Michael Behe is one of the leading advocates of Intelligent Design over Evolution and he just published a book called The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. In it he argues that while yes, parasites and viruses (to name a few) do show definitive evolutionary steps because of their ability to become drug resistant, humans, could not possibly have mutations like those by chance because in his words “…we would need to wait a hundred million times ten million years. Since that is many times the age of the universe, it’s reasonable to conclude the following: No mutiation that is of the same complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years.” This is why he belives that humans could not have have evolved from apes. Nice argument but unfortunately, as pointed out by Professor of Biology Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University, his math is wrong as is much of his reasoning.
In this weeks issue (June 28th, 2007) of Nature, Dr. Miller puts forth a brilliant rebuttal of Michael Behe’s fundamental argument in his book. His comment about Behe’s error is powerful. He states, “It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics.” He further goes on to say “Behe obtains his probabilities by considering each mutation as an independent event, ruling out any role for cumulative selection, and requiring evolution to achieve an exact, predetermined result. Not only are each of these conditions unrealistic, but they do not apply even in the case of his chosen example.”
Behe is an example of someone who creates a supposed scientific fact using the right words but makes incorrect assumptions. His claim that life is irreducibly complex because “every part of such a system had to be in place for natural selection to favor it.” As Dr. Miller states, “A nice argument, except for the annoying fact that it is wrong.” He points out that many protein subsets have selectable functions that Behe claims don’t occur.
This is why intelligent design promoters fail in courts when they try to get I.D. taught in school science programs. Their science isn’t there. Not even a shred of scientific data to prove it.