Mainstream evolutionary biologists are independently arriving at very similar conclusions to Behe’s central thesis in Darwin Devolves, the one that drew the most wrath from critics. In light of Andrew Murray’s article in Current Biology, Behe appears to be vindicated.

Enjoy this excerpt from the new book Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell, taken from chapter 1, by Robert A. Alston, PhD, an electrical engineer with Picatinny Arsenal and a former NASA special projects engineer.

A useful myth is hard to put down. The Galileo myth gives a premiere illustration. Ever since John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White fostered the “warfare thesis” of “science vs religion” in the late 19th century, appealing to the Galileo affair as the example par excellence, historians have had little luck convincing the scientific establishment that their version of the Galileo story is flawed.

Philosophers are making some important and interesting contributions to the conversation about biological origins. A new paper in the Italian philosophy journal Humana Mente, “Residuals of Intelligent Design in Contemporary Theories about Language Nature and Origins,” observes that the arguments of intelligent design proponents are applicable to many explanations of the origins of language.

Yale neurologist Steven Novella asked a question in 2007: “[C]an materialism/naturalism be falsified?” And answered “I argue that it cannot be.” Of course, the answer to Novella’s question depends on how we define materialism or naturalism (the two terms are indistinguishable for his, and our, purposes here). And on this point Novella is unclear.