Unlock the Mystery of Evolution: Darwin's Black Box and the Biochemical Challenge

AP: Brilliantly presented with very simple analogies and pictures - tackling a very difficult subject and going against the perceived wisdom of the times. Impossible to ignore its conclusions.

United Kingdom on Aug 23, 2023

Gary Dean: Very thorough and conclusive

Australia on Jun 09, 2023

padget: When reading reviews on a product or item I've already decided I will likely purchase, I tend to read the lower star ratings to determine if I should not purchase the item.

Some of the 1 star authors claimed Behe misquoted other scientists, but they clearly did not read his prologue - in it, he states that he reworded some of the quotes in order to make them a little more understandable for the lay person. They also make Michael Behe's point throughout the book of the biased, illogical lens in which Darwinian evolutionists view biology.

Behe elucidates biochemistry and irreducibly complex systems very well for the lay person, making it perfectly understandable how a gradual, step by step, Darwinian process is simply not possible to form these systems. His common sense observations against gradual Darwinian evolution are genius in their simplicity. My favorite being - '...if a protein appeared in one step with nothing to do, then mutation and natural selection would tend to - eliminate it.'

Behe also cites thoroughly how there is no relevant scientific journal or any papers submitted that has ever even attempted to explain origin or irreducible complexity....

United States on Apr 30, 2023

Amazon Customer: As advertised, no problems, all ok

Spain on Sep 25, 2022

Brett S: This book is very good, and so I give it full rating in whatever system being used. There is no superstition here nor invoking of religion, just looking hard at the evidence with a scientific eye.

I appreciated the introduction to the complexities of systems at the molecular level that this biochemist knows and so he then explained clearly and made accessible to the layman. He made great use of metaphors to explain concepts in terms of real life examples. He also has a sense of humor too - not a dry book at all!

His elucidation of the theory of intelligent design is very well thought out. His arguments and presentation of the data is so good that it is no wonder everyone who hates his book because it challenges their dogma has not really tried to refute anything in it, but instead resort to mainly hit pieces that attack made up straw man arguments of things Behe never said, instead of directly and clearly arguing against things he actually wrote about (and it has been 23 years now since the first version came out).

Since science has advanced in these past years he has recently released a new book which should also be a good read: Darwin Devolves: The New...

United Kingdom on Mar 10, 2019

Dr. C.H.E. Sadaphal: The power of Darwin’s Black Box rests in its persuasive and compelling argument against the explanation for the gradual development of life based on Darwinian evolution by natural selection. What the reader gets is a powerful, evidence-based, data-driven book that exposes Darwinian macroevolution as an archaic idea that lacks explanatory power and ultimately is scientifically bankrupt. Dr. Behe’s negative argument stands on its own, so even though he goes on to make a case for intelligent design, he never draws a conclusion of, “Therefore, it must be God.” Rather, after being educated on the falsity of Darwin’s theory, in the second part of the book the author makes an inference to the best explanation (design) while leaving the door open for science to make contributions in the future.

As a biochemist, Dr. Behe clarifies that at a molecular level, life is not only astronomically complex but irreducibly complex, and thus any plausible explanation for life must have a clear and precise elucidation of how this complexity arose. Science triumphs because it provides an explanation for “How?” If something fails to clearly and specifically answer that question, then...

United States on Jun 05, 2017

Mr. Christopher L. Stradling: I finally got round to buying this book and it has answered a nagging question that had been in my head for a couple of years. Some time ago I came across a Youtube denunciation of Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity argument, delivered by someone with a beard. It was a lecture. The beard furiously wagged up and down as it's owner (can't remember who it was) told his audience that every component protein in the bacterial flagellum had a separate function elsewhere in the cell. Since (said the beard) Behe's definition of Irreducible Complexity was a system whose constituent parts had no function outside the system, the bacterial flagellum was not irreducibly complex. When I saw this clip I wondered why Behe should weaken his argument by insisting the constituent proteins had no function outside the system in question. Well it turns out Behe never said any such thing. He clearly states in the original part of the book that the proteins in the biochemical systems he is considering can have roles elsewhere - for example, he mentions that the motor proteins in the cilium are also in use as transport vehicles, hauling cargoes along tubulin trackways inside the cell. This is confirmed...

United Kingdom on Sep 25, 2014

Geoff Puterbaugh: It surprises me that this book is more than ten years old. I guess I let my mind run on automatic pilot with regard to "Intelligent Design" --- and the autopilot tended to assume that ID was going to be completely uninteresting, like the "ideas" of a flat earth, or young-earth creationism.

This book, along with  Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design , has convinced me that my autopilot was completely mistaken. Intelligent Design is NOT "creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo." As Stephen Meyer has pointed out, the creationist movement grew out of the Bible --- it was born in Holy Writ. Intelligent Design comes out of science, most particularly the stunning discoveries about the nanotechnology in the living cell.

What we have found in the cell is an amazing, very large group of molecular machines, which could be called a nanotechnology factory. Probably the most amazing thing about this factory is that it can duplicate itself, and perhaps the most inexplicable thing is that it runs using computer technology. The genetic code found in DNA is something we might never have understood without discovering computers first, and it's also...

United States on May 14, 2011