Behe says he once fully accepted the
scientific theory of evolution, but that after reading
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), by
Michael Denton, he came to question evolution. Later, Behe came to believe that there was evidence, at a biochemical level, that some biological systems were "
irreducibly complex". He thought that these systems could not, even in principle, have evolved by
natural selection. He believed that the only possible alternative explanation for such complex structures was that they were
created by an "
intelligent designer". Irreducible complexity has been rejected by the
scientific community. The 1987
Edwards v. Aguillard U.S. Supreme Court decision barred the required teaching of
creation science from
public schools but allowed
evolutionary theory on the grounds of scientific validity. After the decision, a later draft of the textbook
Of Pandas and People (1989) systematically replaced each and every cognate of the word "
creation" with the phrase "intelligent design" or similar ID terms. The books of lawyer
Phillip E. Johnson on
theistic realism dealt directly with criticism of evolutionary theory and its purported biased "
materialist" science, and aimed to legitimize the teaching of creationism in schools. In March 1992, a conference at
Southern Methodist University brought Behe together with other leading figures into what Johnson later called the "
wedge strategy." In 1993, the "Johnson-Behe cadre of scholars" met at
Pajaro Dunes, California, and Behe presented for the first time his idea of irreducibly complex molecular machinery. Following a summer 1995 conference, "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture," the group obtained funding through the
Discovery Institute. For the 1993 edition of
Pandas, Behe wrote a chapter on
blood clotting, presenting arguments which he later presented in very similar terms in a chapter in his 1996 book ''
Darwin's Black Box''. Behe later agreed that they were essentially the same when he defended intelligent design at the Dover trial. In 1996, Behe became a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, later renamed the
Center for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promoting intelligent design.
''Darwin's Black Box'' In 1996, Behe published his ideas on irreducible complexity in his book ''
Darwin's Black Box''. Behe's refusal to identify the nature of any proposed intelligent designer frustrates scientists, who see it as a move to avoid any possibility of testing the positive claims of ID while allowing him and the intelligent design movement to distance themselves from some of the more overtly religiously motivated critics of evolution. As to the identity of the intelligent designer, Behe responds that if, deep in the woods, one were to come across a group of flowers that clearly spelled out the name "LEHIGH", one would have no doubt that the pattern was the result of intelligent design. Determining who the designer was, however, would not be nearly as easy. In 1997,
Russell Doolittle, on whose work Behe based much of the blood-clotting discussion in ''Darwin's Black Box,'' wrote a rebuttal to the statements about irreducible complexity of certain systems. In particular, Doolittle mentioned the issue of the blood clotting in his article, "A Delicate Balance." Later on, in 2003, Doolittle's lab published a paper in the
peer-reviewed journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which demonstrates that the
pufferfish lacks at least three out of 26 blood clotting factors, yet still has a workable blood clotting system. According to Doolittle, this defeats a key claim in Behe's book, that blood clotting is irreducibly complex. In reviewing a book by
Robert T. Pennock, Behe took issue with the "intelligent design" group being associated with "creationism," saying readers would typically take that to mean
biblical literalism and
young Earth creationism (YEC). In 2001 Pennock responded that he had been careful to represent their views correctly, and that while several leaders of the intelligent design movement were young Earth creationists, others including Behe were "
old-earthers" and "creationists in the core sense of the term, namely, that they reject the scientific, evolutionary account of the origin of species and want to replace it with a form of special creation."
Behe and Snoke article In 2004, Behe published a paper with
David Snoke, in the
scientific journal Protein Science that uses a simple
mathematical model to simulate the rate of evolution of proteins by point mutation, which he states supports irreducible complexity, based on the calculation of the probability of mutations required for evolution to succeed. However, the paper does not mention intelligent design nor irreducible complexity, which were removed, according to Behe, at the behest of the reviewers. Nevertheless, the
Discovery Institute lists it as one of the "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design."
Michael Lynch authored a response, to which Behe and Snoke responded.
Protein Science discussed the papers in an editorial. Numerous scientists have
debunked the work, pointing out that not only has it been shown that a supposedly irreducibly complex structure can evolve, but that it can do so within a reasonable time even subject to unrealistically harsh restrictions, and noting that Behe and Snoke's paper does not properly include natural selection and
genetic redundancy. When the issue raised by Behe and Snoke is tested in the modern framework of evolutionary biology, numerous simple pathways to complexity have been shown. In their response, Behe and Snoke assumed that intermediate mutations are always damaging, where modern science allows for neutral or positive mutations. Some of the critics have also noted that the Discovery Institute continues to claim the paper as 'published evidence for design,' despite its offering no design theory nor attempting to model the design process, and therefore not providing an alternative to random chance. Many of Behe's statements have been challenged by biologist
Kenneth R. Miller in his book, ''
Finding Darwin's God'' (1999). Behe has subsequently disputed Miller's points in an online essay.
The Edge of Evolution In 2007, Behe's book
The Edge of Evolution was published arguing that while evolution can produce changes within species, there is a limit to the ability of evolution to generate diversity, and this limit (the "edge of evolution") is somewhere between
species and
orders. In this book Behe's central assertion is that Darwinian evolution actually exists but plays only a limited role in the development and diversification of life on Earth. To this aim, he examines the genetic changes undergone by the
malaria plasmodium genome and the
human genome in response to each other's biological defenses, and identifies that "the situation resembles
trench warfare, not an
arms race", by considering the
hemoglobin-destroying, protein pump-compromising as a "war by attrition". Starting from this example, he takes into account the number of mutations required to "travel" from one genetic state to another, as well as population size for the organism in question. Then, Behe calculates what he calls the "edge of evolution", i.e., the point at which Darwinian evolution would no longer be an efficacious agent of creative biological change, arguing that purposeful design plays a major role in the development of biological complexity, through the mechanism of producing "non-random mutations", which are then subjected to the sculpting hand of natural selection.
The New Republic,
The Globe and Mail,
Science, and
Nature who were highly critical of the work noting that Behe appears to accept almost all of evolutionary theory, barring random mutation, which is replaced with guided mutation at the hand of an unnamed designer. The book earned Behe the
Pigasus Award for the year 2007.
Darwin Devolves Behe also promotes
intelligent design in his 2019 book,
Darwin Devolves, whose central premise is that the combination of random
mutation and
natural selection, apart from being incapable of generating novelty, is mainly a degradative force. Like his previous books,
Darwin Devolves received negative reviews from the scientific community, including a scathing review in
Science by
Nathan H. Lents,
Richard Lenski, and
S. Joshua Swamidass, a harsh critique by
Jerry Coyne in
The Washington Post, and a scholarly rebuttal in
Evolution from Gregory Lang and Amber Rice, Behe's colleagues at
Lehigh University. Lents said of
Darwin Devolves and
The Edge of Evolution: "his [ ] two books totally missed their marks and were easily dismissed by the scientific community." Lang and Rice's assessment noted that while Behe rightfully acknowledges that organisms have common ancestry, it is posited that a designer is required for more distant relationships like at the family level, and that the presentation of degradative processes is exaggerated with evidence of beneficial adaptations dodged. The article also criticized the use of false analogies and neglecting evidence of new genetic raw material production for evolution ("Behe is correct that the loss of genetic information is an important mechanism. However, the opposing processes of gene duplication, horizontal gene transfer, and introgression balance out gene loss, providing a source of new genetic material"). They then concluded with examples of adaptation that contradict the book's conclusions and expound on the flaws of Irreducible Complexity, adding that "why evolution by natural selection is difficult for so many to accept is beyond the scope of this review; however, it is not for a lack of evidence."
Publications Behe has written for the
Boston Review,
The American Spectator, and
The New York Times. ==Court cases==