–unlike an intelligent agent, it can’t “see” whether a mutation will be helpful in the long run. Random mutation and natural selection can only select whatever changes confer an immediate advantage, regardless of whether the changes are constructive or destructive. We see that starkly in human genetic responses to malaria, where many genes have been broken, diminished, or warped (like sickle cell). Yet in order to build complex coherent molecular machinery, evolution must avoid destructive changes and select ones that will be helpful in the future. A blind process can’t do that.

Look for the latest issue of WORLD Magazine out on newsstands now.