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Michael Behe Gets What He Deserves: a Fair Treatment of His Argument

This week Behe’s Edge of Evolution received a glowing review in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Cameron Wybrow, who writes:

Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, provides some hard numbers, coupled with an ingenious argument. The key to determining the exact powers of Darwinian evolution, says Behe, lies with fast-reproducing microbes. Some, such as malaria, HIV, and E. coli, reproduce so quickly that within a few decades, or at most a few millennia, they generate as many mutations as a larger, slower-breeding animal would in millions of years. By observing how far these creatures have evolved in recent times, we can estimate the creative limits of random mutation.

It’s worth noting that, unlike certain critics who used their reviews to make ad hominem attacks, Wybrow actually addresses and explains Behe’s scientific argument. As Wybrow makes clear,

Behe deserves better. The Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.