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A Mousetrap for Darwin, and Another for Lenski

Darwin Devolves
Photo: Richard Lenski, by Zachary Blount [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons.

Today’s ID the Future extends the discussion of A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael Behe Answers His Critics, the latest from Discovery Institute Press. Here the focus is on Parts 4 and 7 of the new book, and in particular Richard Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

What has Lenski’s long-running project demonstrated? As Behe explains in the book, and elaborates on in today’s podcast:

The study has addressed some narrow points of peculiar interest to evolutionary population geneticists, but for proponents of intelligent design the bottom line is that the great majority of even beneficial mutations have turned out to be due to the breaking, degrading, or minor tweaking of pre-existing genes or regulatory regions. There have been no mutations or series of mutations identified that appear to be on their way to constructing elegant new molecular machinery of the kind that fills every cell.

Listen as Behe fills in the details with host Eric Anderson. And to go still deeper, pick up A Mousetrap for Darwin here.

Jonathan Witt

Executive Editor, Discovery Institute Press and Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Jonathan Witt, PhD, is Executive Editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and senior project manager with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His latest book is Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design (DI Press, 2018) written with Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola. Witt has also authored co-authored Intelligent Design Uncensored, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, and The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot. Witt is the lead writer and associate producer for Poverty, Inc., winner of the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award and recipient of over 50 international film festival honors.

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A Mousetrap for DarwincellsDiscovery Institute PressEric AndersonevolutiongenesID the Futureintelligent designLong Term Evolution ExperimentMichael BeheMichigan State Universitymolecular machinerymutations