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This week is a time for giving thanks. Here’s one thing I’m thankful for that I am adding to my list: I am grateful for a scientist named Michael Behe. If you share my gratitude, I hope you will consider the next few days —  culminating in Giving Tuesday, November 27 — as an opportunity to help Mike get the word out about his next book.

Twenty-two years ago Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box launched the intelligent design movement onto the national stage. I’m grateful to him for taking that courageous step. He’s drawn a lot of fire over the years for speaking scientific truth to power. And now he’s giving us something more to be grateful for — his newest book, the excellent Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution. 

If you want to express your gratitude and support for Behe and his latest work, I encourage you to go here to fund a global educational campaign focused around the book. Let’s get him and his argument in front of as many people as possible.

Darwin’s Black Box was big. But the impact of Darwin Devolves may be even bigger. I’m convinced it has the power to persuade a new generation to scrap modern evolutionary theory, and embrace design.

The Polar Bear as Darwinian Exemplar

In the first chapter, Behe the Darwin skeptic throws a curve ball. The neo-Darwinian mechanism did create the polar bear from the brown bear, he announces. But, as he explains, it did so by damaging or breaking existing genes. It did it through devolution. 

Behe distills the essence of Darwin Devolves:

This book…concentrates on completely unexpected, devastating new problems that could only have come to light after major recent advances in technical methods for probing the molecular level of life. With surpassing irony it turns out that, as with the polar bear, Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counter-intuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully de-volutionary. 

Why is that significant? Since Darwin’s mechanism “works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain,” it is self-limiting. Behe says it’s like if you desperately needed slightly better gas mileage from your car, you could rip out the back seat and, presto! — better gas mileage. It’s a neat tactic, and essentially the same devolutionary trick that nature used to create the polar bear. But it’s not one that can build new cars, new cellular machines, new organs, or new animal body plans. Only intelligent design can do that. 

Darwin Devolves gives example after example of evolution by devolution. Behe shows that the pattern is everywhere in biology, with fresh examples discovered every year. 

What biologists aren’t finding are examples of evolution by, well, evolution — that is, unguided evolutionary processes generating novel organs, novel body plans, and the new biological information needed for such inventions. 

The book offers a powerful case against modern evolutionary theory. And it reaches its climax with a carefully posed argument for intelligent design. 

How You Can Help Change Minds

The publisher, HarperOne, is strongly behind the book, and we want to give it an extra big push of our own. We here includes you. An immediate groundswell of online giving from you can make the following happen:

• Allow more posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to reach a broader audience.
• Expand Dr. Behe’s talk-radio book tour.
• Purchase key e-mail lists that specifically reach young people, scientists, and educators.
• Expand our Google digital information campaigns.
• Fund a high-impact short video.

Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemist and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, is one of the founding leaders of the intelligent design movement. He was hugely influential 22 years ago, and his influence remains no less powerfully felt. Recently his work helped turn renowned paleontologist Günter Bechly from Darwinism to design. How many brilliant scientists might Behe’s newest book pull into the light? And how many young people will they, in turn, influence? 

If that’s a prospect you welcome, be a force multiplier, and honor Mike’s long years of brave service in the cause, by giving today. 

Photo: Polar bear, by robynm, via Pixabay.