Reality of Life - Rated 
If I have nothing to hide then I should not be worried about any questioning.I wonder why evolutionary biologist are so defensive and do not allow anybody to even question their science. Afterall science is the name of questionning, is it not? by questionning science moves forward only. This book is based on real world examples with real world facts supported by science completely and not hypothetical stuff where questionning is not allowed. When "intelligent Design" is not afraid of questionning then why darwinist, evolutionary biologist etc are?
A worthy contribution to the evolution debate - Rated
I have read a number of books on both sides of the evolution debate and this rates as worthy contribution to the topic. This is not one of my personal favourites simply because it covers very familiar ground for me. Nonetheless, it is well written, well thought out and probably a better choice for people either new to the topic or with a modest background in maths and science. Worthy alternatives are (pro-evolution): "The Blind Watchmaker" and "Climbing Mount Improbable" and (pro-design): "Evolution a Theory in Crisis" and "Darwin's Black Box". Personally, I would suggest always reading one pro-evolution and one pro-design book together if you are trying to get a reasonably balanced view of the topic. There are extremists on both sides of this subject and occasionally objectivity is clouded by bias, emotion or fuzzy logic or rarely outright untruths.
I have seen a number of reviews suggesting that the pro-design books listed above (including this title) are somehow unscientific, biased or incorrect. My reading around the topic and personal area of expertise suggests that such people are merely cranks (i.e. they seem to be somewhat uninformed). I have not been able to find a single case where such charges or simple dismissals can be convincingly substantiated (against any of the above books). Personally, I am convinced that this is an honest and serious debate and well worth the time and effort involved in understanding it. For me personally, it has been very enjoyable.
IDiot? Hardly - Rated 
The argument runs basically thus: given the rate of beneficial mutations observed in all the generations of malaria vs medicine over the last 50 years, we are not statistically entitled to expect any modifications necessitating more than 2 new protein-protein binding sites to ever occur randomly (resistance to chloroquine, which requires 2 coherent point mutations, occurred once in 10^20 parasites). The evidence that highly complex cellular machinery could have developed at a rate of at most two mutations at a time is nonexistent, hence it is not "biologically reasonable" to attribute said machinery to the mechanism of random variation + natural selection.
This obviously isn't a watertight proof. Maybe someday someone will be able to sketch out a pathway from zero to flagellum (say) proceeding exclusively by single or double mutations, each of which results in a survival advantage compared to that which preceeded it. Or even if they don't, that doesn't prove such a pathway couldn't exist. The thing is, given that so many reviews from Darwinists seem to utterly and (surely) wilfully miss the point - Dawkins, bizarrely, goes on and on about dogs - I begin to suspect that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The last couple of chapters are dedicated to answering objections and attempting to explain and defend what ID is all about, making reference to Physics and Chemistry too. I especially enjoyed this part of the book, particularly the section dedicated to scientists caught listing all the biological discoveries they had never expected on the basis of Darwinism. So much for the complaint that ID doesn't make predictions.
Let's face it: a book this controversial can't fail to be worth reading, and it doesn't. Just watch out for the Great Danes.
Well written and thought out - Rated
Despite the hostility of some reviewers, I found this to be a good book.
Behe examines latests results regarding the powers of random mutation and wants it wanting. In the books' centerpiece examples, he examines how much random mutations can do in malarial parasites and bacteria. These organisms have very small generation times, so scientists have been able to test in the lab what would be worth millions of years of time for us vertebrates. According to Behe's analysis, evolution relying on random mutation has very limited powers.
Some critics here have pointed to dog breeding and bacterial resistance as counterexamples to Behe. In my opinion these critics should at least have mentioned that Behe actually uses both as examples of the powers and limits of random mutation + natural selection in his book. In my opinion, he is correct to point out that one has to analyse what is actually going on in the changes to see whether darwinism is true. In the dog mutations, no new molecular machines, cell types etc. are created. Having different dog breeds don't automatically demonstrate that the same process could have built man gradually from small bacteria.
Indeed, most criticisms are well dealt with by Behe in his book. Others are dealt with at his Amazon blog. In my opinion, his arguments are not easy to dismiss.
In the book, Behe also expands on his influential "irreducible complexity" argument again undirected evolution. Behe's criticism is made unusual by the fact that he accepts common descent, but believes that it was guided by an intelligent designer. Many other scientists have been of the opinion that darwinian processes as traditionally conceived do very little, but a smaller percent believe in the theory of Intelligent design: the idea that life's complex machinery came about through intelligent design, just as human machinery came about through human design.
A step forward for Intelligent Design - Rated
Behe's first book, "Darwin's Black Box", was one of the books that made the Intelligent Design debate more visible. Proponents of ID argue that it is possible to argue on the basis of scientific evidence that life (or the universe) requires intelligent input of some sort. This differs from creationism, that argues fundamentally for the presence of God on the basis of the authority of a religious text. However, since like creationism, ID excludes the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of various phenomena, it has aroused the indignation of many of the same opponents, who are keen to characterise ID as being no more than "creationism in a cheap tuxedo".
So it is inevitable that this book will polarise the opinions of readers - or potential readers: enough people who know Behe by reputation may well weigh in on either side of the debate without actually bothering to read "The Edge of Evolution".
However, what is of more importance than the debate between nay-sayers and yay-sayers are the issues that Behe raises. He goes substantially beyond "Darwin's Black Box" here. In his first book, he argues that complex biochemical machinery could not arise by chance. In this book, he suggests that "the edge of evolution" - the most complicated achievement that a purely darwinist process could hope to achieve - is much less complex than (say) a machine like the bacterial flagellum. He makes the case for this in mathematical terms - calculations that are more biologically specific than those presented by Dembski in "The Design Inference" - and backs up his case by looking at two specific biological systems in some detail - the malaria parasite and the AIDS virus.
In effect, he is arguing that whilst darwinism is an adequate means of explaining microevolution (such as antibiotic resistance, the preservation of the sickle-cell mutation, and resistance to antimalarial drugs), it is not powerful enough to produce macroevolution. He is quite careful about his terminology here; he accepts both natural selection and common descent, but argues that random mutation - a required plank of darwinism - is not up to the task required of it.
One of the major charges made against ID is its refusal to identify either a designer or a process. Behe points out again that identification of a designer is not inherent in the identification of design, but does propose a process. He argues that life as we see it has to be a highly non-random outcome of processes - and therefore, the designer might work by manipulating these processes. This might mean engineering mutations throughout the history of life to bring about the desired end. Is this distinguishable from random mutations? He would argue, yes - if an outcome is very low probability, then it is not an adequate or reasonable explanation to suggest that it is random. Even Dawkins - the loudest proponent of darwinism - accepted this in "The Blind Watchmaker", where he suggested that if life could be shown to be unlikely to arise once in the galaxy, then the assertion that life was the product of chance would be unreasonable. Of course, this was written in those innocent, pre-"Rare Earth" days when Carl Sagan was confidently asserting that there were probably thousands of intelligent life forms all around us in the universe.
Behe's book is a serious attempt to move the debate on - and has been accompanied by serious attempts by darwinist heavyweights to get people to ignore him - see Behe's blog on amazon.com for details of his interactions with such. Of course, you need an open mind if you are going to accept that there might be an intelligent designer - whoever or whatever that happened to be. But isn't that what we post-enlightenment thinkers are supposed to have?
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