This book was the book that started it all- that is, the Intelligent Design movement. For those of you who don't know, let me explain the premise of the book (and, really, the movement). Scientists post-Darwin thought that the cell would be extremely simple. Until the 1950's that was the assumption that fit nicely in the Darwinian explanation of life. However, once microscopes were powerful enough to see the cell, they quickly saw that they were dead wrong. They found a world of complexity, a world of machinery that perform the necessary procedures to keep us alive. The idea for Behe is that there are some organelles and processes in the cell that could not have evolved.
Think about it. In order for complexity to arise out of Darwinism, there needs to be one adaptive advantage added on to another added on to another one at a time. That means that each successive step on the road to what we have to day would have to be advantageous, otherwise there would have been no reason for nature to "select" that particular trait.
Now think about if you found a machine. Behe famously uses the example of a mousetrap. Could something like this have evolved- one piece at a time? If you think about it, the answer is no. The mousetrap's single parts offer no advantage unless they are all there at once and arranged in such a fashion that the machine will operate. If all the parts of the trap aren't present, there's no advantage- it will not get selected. The entire trap must be there at one time! When this describes something it is said by Behe to be "irreducibly complex".
When we look into the world of biochemistry we see that the machines that do the work of life are far more complicated and require far more precisely-tuned parts than a simple mousetrap. What's more is that there are processes, like blood-clotting, that are extremely complex. These are processes that would be of no use, in fact they would be often fatal, if just one part of its elaborate cascading sequence didn't work. A Darwinian explanation depends on slow, piece-by-piece explanation of origin, with each successive piece being selected on the basis that organisms who had this trait would be more likely to survive. Half of a blood-clotting system, however, is worse than no blood clotting system at all! (I must spare details)
The book is split into thirds. The first section details his basic idea and some general troubles with Darwinism. The second third explains in scientific, gory detail 4 examples of irreducibly complex systems- those machines or processes that, if you don't have the whole thing, you don't have anything (that is anything helpful for survival. The last third addresses where to go from here. This is the last stage of his argument.
What do scientists do if a Darwinian solution seems highly improbable or even impossible? (The examples he uses are currently complete roadblocks for evolutionary scientists). The only situation in our experience that we see systems with irreducible complexity... are when they are designed. Behe simply asks, "Why can't we say that these systems are no exception? Our best explanation is that these systems were designed by an intelligent agent. It appears that an intellect made some things with an end-product in mind. Behe insists that we can't know anything about the designer from this argument and he spends a great deal of time discussing the implications in science and philosophy that inevitably come up with an argument like this. He also notes the easy-to-see difference between this argument from science and any form of creationism or appeal to special revelation.
Though most in the media and internet world completely (and I mean completely) misconstrue his argument, it is a very good one that is based in the bare facts of biochemistry. The idea of intelligent design is important for theists and scientists alike and it constitutes a movement that will continue despite violent opposition from the both scientific and skeptical sources, as well as the media. Why is that? It's simply because men like Behe are looking at facts. It's hard to argue with that. Honestly, if someone could construct a plausible, Darwinian explanation for the 4 items mentioned in the book, this thing would be just as the majority says- a done deal- not worth mentioning. In the absence of such explanations, however, I am compelled to wonder about the future of Darwinism...
