Richard Lenski
© Zachary Blount [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons
Richard Lenski
Science has just published a review of Darwin Devolves, more than two weeks before the book's official release date. (I suppose they wanted to be the first on the block to take a shot at it.) Let me first say this - Woo-hoo!! I'm simply ecstatic about the review. Not because it's favorable - it surely isn't. But because it is so embarrassingly, cringe-inducingly weak. It's the equivalent of a reviewer being rendered speechless, but soldiering on because he's been assigned to write 700 words - gotta say something. And it's co-authored by no less than Richard Lenski, member of the National Academy of Sciences and world-renowned investigator behind the 60,000-generation long-term evolution experiment (LTEE), to which I devoted most of Chapter 7!

The Overwhelmingly Important Point

In a few days I will offer a detailed rebuttal. But the overwhelmingly important point to notice right up front is that the reviewers (Lenski plus Josh Swamidass over at Peaceful Science and John Jay College biologist Nathan Lents) have absolutely no response to the very central argument of the book. The argument that I summarized as an epigraph on the first page of the book so no one could miss it. The one that I included in the title of a 2010 Quarterly Review of Biology article upon which the book is based. The one for which I chose the most in-your-face moniker that I could think of (consistent with the professional literature) to goad a response: The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. The rule summarizes the fact that the overwhelming tendency of random mutation is to degrade genes, and that very often is helpful. Thus natural selection itself acts as a powerful de-volutionary force, increasing helpful broken and degraded genes in the population.

And they had no response! That's because there is in fact nothing that can alleviate that fatal flaw in Darwinism. Much more to come soon.

Editor's note: Science has taken action two weeks before the release of Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution - and so should you! Be sure to order Professor Behe's new book while there's still time to get the associated pre-order perks, including a bonus chapter and immediate access to a 41-part online video course on intelligent design and evolution.