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This book has garnered a great deal of attention, for it is an anti-Darwinist's dream: a biochemist, of all people, who claims to have derived an irrefutable scientific argument against the evolution of species, and thus for intelligent design (i.e. God). In truth, this book is little more than proof that one's status as a knowledgeable biochemist is no obstacle to being an idiot when it comes to evolutionary theory. Let me not mince words: when Behe writes about biochemical processes, he knows whereof he speaks. When he writes about evolution, he hasn't a clue. I can summarize his most basic error and leave it at that: Behe's central argument is that complex biochemical systems exist that, if one were to remove a single part, the entire system would cease to function. The chances of such a system arising de novo, by random chance, are astronomical, and the notion that such a scheme could come about by incremental changes is also absurd, since the function does not exist until the scheme is finished. What Behe completely fails to understand, however, is how complex systems truly can evolve from initially simple ones. Imagine a task that is achieved by a single molecule; over time, this molecule is duplicated. The second copy is not necessary, but is maintained in the genome; over time, it mutates (as does the original) until the process now requires both molecules. Voila: "irreducible complexity" is in fact reducible. One need not even be an expert in evolution to grasp this. To grasp Behe's argument, however, one must be ignorant, perhaps willfully so, and at the same time be willing to enter into the fallacy that the existence of God (or of "intelligent design") is a matter that science or logic is capable of addressing. Behe's book, unlike his career as a biochemist, is built not on science, but wishful thinking. As such, the blurbs referring to "hidebound academics" who "blindly" persist in adhering to Darwinian theory, are the worst sort of yellow journalism. Astronomers would appear "blind" and "hidebound" as well if irrational fools kept dragging them into court to defend the notion that the planets revolve around the sun and not the Earth. Of course, unlike Darwin, the Copernican notion hasn't threatened anyone's parochial world-view since the 1600's or so...