A Mousetrap for Darwin

Michael J. Behe

p11 Introduction

p11 "the eclipse of Darwinism in the scientific community is well-advanced." "intellectual inertia maintains Darwinism as textbook orthodoxy."

p12 "mere evolution - and the mechanism or cause of evolution"

p12 "Darwin's claim to fame, rather, was to propose a cause for evolution that involved only mechanical considerations that science could readily study" "in the dark about the mechanism."

p12 "1940s .. neo-Darwinian synthesis" .. modern genetics. "presumptive explanation in the scientific community and popular press for the cause of evolution" .."at least for a few decades."

p13 1. The Problem for Darwin Breakthrough of the 1950s - DNA and the genetic code, information. "life is based literally on machines made of molecules" cell: "fully automated, nanoscale factory, sophisticated beyond human imagining."

p14 Levine & Davidson on "Gene regulatory networks" GRNs

p14 Bruce Alberts president National Academy of Science - protein machines

p15 "How could Darwin's clunky mechanism - one tiny, random change at a time, each followed by a long, fitful, and uncertain period of natural selection, with no ability to anticipate future needs - account for the molecular marvels that modern biology had uncovered? Increasingly the answer became, it couldn't."

p15 "So even as biologists continue at breakneck speed to discover how life actually works in the present, and despite cheerleaders in the popular press and aggressive proselytizers, origins science is in a funk. The question that Darwin was supposed to have answered - what is the reason for the unfolding of life? - stands unanswered."

p15 "Yet, for those willing to see, the solution is blazingly obvious. Whenever we come across 'logic maps' in our everyday world, or 'a factory that contains and elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines,' we immediately conclude that they were purposefully put together. Such arrangements simply reek of design. And why in such cases do we so confidently conclude design? Why - whenever we observe a purposeful arrangement of parts in our everyday world, such as, say, in an ordinary mechanical mousetrap - do we routinely conclude that intentional intelligent design is the explanation? The reason is that only minds can have purposes, so the discovery of parts arranged for a purpose allows us to infer that other minds besides our own exist."

p16 2 Into the Ring
"I first entered the fray with the 1996 publication of "Darwin's Black Box". "It was time, I decided, for science to acknowledge that pre-Darwinian biologists were right - life had indeed been purposely, intelligently designed." "soon, criticism came in force" "popularity with the public .. scientific community felt threatened .. Science organizations published official pamphlets denigrating the concept of design. .. Governments .. issued edicts against discussing design in schools."

p17 "I followed .. with "The Edge of Evolution" in 2007 and extended my case in 2019's "Darwin Devolves".

" The present book is a selection of my writings and talks over several action-packed, fun-filled decades in many battles over Darwinism and intelligent design."

Part One: A Black Box Under the Microscope

p19 "Yes, organisms come in astonishing vaieties, and , yes, they have amazing abilities. But how exactly do they do what they do? How does even a single cell live, metabolize, reproduce, and transmit information to its offspring? In 1859, When Darwin's The Origin of Species first appeared, even rudimentary answers to such questions were decades down the road."

1. Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry

2. Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design

3. Darwin under the Microscope

4. The Sterility of Darwinism

5. Boston Review on the Web

6. Darwinism and Design

7. Intelligent Design is not Creationism

8. Reply to "Of Mousetraps and Men"

9. A Review of Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God

10.Has Darwin Met His Match?

11.Hog's Tail or Bacon?

Epilogue: Restless Science

R Nave