The New York Times is going to publish Richard Dawkin’s review of Michael Behe’s new book on Sunday. It was previously up behind the TimesSelect wall, but it’s now available for public viewing.
Here’s a selection of what Dawkins has to say about The Edge of Evolution:
I had expected to be as irritated by Michael Behe’s second book as by his first. I had not expected to feel sorry for him.
…
After his humiliation in court [at the Dover trial], Behe — the star witness for the creationist side — might have wished to re-establish his scientific credentials and start over. Unfortunately, he had dug himself in too deep. He had to soldier on. “The Edge of Evolution” is the messy result, and it doesn’t make for attractive reading.
…
Behe correctly dissects the Darwinian theory into three parts: descent with modification, natural selection and mutation. Descent with modification gives him no problems, nor does natural selection. They are “trivial” and “modest” notions, respectively. Do his creationist fans know that Behe accepts as “trivial” the fact that we are African apes, cousins of monkeys, descended from fish?
…
… Behe, as is normal at the grotesquely ill-named Discovery Institute (a tax-free charity, would you believe?), where he is a senior fellow, has bypassed the peer-review procedure altogether, gone over the heads of the scientists he once aspired to number among his peers, and appealed directly to a public that — as he and his publisher know — is not qualified to rumble him.
The review makes me wish that the people who read (and believe) Behe’s books were the same people that read the New York Times.
Alas.
[tags]atheist, atheism, New York Times, Michael Behe, Richard Dawkins, The Edge of Evolution, Dover, Intelligent Design, Charles Darwin, Discovery Institute[/tags]