My review of Behe’s book in the Washington Post

March 8, 2019 • 3:20 pm

Well, I read Michael Behe’s new intelligent-design book Darwin Devolves a long time ago, as I was asked to review it for the Washington Post. But I couldn’t say that, of course, for it would reveal that I had a prepublication copy, and that means I was going to produce a review. One can’t say that in advance. Up to this point, instead of giving my own take on the book, I gave the take of others: Rich Lenski, Josh Swamidass, Nathan Lents, and so on. At last my own review is out.

Well, we all agree: the book is, as ID books always are, junk science.

But Behe makes some truly outrageous statements in this one, especially his claim that mutations involved in distinguishing new families and similar higher-order taxa are those created by the Designer (aka God), while mutations creating lower level taxa like species and genera are random, non-Goddy mutations. To any biologist who knows how subjective groups like genera, families, and so on really are, this is arrant nonsense, bordering on lunacy.

Behe also claims (and I didn’t say this in my review), that the fossil record shows that “higher categories of classification such as phylum and class [precede] new lower levels of classification such as order and family” (p. 196), which is also ludicrous. All taxa begin as new species that result from the splitting of populations, and species themselves often continue to split and diverge to the point where groups of them (preferably with a common ancestry) can be called genera, families, and so on.

I didn’t get to mention that in my review, nor did I describe Behe’s ludicrous claim that disulfide bonds in proteins (cysteine-cysteine) are “irreducibly complex” because they hold proteins together but both of them must be in place before you get that bond. Ergo, God is required.  But there are plenty of single, free cysteine residues in proteins, which is a perfectly adaptive first step in forming those disulfide bonds. No irreducible complexity needed.

Sorry, but Behe’s book is dreadful. And that is what my review says. He and the Discovery Institute will be furious, but too damn bad. They’ve lied for Jesus too long.

Click on the screenshot to read my take on the book.

102 thoughts on “My review of Behe’s book in the Washington Post”

  1. The “macro vs micro” evolution trope used by ID supporters like Behe is one of the worst examples of special pleading.

  2. What is really disturbing about all this is the Library of Congress will have classified this book as a science book. So, people browsing science books, hoping to learn more about evolution could happen upon this one and get all the wrong ideas. It should be classified as a religious book. It’s a shame there isn’t a way for these things to have to meet some sort of scientific review by scientists in the field to okay it as a science book before its classified.

      2. You maybe used a comma where I would not have, and you missed an apostrophe in the second-last word, but the comment was perfectly clear and to the point.

    3. I wonder what other books are classified that way… and I wonder if there was a major effort by ID publishers to achieve such categorization…

      1. I got in a big tangle with Amazon and Chapters Canada over another ID book. Amazon moved it to the religious category but Chapters, as soon as they moved it, it got moved back. They told me this is because of the Library of Congress classification. It’s all part of the Wedge initiative.

      2. Generally as far as I can tell pseudosciences are shelved with their real counterpart as a matter of policy in LoC, at least. For example, psychoanalysis is found with psychology, IIRC.

    4. Below is a screenshot of the Library of Congress [LC] record for Darwin Devolves ISBN-13 9780062842619.

      The LC uses data supplied by HarperOne who are regarded as a trusted publisher by the LC one must assume. This all happens before the LC gets a physical book:

      https://flic.kr/p/2f6QE1i

      It is under Dewey Classification 576.8 [Mathematics & Science > Life Sciences > Evolution & Genetics > Evolution]

      Fortunately library directors & their staff can adjust the Dewey to their own purposes as long as there’s a record of the change somewhere in that library’s system. Thus a book on sewing machine repairs [Appliance Repair 643.6] might be renumbered so as to be shelved with sewing [646.2].

      In my library [UK] all that creationist & ID garbage is renumbered to fit into a “theories” sub-classification, if I go to that physical shelf [three shelves as it happens] I can find around 120 books that go from mythologies, through Lamarckism to Darwinism [original & modern synthesis], creationism, ID [including some super-dross on aliens] & panspermia [mainly Hoyle]. Great stuff! All of Behe’s bollocks is there along with other Americans & that Turkish jailbird’s laughable book. I think this local arrangement of Dewey numbers is because the university nearby is doing a course on the “controversy”.

      P.S. The LC doesn’t have to hold the physical book themselves – they keep a tiny proportion of books judged somehow to be useful to Congress – the actual book may be 1,000s of miles away. I noticed with glee that the US Army’s Fort George G Meade [that hosts & hosted some wacky cold war & post cold war projects] is storing one of Behe’s older crank books, but I’ve realised that’s only because the base hosts an overflow storage facility for the US LC.

      1. Let the local libraries know I wouldn’t mind keeping all Behe’s books nobody wants to hold physically themselves. I have a barrel in the basement that would do nicely.

          1. Very likely you’d find his books in one of the lower strata. After all, he is an old Earth creationist.

          3. Evilly, I get the temptation to run at the desk & kick it with both legs while flying sideways. It would probably turn out worse for me but it just looks so damn tempting.

        2. Heck, anybody wishing to circular file a copy of Behe’s new book, send it on to me. I keep tabs on all the antievolution literature, and having Behe’s latest book without having to pony up money for it (or check out a library copy in dribbles) is help to the project. I’ve spent enough scratch on Phillip Johnson over the years as it is.

          1. Congratulations. I never knew such self sacrificing heroism existed in this area. Keep up the good work and report back when the feeling strikes you.

          2. I do try. It helps to have a resilient stomach when trying to digest twaddle in bulk (some 9000 antievolution sources currently). But remember, from a source methods direction, each antievolutionist displays the method in the work, and the more they spew, the clearer that becomes. The failure to address a matter in book number one is an isolated blip; the failure to do so in three books is quite another matter. So keeping track of the full antievolution field, what they directly cite and discuss, and more importantly what they don’t, allows empirical methods measurements to be made (like how few core fact claimants there are in antievolutionism, only around 60, or how as a group they’re missing around 90% of the data field they would need to account for at minimum in order to graduate to a plausible alternative to the current evolutionary paradigm).

          4. Yep. Nothing fancy http://www.tortucan.wordpress.com with pdf postings, links to the books I’ve done so far, comments and questions always welcomed (there’s also a mirror site with html drafts of the modules at http://www.tortucan.com). I’m doing a weekly “Evolution Hour” (with occasional scientist guests, like Swamidass and Lents … hey Jerry, would love to have you too) discussing creation/evolution related topics most every Wednesday at 5 PM Pacific time.

            I have the obligatory Facebook page, and also am active on Twitter @RJDownard (actually quite a handy platform, as many a scientist is on it, where they give heads-up on their cutting edge work). And of course, a place to joust with the many, man, many creationists there, big and small.

            I’m a newbie at all this, so stumbling along as best I can, trying to fight the good fight, trying to connect up with a network of like-minded people to combat woo at every juncture. And you may have noticed that lately there’s no shortage of woo to combat. Hence I keep busy.

          5. You are posting over and over and over again on this thread, and also advertising your own site. Please do not post so much and stop advertising your own social media here, which is why you got moderated in the first place. As the Roolz state, I ask readers not to dominate threads.

      2. Ah yes, the Edson I poke to at chapters-Indigo explained the publisher had classified it as such and the LC had accepted it that way.

        1. The Edson? Thanks iPad. No, it is supposed to say “the person”. And not “poke” but “spoke”. My thumbs on iPads seem to often miss esses.

  3. Ordinarily, the religious aura of ID might be ignored by reviewers unwilling to upset any Sincerely Held Beliefs, and focus on the arguments and science. It is heartening to see PCC(E)’s post wasting no time getting the priorities straight.

    In other words : excellent, yet, depressing, review. Let’s hope it’s Behe’s last effort.

    1. Oof sorry – editing : of course PCC(E)’s article – and many posts here – deals extensively with the arguments and science, I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

    2. One more edit – after just finishing PCC(E)’s review – i take back what I write about Behe throwing in the towel – instead, it might be good for Behe to retreat to his lair and begin work on a new tome to publish, in order that PCC(E) can teach us all some cool biology after he reviews it!

      1. Hardly useful today with the modern synthesis. As Behe notes in his book, much of the science, the real science, done in biology has had to await the arrival of amazing new technologies that we have only had for a few years. We are very privileged to live at this time in history of course, when we can actually understand so much more than Darwin did or even could have. So yeah, an interesting read, but kinda like reading a book on electronics prior to the invention of the transistor.

          1. Indeed – The Greatest Show On Earth is there as well as Your Inner Fish!

        2. Whoever you are, robward, you aren’t reading comments before you hypercomment, you’re not understanding the Roolz, and you’re touting ID as serious science. That all combines to make your presence here undesirable I suggest you go post on Evolution News & Views. Oh, I forgot–they don’t take comments. Maybe BioLogos?

          1. You may be reacting to his mention of Behe rather than to what he actually says. That comment didn’t even mention ID, much less tout it, and it didn’t praise either Behe or his book. All he says is that we know much more than Darwin did (true) and that molecular techniques have greatly advanced the field (true) and that Darwin has been superseded by the Modern Synthesis and other more recent theory (true; neutral evolution, anyone?).

            Of course, it’s possible that Rob is a huge ID fan. I’m just saying you can’t tell from that post, which says nothing objectionable.

          3. Me too. But that’s from the wrong post. Still, it turns out from later posts that Rob is probably an IDer.

      1. I don’t know about you personally GBJames, but reading thru the comments was a little disappointing. I was hoping to learn some good arguments against Behe’s book, but that is not what I am hearing thus far.

        3. You can find further in-depth discussion of some of the many problem’s with Behe’s book in these posts:

          https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/does-behes-first-rule-really-show-that-evolutionary-biology-has-a-big-problem/

          https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/on-damaged-genes-and-polar-bears/

          https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/is-the-ltee-breaking-bad/

          https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/evolution-goes-viral-and-how-real-science-works/

          https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2019/02/07/darwin-devolves/

    5. I know the enemy: unfortunate brainwashed liars. Every millisecond spent on reading a creationist is wasted time. Indeed, some could decide to suffer for mankind in order to spare others from suffering, and read and review a creationist book. I have done it myself. But it should not be a system.

      By analogy, if you see powder labeled “Potassium cyanide”, you need not ingest it to check its physiological effects first-hand.

    6. I thought that being like like sheep was a noble thing to aspire to according to psalm 23

      May I ask who’s yor shepherd Rob?

  6. Hey Jerry, I don’t understand this comment: “They’ve lied for Jesus too long.” There are prominent non-Christian Jews in the ID movement, and atheists, and Hindus, and Muslims. So this comment kinda comes across a bit weird.

    1. Just because Muslims lie for Mohammad, Hindus lie for Ganesha (and many others), and religious Jews lie for Yahweh, doesn’t mean that Behe doesn’t lie for Jesus.

      Behe, the Discovery Institute, and American creationists in general are overwhelmingly Christian. They lie for Jesus.

    2. He’s talking about the Discovery Institute in particular, not the ID movement in general.

      Are you a supporter of ID Rob?

    3. These days Jewish and Muslim creationists do not put forward arguments of their own but largely copy from U.S. creationist sites.

      Hindu creationists do actually have some arguments of their own, that Ayurvedic sages already explained everything, predicted everything, and invented everything, long ago.

      1. Probably the same troll as the other troll. Just giving everyone a hard time for jollies.

    5. It’s a Christian movement. So lying for their own religion and lying for Jesus aren’t mutually exclusive. Jesus still gets his jollies when other people lie for him.

  7. Having examined Behe’s prior two books, it sounds like this new one merely doubles down on his mantras, especially how he imagines higher systematic categories somehow lie beyond “The Edge of Evolution” (yet not actually examining the available paleontology and their associated genetics to test whether his notions have any utility there at all).

    We can expect though for Behe’s groupies in the ID movement to wave this latest installment as another benchmark in their literature, no matter what the critics say. And of course those followers will not even try to source fact check it.

    That is what a double-down mind does tend to do, after all.

  8. Most of them are Christians, and “lying for Jesus” is a common trope. But yes, there are Jews and Hindus, too, though there are hardly any atheists who are creationists. I know of only one (David Berlinski), and I suspect he’s a secret believer.

    Your comment comes across as a bit weird, by the way, since you recommend that people read Behe’s book. People are welcome to, but it’s a complete waste of time and says nothing new.

      1. Fred Hoyle, I think, was an atheistic creationist (and astrophysicist). But on par for the course, his arguments against evolution (and Big Bang cosmology) are just as ignorant.

        -Ryan

        1. Nah, Fred was all about evolution from space, not creationism. And that’s not the other guy I was thinking of.

    2. I don’t think Berlinski actually endorses ID. (I recall that he specifically declined to do so during his debate with Ken Miller, Michael Ruse, et al. on Firing Line.) I think Berlinski limits himself to hostile criticism of evolutionary theory.

      1. Berlinski is a feisty and pathological contrarian (he has even doubted the Big Bang), beloved of artsy verbiage but really bad at exploring details (as I discovered some years ago in a lengthy email interaction with him, which ironically enough resulted in my penning “3 Macroevolutionary Episodes”). Berlinski tended to skim read the texts I forwarded to him (at his request), offering snarking comments, but avoiding the documentary footnotes.

        He willingly swallowed Phillip Johnson’s recommendation of a full-blown creationist paper by John Woodmorappe at AiG assailing the reptile-mammal transition, but there’s no indication then or since that Berlinski even thought to fact check any of the claims or (horrors!) move to read the original technical papers Woodmorappe was sniping at. Thus is the truculent pseudoscience method of David Berlinski seen in practice.

  9. An excellent review and direct to the point. Even a cave man gets it. Really liked the line – In the face of scientific ignorance its more productive to keep working than to punt to g*d.

    1. Umm…

      “Among the most vocal [advocates of ID] is Michael J. Behe, a biology professor at Lehigh University whose previous books…have sold well”

      🙂

  11. When I click on either of the links in the OP, the review pops on the screen for a second, only to be replaced by an invitation to subscribe to the WaPo online to be able to read the article. Is there a free access point? – though I think our library might get WaPo.

    1. In Safari you can switch to private browsing, which worked in this case. I don’t know the equivalent step in other browsers.

    2. No problem for a WaPo subscriber. I’m willing to continue supporting a strong, free press.

    3. I could access it. It’s just that the subscribe invitation takes up half my phone screen and the button to remove it is pretty small.

      -Ryan

      1. It seems to be cookie based. The private view is an option I’ll have to try – like a naughty person, I just opened it in a different browser – for me, Chrome.

    4. I am a lapsed WaPo subscriber so it won’t let me see the text. I just switched to another browser and I’m in.

      1. It was HarperOne who categorised it not the Library of Congress. The LC doesn’t have the resources & relies on publishers to do that.

  14. Excellent review, which reads very well. Now counting down, waiting for creationist/ID responses that “Jerry didn’t read the book”, “Jerry fails to engage with Behe’s central argument”, or “Jerry engaged with Behe’s arguments in the book, but not with his more recent explanations”.

    3 … 2 … 1 …

    1. Right

      There’s a difference between doing that, and talking at length about all the things found in the book and only those things. I’m not sure what that’s called but it ought to have a name.

  16. Jerry, thank you for reading and reviewing Behe’s book for us. It must have been painful, but you saved us from having to suffer.

    1. A new interpretation of “devolve”? Is that Darwin devolving a fish? I suppose if it were Darwin, there’d be a little bald spot… hmmm… looks close… otherwise, with the fancy halo, it would be the Sistine Chapel style God with a toga… or PJ’s, can’t tell… … can’t see the footwear… I’ll have to check if he is barefoot up there…

      1. Ok here’s the picture:

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creaci%C3%B3n_de_Ad%C3%A1n.jpg

        God doesn’t have any bald areas (I mean, RIGHT?!), nor sandals. And I’m not sure that’s a toga, so our friend in the woodcut I take to be Darwin on his early morning stroll walking the fish for a pee-pee. It’s early morning because the sun’s angle is low, and right behind his head – thus it LOOKS like a halo because of illusion.

  19. I’m happy to see that you went after him on the cysteine business. I remember that someone – exactly who I’ve sadly forgotten – went thru the 3D database and came up with a figure of about 50% of all cysteines being non-crosslinked. It’s mainly the internal ones that form crosslinks or are involved in liganding metal ions like Zn++.

    Also forgotten exactly, but I remember a paper about the evolution of cysteines from serines (a one-base change) across the phylogeny of some protein. IIRC, it was in TIBS (Trends in Biochemical Sciences).

    1. I think the cysteine / cystine 3D compiler may have been Janet Thornton. At least that’s the name that just surfaced in my head. Otherwise perhaps Jane Richardson.

  20. Thank you Dr. Coyne for your exceptional review of Behe’s most recent endeavor to lather additional lipstick on the wearisome and discredited ID pig.

    The invention of religion is Humankind’s most deadly weapon of mass destruction.

  21. I read that review with pleasure, it seemed* spot on!

    * Have not read the crank book, nor intend to.

  22. I wonder – How do Intelligent Design proponents know there is a single designer, or multiple?

    A watch is designed usually by more than one designer, though, there might be one, like John Harrison back in the 18th c. – but that’s more _invention_ than design…

    How do ID proponents distinguish design from invention, or manufacture for that matter?

    Seems ID is hooked on a metaphor that isn’t helping their case.

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