"The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe

I found "The Edge of Evolution" to contain rigorous arguments to show why Darwinian evolution is not the means by which species were created. His main argument draws on our knowledge gained from the fight between humans and malaria. I found this book to be carefully and thoughtfully written, and particularly like the way his arguments rely heavily on calculations performed on the available data. I have been unable to find any counter argument, so I have begun this discussion.

You need to expand on this some before we're to an adequate starting point for a debate.Please post more information as a new message in this topic.Adminnemooseus

Okay no problem, I will write a summary of the main points this week and get back to you.Thanks, Colin.

I guess I should have said this in the previous message.We're not looking for a huge amount of text - Indeed, we don't want a huge amount of text in an opening message.About 2 or 3 modest paragraphs should do it. We just need a beginnings of Behe's core theme to get things started.Adminnemooseus

Consider the Malarial parasite as a real life case study for evolution. since an anti malarial drug "chloroquine" was first mass produced sometime during WW2, it is thought that malaria developed resistance to the drug about 4 times independently. Behe is happy to call this less than 10, to be safe. All of the known resistant malarial strains have common changes in 2 amino acids, located in a section of DNA which encodes for a protein pump.Other later drugs, put up much less of a fight, and became ineffective much quicker, sometimes just weeks. These drugs could be overcome by a mutation of just one of several amino acids.By taking the estimated number of chloroquine resistant strains (10) over the past half century, the approximate number of malarial parasites in each infected host (1 trillion), and the estimated number of infected hosts in the same time 10 million, the chances of malaria developing a resistance to chloroquine is approximately 1 in 10^20.Malaria has not yet managed to overcome the problem of the sickle gene in humans, despite having a much longer time to work with than with the drug chloroquine.Keeping in mind that only 2 essential amino acid changes were required, if 4 were needed for example, that number would be 1 in 10^40, which he says is less than the estimated total number of bacteria that have ever lived on Earth.Now, the total number of humans to have ever lived is easily less than
10^20 (even generously allowing for unknown ups and downs in population). How then, if the mind boggling numbers of malaria take so long to overcome a problem requiring just 2 changes in amino acids, can the piddling number of humans be expected to have achieved a transition from ape-like creatures with less population? (for example)Edited by Colin, : No reason given.Edited by Colin, : No reason given.

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