The Edge of Evolution

The Search for the Limits of Darwinism

By: Michael J. Behe

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

In a tour de force of science and logic, the best-selling author of Darwin's Black Box combines genetics, laboratory results, and mathematics to prove, once and for all, that the universe and life on Earth are designed.

Michael J. Behe launched the intelligent design movement with his first book, Darwin's Black Box, by demonstrating that Darwinism could not account for the complexity of biochemistry. Now he takes a giant leap forward. In The Edge of Evolution, Behe uses astounding new findings from the genetics revolution to show that Darwinism is nowhere near as powerful as most people believe. Genetic analysis of malaria, E. coli, and the HIV virus over tens of thousands of generations, not to mention analysis of the entire history of the genetic struggle between them and "us" (humans), make it possible for the first time to determine the precise rates, and likelihood, of random mutations of varying kinds. We now know, as never before, what Darwinism can and cannot accomplish. The answers turn conventional science on its head and are certain to be hotly debated by millions. After The Edge of Evolution, life in the universe will never look the same.

©2007 Michael J. Behe (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Though many critics won't want to admit it, The Edge of Evolution is very balanced, careful, and devastating. A tremendously important book." (Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences)

Listen to it, not to comments about it!

No topic is more prone to straw man arguments than arguments against Intelligent Design. Every time the subject of Intelligent Design comes up in my presence many react as if ID proponents were arguing for a 6,000 year old world. When I ask those holding such views what they've read from the ID community itself invariably it comes up that all they read was works from anti-ID thinkers about ID. The truth is that most who are anti-ID work on the assumption that NOTHING is more improbably then the existence of God and hence of design. Thus, even he most bizarre and/or improbable scientific speculation is more believable to them then the possibility of design and upon this basis they criticize Behe. This book however is NOT about God, it is about understanding the origin of the complexity of our physical world from a genuinely scientific perspective. Specifically, in this book Behe agrees with common decent and also with some variation that results from random changes and natural selection. However, the "Edge" he seeks to define in this book is between what Darwinism can explain and what it can't. If you want to know what ID is about and are not content to read straw man arguments against ID then this book is for you. I think the Edge of Evolution is even better than Behe's earlier work Darwin's Black Box because it is written years later taking into account important scientific discoveries in molecular biology and with the arguments of those who criticized Darwin's Black Box in mind.

Darwinian is tested by logic and statistics

Darwinism is often presented as THE explanation for life on our planet. But there is little evidence to support this. We can all agree with Mendel that the offspring will inherit attributes from their ancestry. It is much more difficult to demonstrate that one species is the ancestor of another species. And this does not consider the fact that our planet began as a sterile place. So, there is no original life to modify.

I liked the discussion of the malaria bug. Since it reproduces so rapidly, many generations can be studied to see what changes are taking place in the bug. The fact that genetic material that no longer provides protection is removed from available DNA was not expected by me. I tend to hang on to my tools even if I haven't used them for a while.

I recommend this book highly.

The Most Important Thing...

to take away from Behe's work is that hegemony is not only possible in religion and politics, but in the scientific community as well. Perhaps that is simply a part of human nature (evolved, designed or otherwise), but be that as it may, scientists have for too long guarded the Darwinian evolution model as a holy text, unwilling to allow other theories to enter the scene. There is much to lend credit to Behe's version of Intelligent Design, and one cannot accuse him of "Creationism in disguise," as he advocates no particular Designer, but merely points out the weaknesses in the idea that all came about by the blind, random procress preposed by Darwin and protected with slavering viciousness by Dawkins and company far too long. Remember the end of the movie Inherit the Wind, when Drummond leaves the courtroom clasping a Bible and Darwin's Origin together? Try to have this kind of open minded approach to this book. It is an alternate theory, flawed and incomplete, but then, so is Darwin's evolution, and science is supposed to be about examining ALL the facts, right? So let's give ID a chance. It will not take us back to the Middle Ages, as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett might suggest. We are smarter than that, and we can intelligently consider what this theory has to offer.

Outstanding Content! Narrator Dramatizations Lame...

A wonderful, and powerful follow-up to Behe's previous book, "Darwin's Black Box." Excellent content and informative technical treatment of the subject.

However, the narrator's voice dramatizations when quoting references were VERY distracting and off putting, perhaps even to the point of sounding sophomoric. Whether directed or not, these "creative liberties" make the presentation sound unprofessional against the academic subject matter of the book.

As unfortunate as these narrative quirks are, the audiobook is still well worth the price and time involved to devote to its consumption.

Amazing book—must read.

Great book on what Darwinian evolution can—and can't—achieve. The narrator unfortunately tries to use accents when reading quotes by other authors. It's quite distracting. The good news is that the quotes don't make up much of the material.

creationist nonsense

I was interested in hearing the biology and to see if behe was not as he was portrayed by all the proponents of evolution that I listen too, but he is. he stated that an analogy for evolution won't really work well because biological systems reproduce and man-made objects don't, and then literally used the bowing 747 argument but with cars. His arguments for his position were all really weak and riddled with fallacies.

tour de force of bad reasoning

example: Makes great hay of there being better genetic ways to prevent malaria... though it is a very simple determination what is better yet when countering straw men the world is suddenly very complex. Reminder, he is saying that different mutations work better in the hygienic modern world ignoring any down sides we do not know of because it didn't happen and says this points to the limits of evolution. He might be right but how would one know?

It still comes back to the complex world we live in and the complex ways we life forms deal with it... are they complex because life started in and adapted to need this environment or because it is preplanned by someone way more complex? I didn't find anything here convincing one way or another, just lots of smoke.

A gross failure of imagination...

I had to give an extra star because it disturbed me so much I could not stop listening. I'll give the author one thing, he didn't dance around the subject, and his argument that evolution is flawed because it isn't happening fast enough? For anyone that feels he made some good points... just because he can't explain something doesn't mean there's no explanation, a lot can happen in a billion years, growing flagella is nothing. Just a few examples of his failure of imagination...

- Why hasn't malaria developed resistance to chloroquine? This one's easy, IT HAS. I'm not insinuating i'm so smart and I already knew this. I looked it up because I didn't believe him. However, HE should know it.

- Why hasn't malaria developed a resistance to cold? I doesn't NEED to. Things don't evolve just to get cool new features, if they did we'd have wings and tigers would be chasing you to work. If you want malaria to develop a resistance to cold,in a hurry, just send everyone infected with it to the arctic and wait. Assuming the people survive, you'll have cold-resistant malaria (and probably some malaria-resistant people).

- HIV hasn't changed enough? I don't get this at all... do you remember all the people with HIV 100 years ago? No? That's because HIV only infected monkeys and the like. It wasn't that long ago that HIV evolved the ability to infect humans, probably in the author's life-time. And if you're more than 10 years old or so, bird-flu has made the jump to humans at least once in your lifetime. Is that fast enough for you?

Just because you don't know how that magician knew you had the 8 of clubs doesn't mean he actually did magic.

Dogma at Its Best

I liked the essay on the battle between humans and malaria; a very detailed account with many references. Unfortunately for most readers I don???t believe that is why they read the book. Nor do I believe that the average lay person could have followed this detailed, arcane presentation and drawn any conclusions about the edge of evolution. What this part of the book felt like was a debate between the author and himself. The average reader was not going to put up much of an argument at this level of doctorate presentation. Generally at this point I found three problems with the presentation. Behe seems to almost completely disregard environmental conditions with regard to mutation and natural selection. He only mentions environmental conditions when they fit his argument, and at one point even downplays the significance of environmental impact on evolution. In the end he associates environmental occurrences with intelligent tweaking of the design of the Universe.
I also found the author playing fast and loose with the mathematics he used particularly with regard to probability. There were several instances where based on the cases presented he multiplied odds when he should have added them. The difference changes the argument completely. I must admit that his examples were so convoluted and overly complex for this type of book, that I had a very difficult time sorting them out and that required re-listening to them several times before reaching a conclusion, but in the case of some mutation that he considered mutually exclusive, it appeared from what he said that they were not, and in fact he contradicts himself later on to agree that they were not mutually exclusive, but doesn???t revisit his mathematics.
Lastly I believe the author and many others who have problems with evolution look at evolution from the wrong end. This is very obvious from his examples of comparing evolution to building buildings and mouse traps. That couldn???t be more inappropriate. For evolutionists in the beginning, there was no blue print. What evolved was what evolved. Had it evolved differently, we humans might not be here. To look at cilia and say it couldn???t possibly have evolved because of the complex proteins, bonds and interactions involved in its operation is fine, but cilia didn???t start as cilia. It ended as cilia. It took millions of years to get to where it got.
I believe Behe lost his argument when he moved away from biology and into chemistry and physics in a more general sense. I do have more knowledge in these areas and conclusions drawn in these areas degenerate into the same argument presented time and time again; that is the Universe is too complex to have happened by chance. He simple states at this point that because some physical constants are so precise and are required to be so, they must have been designed. When he presents his other universes argument, he cites two examples to show that a finite number of other universes or an infinite number of universes were not possible for evolution to work. The very obvious other choice would have been a finite number of universes over an infinite time period. He conveniently omitted that option.
Behe repeatedly states that scientists have not proven anything that refutes his claims and therefore he is right. I don???t think he made this case at all. Moreover the details of the Universe continue to be unraveled every day by scientists and engineers with highly inquisitive minds.

A Little Too Techincal & Detailed

Depending on your taste and your style this book may or may not be for you. When the author, Behe, gets into the real minute details of biological functions, he kind of lost me from time to time (and I'm a student of science), but then when he picked it up a little bit and talk about our environment and the larger creatures that inhabit it, that made it much more interesting.