I just finished this book today and want to bring it to the attention of forum members as very important! After all the evolutionary biology and genetics studies I've read over the past year or so, this brought everything home in a serious way; Behe goes into the details.
The copy I have is the 10th anniversary edition and includes an afterword chapter that deals with all the attack the book came under after its original publication; very useful information to have. He also sums up the situation:
"The rise of the intelligent design hypothesis is not due to anything I or any other individual has written or said, but to the great advance of science in understanding life. In Darwin's day, the cell was though to be so simple that first-rate scientists such as Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel could seriously think that it might arise spontaneously from sea mud, which would be quite congenial to Darwinism. Even just fifty years ago it was a lot easier to believe that Darwinian evolution might explain the foundation of life, because so much less was known. But as science quickly advanced and the astonishing complexity of the cell became clear, the conclusion of intelligent design is strengthened by each new example of elegant, complex molecular machinery or system that science discovers at the foundation of life. ... It is a hard fact that the scientific case for the intelligent design hypothesis is getting much stronger." (p. 271)
And he's absolutely right. I can remember being presented with the topic of how the ribosome works years ago in biology classes. What was known about it then was much less than what is known now, but even then, I sat back and thought about it and realized that here was something that was impossible to conceive of as an "evolutionary product."
Right now, after finishing this book, I can say that the one thing that kept going through my mind as I read the "details" where the devil resides, is the incomprehensible intelligence behind the design of life. I really do urge everyone to read this book if only for that impression, alone.
This book, and all the recent science reading discussed here on the forum has only strengthened the Cassiopaean representation of reality and densities and so forth. Behe doesn't even speculate about "the designer" though he thinks it is a project worthy of scientific attention. But here we are with an explanation of our reality and other realities that is more or less a set of categories into which all this recent research rather neatly fits. And another thing that kept running through my mind was the thought that such intelligences might not always be benevolently inclined toward humans, so its not a bad idea to know what one is up against. It gives all new meaning to the Cs description of 4D battles being perceived by us as "weather and earth changes and cosmic phenomena."
As I said, the book is about the details and there's not too much I can say here to explain all that; it's a book best read individually and then, when enough people are "in the know", can be discussed in short hand, so to say.
Just an awesome book.
The copy I have is the 10th anniversary edition and includes an afterword chapter that deals with all the attack the book came under after its original publication; very useful information to have. He also sums up the situation:
"The rise of the intelligent design hypothesis is not due to anything I or any other individual has written or said, but to the great advance of science in understanding life. In Darwin's day, the cell was though to be so simple that first-rate scientists such as Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel could seriously think that it might arise spontaneously from sea mud, which would be quite congenial to Darwinism. Even just fifty years ago it was a lot easier to believe that Darwinian evolution might explain the foundation of life, because so much less was known. But as science quickly advanced and the astonishing complexity of the cell became clear, the conclusion of intelligent design is strengthened by each new example of elegant, complex molecular machinery or system that science discovers at the foundation of life. ... It is a hard fact that the scientific case for the intelligent design hypothesis is getting much stronger." (p. 271)
And he's absolutely right. I can remember being presented with the topic of how the ribosome works years ago in biology classes. What was known about it then was much less than what is known now, but even then, I sat back and thought about it and realized that here was something that was impossible to conceive of as an "evolutionary product."
Right now, after finishing this book, I can say that the one thing that kept going through my mind as I read the "details" where the devil resides, is the incomprehensible intelligence behind the design of life. I really do urge everyone to read this book if only for that impression, alone.
This book, and all the recent science reading discussed here on the forum has only strengthened the Cassiopaean representation of reality and densities and so forth. Behe doesn't even speculate about "the designer" though he thinks it is a project worthy of scientific attention. But here we are with an explanation of our reality and other realities that is more or less a set of categories into which all this recent research rather neatly fits. And another thing that kept running through my mind was the thought that such intelligences might not always be benevolently inclined toward humans, so its not a bad idea to know what one is up against. It gives all new meaning to the Cs description of 4D battles being perceived by us as "weather and earth changes and cosmic phenomena."
As I said, the book is about the details and there's not too much I can say here to explain all that; it's a book best read individually and then, when enough people are "in the know", can be discussed in short hand, so to say.
Just an awesome book.
