Book Review: Darwin’s Black Box

Author:	Michael Behe	Rating:	***** (4)
Date read:	May, 2010
Evolution vs. Creation Book:	6

Behe makes a good case that Darwinism does not account for complex biochemical processes, i.e., molecular-level structures and processes within cells. He describes several examples in detail, showing the interaction and interdependencies among different components. Very interesting to me, having close to zero previous knowledge of biochemistry. Along with these examples, Behe also looks at the literature to see what biologists and other scientists have discovered or proposed as explanations of step-by-step development of these structures and processes, and finds there is virtually nothing there. The topic is not addressed in the literature in any meaningful sense at all.

Key quotes:

The English biologists Mae-Wan Ho and Peter Saunders complain as follows: “It is now approximately half a century since the neo-Darwinian synthesis was formulated. A great deal of research has been carried on within the paradigm it defines. Yet the successes of the theory are limited to the minutiae of evolution, such as the adaptive change in coloration of moths; while it has remarkably little to say on the questions which interest us most, such as how there came to be moths in the first place.” 

In fact, none of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual, step-by-step Darwinian fashion. Although many scientists ask how sequences can change or how chemicals necessary for life might be produced in the absence of cells, no one has ever asked in the pages of JME such questions as the following: How did the photosynthetic reaction center develop? How did intramolecular transport start? How did cholesterol biosynthesis begin? How did retinal become involved in vision? How did phosphoprotein signaling pathways develop? The very fact that none of these problems is even addressed, let alone solved, is a very strong indication that Darwinism is an inadequate framework for understanding the origin of complex biochemical systems.