Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

Two recent scientific publications tell this story. First, in 2007, Michael Behe published a book, The Edge of Evolution, amplifying the results of his 2004 paper with David Snoke. Using public-health data about a genetic trait—resistance to the antimalarial drug chloroquine in the one-celled organism that causes malaria—Behe provided another line of evidence and argument to support the conclusion that multiple coordinated mutations are often necessary to produce even minor genetic adaptations. Based on public-health data, Behe determined that resistance to chloroquine only arises once in every 1020 malaria-causing cells. Behe inferred, by working the problem backwards, that the trait probably required multiple—though not necessarily coordinated—mutations to develop. He called this trait a “chloroquine complexity cluster,” or a “CCC.”29 Behe wanted to explore what he called the “edge of evolution,” the limits to the creative power of mutation and selection at the genetic level. Having established that this trait could arise by random mutation in a reasonably short period of time, he wondered how much time would be required to produce traits of greater complexity in populations of various sizes. He asked his readers to consider a hypothetical genetic trait twice as complex as a CCC cluster—a feature requiring the origin of two coordinated traits, each as complex as a CCC. In other words, Behe wondered how long it would take to develop a hypothetical trait that required two ...