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Canadian writer gets positive review of Edge of Evolution published in Philadelphia Inquirer

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Cameron Wybrow wrote me a while back wanting to know why most legacy Canadian mainstream media will not publish anything about the intelligent design controversy beyond the often incompetent or politically motivated stuff that the New York Times would put out.

I said it was my guess that the legacy media would go under before they would update their thinking and ask obvious questions like, “Could it be that there IS something wrong with Darwinism, and that that is why Darwinists must attempt to ruin the careers of anyone who questions it?”

Well, I underestimated Cameron. He now writes to say,

After many failed tries, I hit upon a newspaper to publish a positive review of Behe, and a major newspaper, too — The Philadelphia Inquirer. It runs about 700,000 copies for its Sunday edition! My review is going to be in tomorrow, Sunday August 19th.

He will send me the text of the review after it appears in the Inquirer, or else I will link to it. He adds,

The editor, who is not hostile to ID but is more of a fan of Francis Collins, was going to try to get Collins to write a “con” review to match my “pro” review. I don’t know if he succeeded. If so, the result would be a unique pair of dueling reviews — good publicity for Dr. Behe, I think. But if not, at least my review will be the first positive review of Behe published in a major print medium (outside of Christian magazines, that is). I hope it balances things a little.

Yes,and I hope it helps a few intelligent people face up to the significance of Behe’s Edge of Evolution challenge to Darwinism.

Update: You can read the article for free here, but you must sign up.

Further Update: Here it is, with no registration required.

One thing Wybrow does is go after the reviewers who have attempted to hide Behe’s findings in damning reviews:

A large part of each [hostile] review is ad hominem, concerned with Behe’s alleged religious agenda, his minority status among biologists, and other irrelevant matters. In Dawkins’ review, the science is barely touched, and it’s not clear from Ruse’s review that he has even opened the cover of the book. Behe deserves better. Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.

No. Not honestly. Not any more.

Also:

David Warren again refuses to be bullied by Darwinists

Peer review: Wonderful quotation on this recipe for squelching new ideas

The latest incontrovertible truth about human evolution overturned – yet again.

Comments
Denyse blogged about a journalist code of ethics. Perhaps there should be a "Book Reviewer Code of Ethics", requiring reviewers to preface all reviews with the statement "I have read this book in its entirety". Of course, newspapers would probably have a hard time finding enough reviewers, since I suspect that reviewing what you haven't---or have bearly read is a common practice.russ
August 20, 2007
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the payload is the author’s open question as to whether Michael Ruse even READ the book. I see the dam starting to break.tribune7
August 19, 2007
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...the payload is the author’s open question as to whether Michael Ruse even READ the book...
It is transparently obvious that none of the ID-critic reviewers read Behe's book. This is not hard to figure out, just like it is not hard to figure out that Behe's arguments and data are sound. GilGilDodgen
August 19, 2007
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dgw, This is a fascinating question you ask "Does Behe’s work rise to the level of a fundamental law of biology–defining the genetic limitations of RM +NS?" Though Behe's work is foundational to establishing the limits of evolution, his work points to a deeper foundational law of "genetic entropy". This law in biology will be even more foundational than Behe's limit on what evolution can and can't do is (Sanford 2005). That is to say that even though Behe shows that evolution can accomplish severely limited minor "beneficial adaptations" in an organism, The adaptation always comes at a cost on the molecular level to the overall genetic information that is in the original parent species of the "adapted" organism. This foundational fact lines up with what we find in the overall fossil record. The foundational law would would reflect introduction of information in a parent species with limited "speciation" away from that information of the parent species. How this formal foundational law of biology might be written may be along the lines of the conservation of information that has been proposed. What Behe's book clearly does do is illustrates that the explanatory power of RM/NS is severely limited. This is cornerstone to the ID position but is not to the level of foundational law of biology,,,,YET.bornagain77
August 19, 2007
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Does Behe's work rise to the level of a fundamental law of biology--defining the genetic limitations of RM +NS? The lack of fundamental biological laws (compared with physical laws in electromagnetics, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and relativity) is a serious shortcoming of the current model. And, one that ID has opportunity to contribute to significantly. http://www.egothemag.com/archives/2005/11/mathematical_la.htmdgw
August 19, 2007
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Here's the article with no registration required: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20070819_Pa__scientist_again_attacks_evolution.htmlruss
August 19, 2007
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I'm almost finished reading EoE. The first half of the book is what strikes me as the category killer. The falciparum data Behe presents is the largest scale observation of eukaryote evolution as it happens by a wide margin using modern techniques where we know exactly which nucleotides changed by random mutation. Nearly a trillion trillion replications - orders of magnitude more replications than the 100 million year history of mammals. What new things did falciparum build with all that opportunity given to rm+ns to add functional information? Nothing. Exactly what ID predicts given a eukaryote mutation rate of one nucleotide change per 10^9 nucleotides replicated. Statistically falciparum should cycle through every possible single nucleotide change a billion times each year and indeed this is what we observe with acquired resistance to the anti-malarial drug avoquine. Avoquine resistance requires a single nucleotide change and falciparum finds it just as often as is expected per the given eukaryote mutation rate. Falciparum should also try out all the possible double nucleotide changes but about a billion times less frequently than single nucleotide changes. Thus about one lucky individual falciparum per year out of 10^20 tries finds the double nucleotide mutation required for chloroquine resistance. Other than that falciparum did nothing. It didn't find a way to adapt to three different human hemoglobin mutations. It didn't find a way to adapt to any new hosts. It didn't find a way to survive outside very warm climates. While falciparum did nothing mammals, with orders of magnitude fewer replications, went from some presumably reptilian/shrew-like common ancestor to bats, whales, horses, rabbits, dogs, cats, humans, and much more. Mammals have the same base random mutation rate as falciparum so why has creative evolution virtually stopped for falciparum while mammals have presumably changed at warp speed in comparison? Two possible explanations are front-loaded design (all the complexity was already there in the mammal common ancestor waiting to be expressed) or Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters is somehow working for mammals but not for falciparum. Whatever the explanation it appears by the best empirical evidence we have that random mutation isn't one of those possible explanations.DaveScot
August 19, 2007
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Well, for my money Tribune7, the payload is the author's open question as to whether Michael Ruse even READ the book. I'll blog on this later, but for now, that queston has also been raised about Dawkins's "review" of Behe's book in the New York Times. See, it looks to me like the Dawinists will probably not succeed in simply preventing consideration of Behe's argument. They will more likely expose themselves to the charge of "reviewing" a book they haven't read, to discourage tohers from reading it.O'Leary
August 19, 2007
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It's very positive, and it is a big deal that the Inquirer -- a very left leaning publication -- would run it.tribune7
August 19, 2007
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I have it in front of me. It's feautred promiently and there is no counterpoint from Francis Collins. Headline is "Pa. scientist again attacks evolution"tribune7
August 19, 2007
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