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Be a Better Scientist. Put the Facts of Malaria in your Trove of Knowledge
This is a serious attempt to explore the limits of Darwinian Evolution. The Neo-Darwinian view is that organisms evolve by means of an accumulation of small gradual changes in the genetic code. Michael Behe’s view is that the limits of such changes in the DNA are far below the limit of the boundary between different kinds of organisms. To prove his point he uses the example of the rapidly reproducing malaria bacteria as his real-world test case. Because of malaria’s rapid reproduction and wide-spread dispersion it has undergone many times the number of reproductive generations, in just the past few centuries, than all the mammals on the earth in all the time of supposed evolutionary history. These many generations have afforded malaria the equivalent chances for random evolutionary change that should have allowed it to reach the limit of Darwinian evolution. The fact that malaria has not managed to kill all of mankind shows that the limits for macro-evolution are very low. In all its millions of generations malaria still has not conquered the cold temperature problem. It can only reproduce when the temperature is above 50 degrees. This is why it is almost unknown in North America and yet is so prevalent in Africa.
Behe explains why bacteria can easily develop immunity to drugs, such as chloral quinine. In many cases such drug resistance can be accomplished by a single point mutation of the DNA strand. Two such point mutations, in fortuitous locations, are less common but do occur. A triple set of advantageously placed DNA point mutations is quite rare and represents what Behe believes to be the limit of Darwinian evolution, “the edge of evolution,” if you will.
Behe’s argument is an important one for all interested parties to reach a real-world understanding of what evolution, through the accumulation of small gradual changes through random mutation and natural selection, can and cannot do. His argument must be answered by Neo-Darwinists, Common Descent adherents, Intelligent Design proponents, and even Scientific Creationists alike. Behe comes to the conclusion Darwinian evolution does not explain the evidence uncovered by modern micro-biology; Intelligent Design does.
Behe briefly touches on Common Descent but only long enough to state his bias in favor of it but does not deal with the alternate explanations that his conclusions for an Intelligent Designer certainly raise in the mind of the reader. The explanation for similarities between the genetic codes of different organisms can be explained by realizing that all organisms had a common Designer. One advantage of using similar genetics for different organisms is that this allows us to learn about the workings of DNA without resorting to the moral quandary of experimenting on human beings. This is to be expected when the Creator is a moral being.
This book is useful for Scientific Creationists because it forces us to grapple with the fact that mutations do happen, and they do have an effect. It is useful for our case since these accumulations of small genetic changes through mutation and natural selection can be proven to have a very limited scope. Organisms can experience micro-evolution through such processes but the macro-evolution of one kind of organism evolving into another kind of organism is beyond the realm of possibility, as is evidenced by the limits of change in the malaria bacteria over the course of millions of generations of such mutation. Malaria is still malaria.
This book is well narrated. The style employed by Patrick Lawlor is very clear. His diction is nearly flawless. This is very difficult material to listen to. Have your rewind button set to make it easy to go back and review.
9 of 13 people found this review helpful
Darwinism is often presented as THE explanation for life on our planet. But there is little evidence to support this. We can all agree with Mendel that the offspring will inherit attributes from their ancestry. It is much more difficult to demonstrate that one species is the ancestor of another species. And this does not consider the fact that our planet began as a sterile place. So, there is no original life to modify.
I liked the discussion of the malaria bug. Since it reproduces so rapidly, many generations can be studied to see what changes are taking place in the bug. The fact that genetic material that no longer provides protection is removed from available DNA was not expected by me. I tend to hang on to my tools even if I haven't used them for a while.
I recommend this book highly.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful