Literature

The journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, normally a good source of stimulating and thought-provoking articles, has decided to carry a review by Nicholas Matzke of Behe's The Edge of Evolution. The tone of the review is one of exasperation - as though Matzke finds it incomprehensible that anyone could be so dumb as to write this book.
However, like so many other reviews, there are signs that the reviewer has not digested the key arguments of the book. Behe is looking at what the data is telling us about the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection that are so beloved by Darwinists. He first shows that our best data sets are all underlining the implausibility that these mechanisms have anything to do with constructing the elegant molecular machinery of cells. Compare this with Matzke's initial salvo: "Behe begins by trying to shore up his argument that 'irreducibly complex' multiprotein systems, such as flagella, are unevolvable." But Behe's comments on this come later in the book! (Furthermore, my reading of Behe is not that he says these structures are unevolvable, but they are unevolvable by Darwinism mechanisms).
Matzke does not like Behe's mutation-rate statistics at all. He claims: "The argument collapses at every step. Behe obtains the crucial 10^20 number from an offhand estimate in the literature that considered only the few CQR [chloroquine resistance] alleles that have been detected because they have taken over regional populations." The correct response to a statistical argument is to present better statistics, or to point to literature that sets out a more rigorous analysis. Matzke does not do this, but uses many words to reach the general conclusion that chloroquine resistance "is both more complex and vastly more probable than Behe thinks." There is no attempt to put some substance into these words. Behe has responded (here) with discussion of the studies identified by Matzke as significant and concluding: "the number for resistance events of 1 in 10^20 seems to be a very good approximation". In my view, Behe ought to have the right to reply to this review, because TREE readers are being presented with a contrived and contentious argument by Matzke.

In the latter part of Matzke's review, he claims: "It is clear that Behe is driven not by a truly scientific investigation, but instead by metaphysics." This is not impressive from a philosophy of science perspective, as metaphysics underpins all scientific investigation. You cannot have science without metaphysics! The important questions relate to the dynamic between them, and how the metaphysics constrains the science. It has long been a concern of the ID Movement that philosophical naturalism is putting blinkers on science: a metaphysical commitment to naturalism leads to a demarcationist agenda and ends up declaring what the world must be like. In particular, it rules out all possibility that intelligent design can have anything to do with nature. Consequently, there is little interest in how to make design inferences in science, and lots of interest in explaining highly improbable data in terms of unknowable multiverses. In my own review of Behe's book, I present him as the real empiricist, and the Darwinians as people governed by their particular dogma.

The edge of creationism
Review of: Michael J. Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
Nicholas J. Matzke
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 22, Issue 11, November 2007, Pages 566-567

First para: Michael Behe is the leading advocate of 'intelligent design' (ID), which has been on the ropes since the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. There, Behe's effort to show that ID is science and not creationism failed [1], [2] and [3]. The Edge of Evolution is Behe's rather scattered comeback attempt. The title refers to his thesis: that is, that anything as complex as a three-protein complex is beyond the reach of random mutation aided by natural selection.

See also:

Michael Behe's Amazon Blog
Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part I (2 November 2007)
Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part 2 (5 November 2007)
Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part 3 (6 November 2007)