Behe! Oh My God!
I mean, I’m having an intellectual orgasm here. That’s from reading Michael Behe’s second book on evolution and design, The Edge of Evolution. If I weren’t a philosopher, I’d go into biology for sure. You can just feel the Godlike engineering power crystallized in the molecular “nanobots” Behe describes. The “trench warfare,” which is how our author labels the evolutionary battle between malaria and men, though indeed blind, is as exciting as any action movie, wherein both sides appear fiendishly clever and yet desperate to win at any cost. And then it should always be remembered that these molecular machines are alive, and they’ll do anything to survive. It’s mortal combat, and it’s riveting. Moreover, Behe makes you a spectator of an epic struggle of good and evil, the good starring the human body, scientists, and doctors; and evil, the merciless malaria microbes.
And then there are his eye-opening calculations of the probabilities of constructive mutations. But those will have to await a full review. For now, if you don’t mind, I’ll just be enjoying the ride.
Update. I just learned why my cat doesn’t need to eat fruit to obtain vitamin C, a question that has bothered me for some time. That’s because humans and chimps have a broken copy of the gene which in my cat makes his own vitamin C. How cool is that?!
June 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Behe has done a great job, which has made him hated and despised by all the right people. Alleged refutations of Behe are legion. I have yet to see one that holds any water.