Few books will be found as informative as this one.  It enables new insights by its lucid presentation of common types of mutational change and provides a reasonable extrapolation of what this means for Darwinian evolutionary speculations.

 By a study of the development of  malaria organisms, malaria drug treatment, malarial resistance to drugs, sickle cell anemia and thalassemia in humans, simple Darwinian mechanisms appear confirmed.  However, the development is documented to be limited to a low random mutation rate never achievable by organisms more complex than P. falciparum with its ability to reproduce millions of times faster than humans.  The odds for a mutation for chloroquine drug resistance in malaria organisms was calculated to be “one in a hundred billion billion (10 to 20^th power),” a number readily reached by microbes with populations of trillions. 

                        On the average, for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, 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 mutation 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....Strict Darwinism requires a person  

                       to believe that mammalian evolution could occur without any mutation of 

                       the complexity of this one(page 61).

 Behe also points out that this mutation was not very complex but simple compared to what nature would require for mutations more complicated than hemoglobin, chloroquine resistance and P. falciparum.   

 Basically, the numbers of individuals and of years of time required for known mutations to occur in nature of unicellular creatures made up of DNA like us, preclude such in multicellular creatures whose population numbers are dwarfed by unicellulars and whose protein DNA dependent mechanisms are incredibly more complicated than in unicellulars.   

 The author admits to believing in “common descent” but rejects Darwinism as “tinkering” with neither the coherence nor the preordained steps necessary to overcome the “irreducible complexity” of the development of life.  For higher animals, the creation of thousands of protein chains in and out of cells into other specific functioning and other reproducing creatures is overwhelmingly impossible in comparison to the two amino acid disturbances studied in the malaria organisms supra.

Behe then goes to HIV with nine genes compared to genes in the thousands in malaria and a mutation rate ten thousand times greater than malaria.   And nothing major in the developmental sense happens:  no new protein-protein interactions, no better molecular machines, no ascendancy, nothing in spite of huge population sizes in fairly simple creatures.               

                         The bottom line:  Despite huge population numbers and intense selective

                         pressure, microbes as disparate as malaria and HIV yield similar, minor,

                         evolutionary responses.   Darwinists have loudly celebrated studies of    

                         finch beaks, showing modest changes in the shapes and sizes of beaks 

                         over time, as the finches food supplies changed.  But here we have

                         genetic studies over thousands upon thousands of generations, of trillions

                         upon trillions of organisms and little of biochemical significance to show

                         for it (page 140).

 Random mutations and natural selection just are not going to prove major species changing evolution nor does the cosmetic beak adjustments of finches adapting to food changes.   Complicated creatures are not to be forthcoming from mutations and natural selection when there is no evidence of even elementary complexification in relatively uncomplicated simple creatures living in a realistic actual long evolutionary time frame.  The Darwin evolutionary total theory fails at the molecular level and at the human level (Read David Stove’s Darwinian Fairytales). 

 This is not to say that significant changes cannot be recognized as regulatory genes and molecules are teased by events affecting microorganisms or by intense interbreeding, for example, of dogs through thousands of generations over 130,000 years...but the organism is still the same organism and the dog (any of the 150 breeds of dog) is still a dog genetically identical to the gray wolf.  These changes do not deserve the label “natural selection” (an inflated sacred phrase to Darwinists) but “natural adjustments” by feedback in dynamic systems capable of natural modifications under the appropriate natural situations whether random or by design.  Whatever happens in the changes we can observe are always species limited and can only wishfully be thought of as “evolutionary” evidence for the creation of other or new species.

 The author’s acceptance of “common descent” is clarified by the discovery of master regulatory molecules which control the development of analogous body systems of supposedly totally unrelated organisms (Behe points out, for example, the Hox proteins of the fruit fly have a human counterpart for analogous sections of the human embryo (page 180-181)).  When I read this part of the book, my insight was that “Behe is wrong about “common descent,” because “common design” is more like it!   And, furthermore, evolution is not “descent,” but “ascent!”  What is most important and obvious is that all creatures share the same molecular fire however manifest, but that does not mean we are related in any significant sense.  Breathing air or using water means no more of a significant developmental relationship than using amino acids.   Humans share 99% of human DNA with some chimpanzees; 74% with the domestic dog and gray wolf; 40% with the banana and some 200 genes are in common with bacteria.  None of that means “common descent,” but that there is a common design and that the common creatures of life are well organized in distinct specificity while using the same building blocks.   Darwin confused “similarity” for “transitioned” or “related” when the only real linkage between different creatures is the use of the same building blocks of life.  Anything more complicated than that is just a nice sweet fashionable Darwin bogus hype snobbery theophobia story.

 For me, a card game analogy helps:  Instead of spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs, the game of life is played with amino acids (primarily left-handed ones at that, a mind boggling fact) and the game is called “Being.”  All beings get an amino acid “hand” to play in material existence, and, in general, the more amino acids the better.  But each creature can only play its own same species specific and species defining “flop” to use a poker term.  The creature can only play the flop it has been dealt, but its hand can be altered by other hands playing the same amino acid game.  The creature’s hand can change consistent with stimuli affecting it, but its basic-being-defining flop never does.    Different creatures may even use each other’s amino acids, but that does not mean identity or significant relationship.   And if the being has a thinking soul with consciousness-of-consciousness, it can transition into transcendental fire with eternal existence (But that is hard to prove). 

 Behe lays the basis for the “common design” of life now readily seen as a symphony rather than a “survival of the fittest” war, a fact obvious to humans who recognize that entropy (sin and suffering) is a real accompaniment of  the consciousness-of-consciousness (C squared) spiritual transcendental level of human existence which goes beyond biology.  The plain old humdrum truth is that Darwinism sounds good, but it has not been scientifically demonstrated, the improbabilities cannot be ignored, and it denies itself when it refuses to look beyond man as an evolutionary creature advancing to another level.

 See, I told you this book was stimulating.  The Edge of Evolution is very informative, challenging, convincing and thought provoking.  In fact, I cannot get “common design” out of my mind, because it clarifies the unity of the life process appropriate for a Creator to create coherently by forming matter in truth, oneness, good and beauty and in the transcendental freedom to know, love and serve Him once it reaches a level of consciousness of consciousness enabling a chosen final personal spiritual evolving.