The Edge

September 13, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

On August 26 Blogging Heads aired John McWhorter’s interview with Michael Behe about Behe’s latest book, The Edge of Evolution. The firestorm resulting from McWhorter’s open admiration for Behe’s work reminds me of the Muslim reactions to published cartoons of Mohammed, and the reasons are similar. Both reactions are reactions to degradation of men held as sacred in their respective belief systems.
In his book, Behe acknowledges value in Darwinian evolution theory, but then suggests the unthinkable: that there are limits to what Darwinian Theory can explain. This would be “the edge,” and Behe demonstrates the edge with multiple examples. The examples are not simply theoretical, but empirical. This is a threat to the view that Darwinian evolution is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all other explanations. Before Darwinism, claims of universal application were reserved for concepts such as omnipresence or omnipotence, which of course were reserved for references to deity, and then only in certain religions.
I think we need another book entitled The Edge of ID. This might help Darwinists with the problem of conflating Intelligent Design and Creationism. ID asks the question, “Is there evidence of intelligent design in the world we experience and can empirically measure?” The edge is empiricism, and involves no historical or religious texts. Religion on the other hand attempts to answer “Who is the Designer?” and draws extensively (sometimes exclusively) upon ancient texts. ID never crosses the line of the repeatable experiment.
Perhaps this inability to see the edge is why staunch Darwinists do not see the edge they cross from Darwinian science into the religious realms of explaining all and taboos of questioning the text. Everything has an edge.. unless of course it is the One God.

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