CLEARING THE PATH

The field of biochemistry has unlocked many of the secrets of the cell.  What has been found is a microscopic world of incredible complexity.   Modern science has learned that, ultimately, life is a molecular phenomenon.  All organisms are made of molecules that act as the “nuts and bolts, gears and pulleys” of biological systems. 

Although science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, scientists have been bewildered in their attempts to explain the origin of life's complexity from a naturalistic, evolutionary standpoint.  The elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level simply cannot be explained as having originated in a slow, step-by-step process as Darwinism would require.  

Many scientists have asserted that explanations are already in hand, or will be in hand sooner or later.  However, no support for such assertions can be found in the professional science literature.  More importantly, there are compelling reasons—based on the structure of theses molecular systems—to think that a Darwinian explanation will never be adequate in explaining the origin of the mechanisms of life.  Many evolutionists see the problems but don’t want to (or refuse to) admit it. 

Michael Behe is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University.  In his book, Darwin’s Black Box (1), he argues that the evidence of evolution’s flaws have been right under our noses—but it is so small that we have only recently been able to see it.  Behe demonstrates, using many examples, that the biochemical world is comprised of an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts.  The more complex and interdependent each machine’s parts are shown to be, the harder it is to envision their origin through a Darwinian, gradualistic pathway.   

Behe is not a creationist.  He believes in the scientific method and argues persuasively that biochemical machines must have been designed, whether by God or by some other higher intelligence.  Once he signed a contract to write his book, he surveyed the professional literature for proposed Darwinian explanations for the origin of complex biological systems.  He suspected that such proposed explanations would be few and far between.  But what he found was a total, systematic absence of any such attempts to describe these complex systems in Darwinian terms. The literature was completely silent on the subject. 

Darwin acknowledged the challenge that complex systems posed for his theory.  One example he used to handle the issue was the complexity of the eye.  In the nineteenth century, the anatomy of the eye was known in detail.  Scientists knew that if a person lacked any of the eye’s many integrated features, the result would be a severe loss of vision or outright blindness.  They concluded that the eye could function only if it were nearly intact.  Darwin knew about the eye too. He discussed the problem in the section of the book appropriately entitled “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication”(2).  For evolution to be believable, Darwin had to convince the public that complex organs could be formed in a step-by-step process. 

Cleverly, Darwin didn’t try to discover a real pathway that evolution might have used to make the eye.  Rather, he pointed to modern animals with different kinds of eyes, (ranging from the simple “light-sensitive spot” to the complex vertebrate eye), and suggested that the evolution of the human eye might have involved simpler organs as intermediates. 

However, after great advances in biochemistry, it is no longer enough for an evolutionist to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century (and as many evolutionists continue to do today).  Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involve staggeringly complicated biochemical processes.  Darwin’s contention that the eye could have evolved from the simplest light-sensitive spot to the sophisticated camera-eye of man is dashed when we realize that even the simplest light-sensitive spot is exceedingly complex.  Hence, evolutionists who honestly look at the molecular evidence face a serious dilemma.

Regarding the problems for evolution created by complex organ systems, Darwin stated: 

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.(3) 

So Darwin is saying that if any complex system could be found that could not possibly have been formed by successive, slight modifications, then his whole theory would be a bust.  It is Behe’s contention that any irreducibly complex system is just such a system, and that there are an innumerable number of such systems.. By irreducibly complex, Behe means: .

.…a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.  An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly… because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.(4) 

Evolutionists may counter that formation of irreducibly complex systems simply requires multiple simultaneous mutation—that evolution might be less likely than originally thought, but still possible.  Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted, yet it is an empty argument.  As the my page on Genetics showed, mutations are extremely rare and always harmful.  To expect multiple beneficial mutations all at once is beyond the realm of possibility.  Scientific explanations invoke causes.  Such sudden events would also be irreconcilable with the gradualism Darwin envisioned.  Evolutionist Richard Dawkins explains the problem this way:

Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual.  But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes.  For if it is not gradual in these cases it ceases to have any explanatory power at all.  Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation.(5)

The reason why this is true rests in the nature of mutation.  Generally a single mutation can, at best, make only a very small change in a creature.  It cannot simultaneously affect the numerous parts of an irreducibly complex system.  Here lies the basis of Behe’s arguments.  As Behe states, if we can show that even one system possesses the characteristics of being irreducibly complex, then we have essentially disproved Darwin’s theory of gradual change over long periods of time produced by random mutations, and his theory “absolutely break[s] down.”  Behe illustrated many such systems in detail and convincingly demonstrated that each one could not possibly have come about in a gradual manner.  (I did not find it necessary to list all of Behe's findings here...refer to Behe's book for the actual examples.)

So what does the evolutionary community have to say in response to Behe?  If you were to get on the internet and read some of the criticisms of Behe’s work, you’ll think he is a crank and a fraud.  His work, we are told, had been “thoroughly discredited,” “completely demolished” and “utterly destroyed.”  However, the critics cannot question his discussions of biochemistry, as this is Behe’s field of expertise.  His credentials are unquestionable.  One biochemist, James Shapiro, said that Darwin’s Black Box had actually understated the complexity of the cell’s systems !!(6) 

Behe’s challenge has been so unsettling that many in the biological community find it easier to pretend his work has been discredited than actually to engage it.  A convenient fiction has emerged in which biologists continually reassure each other that Behe has been refuted but fail to provide an actual refutation.(7)  That's where we stand today.  Behe's work is right on point and there has been no legitimate refutation.

In media reports on intelligent design, one often hears the following sound bite:  “Life is too complicated to have arisen by natural forces, so it must have been designed.”  This sound bite captures many people’s intuitions about intelligent design, but is too simplistic for scientific purposes.  Behe has shown us how to interpret this claim, substituting the rigorously defined phrase irreducibly complex for the vague and undefined phrase too complicated, and he has shown us how to reason our way properly from the inadequacy of undirected natural forces to design.(8)

Media reports claim intelligent design is a "faith-based" alternative to evolution based entirely on religion rather than scientific evidence, that it’s just creationism repackaged by religious fundamentalists in order to circumvent a 1987 Supreme Court prohibition against teaching creationism in the public schools.
 

In reality, the modern theory of intelligent design was developed by a group of scientists who were trying to account for the origin of the digital information encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule.  The information-bearing properties of DNA provided them strong evidence of a prior but unspecified designing intelligence. 

In 1953 when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery.  The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code.  Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions, or information, for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive.  As famed evolutionist Richard Dawkins has acknowledged, “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”  Bill Gates has noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created.”(9) 

After the early 1960s, further discoveries made it clear that the digital information in DNA and RNA is only part of a complex information processing system, an advanced form of nanotechnology that both mirrors and exceeds our own in its complexity, design logic and information storage density.  Today, the questions of where this digital information came from lies at the heart of origin-of-life research. 

Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed.  To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has come close to explaining the origin of the digital information needed to build the first living cell.  There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone.  And the information in DNA has also been shown to defy explanation by reference to the laws of chemistry. 

Yet, the scientists arguing for intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes, chance, or laws have failed to explain the origin of the information.  They also argue for design because we know from experience that systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes.  DNA functions like a software program.  Software obviously comes from programmers.  Information always arises from an intelligent source.  So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren't there to observe the system coming into existence.

Thus, contrary to media reports, the theory of intelligent design is not based upon ignorance or religion but instead upon recent scientific discoveries and upon standard methods of scientific reasoning in which our uniform experience of cause and effect guides our inferences about what happened in the past.  Of course, many will still dismiss intelligent design as nothing but warmed over creationism or as a “religion masquerading as science.”  But intelligent design, unlike creationism, is not necessarily based upon the Bible.  Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority.

According to neo-Darwinism, wholly undirected processes such as natural selection and random mutations are fully capable of producing the intricate designed-like structures in living systems.  In their view, natural selection can mimic the powers of a designing intelligence without itself being directed by an intelligent designer.  In contrast, the theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause.  As Behe pointed out, and many biologists agree, this appearance of design cannot be merely an illusion.  Natural selection could not have produced this appearance in a neo-Darwinian fashion, one tiny incremental mutation at a time.

As neo-Darwinists explain it, natural selection preserves or “selects” functional advantages.  If a random mutation helps an organism survive, it can be preserved and passed on to the next generation.  Yet these irreducibly complex mechanisms, as Behe detailed at length, have no function until after all of its parts have been assembled.  Thus, hypothetically, natural selection can supposedly "select" or preserve the machine once it has arisen as a functioning whole, but it can do nothing to help build it in the first place.  This leaves the origin of molecular machines unexplained by the mechanism of natural selection.
 

Based upon our uniform and repeated experience, we know of only one type of cause that produces irreducibly complex systems:  intelligence.  Whenever we encounter irreducibly complex systems, such as an integrated circuit or an internal combustion engine, we know invariably a designing engineer played a role.  Yet even the simplest cell is much more complex than anything created by man.  Intelligent design best explains the origin of molecular machines within cells.  Molecular machines appear designed because they were designed. 

In order to detect design two features must be present: complexity and specification.  Complexity guarantees that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily be attributed to chance. Specification guarantees that the object exhibits the right sort of pattern associated with intelligent causes. 

In Steps Toward Life, Manfred Eigen states what he takes as the central problem facing origins-of-life research:  “Our task is to find an algorithm, a natural law that leads to the origin of information.”(10)  All of the scientific laws known to man contradict the possibility that life could have started on its own.  That is why scientists like Elgen continue to look for some as-yet unknown principle or "algorithm" to explain how it could have happened.  

The great myth of modern evolutionary biology is that information can be gotten without recourse to intelligence.(11)  Algorithms and natural laws are incapable of explaining the origin of information.  Algorithms and natural laws can explain the flow of information and the transmission of already existing information.  What they cannot do, however, is originate information.(12)

Pure chance, entirely unsupplemented and left to its own devices, is incapable of generating complexity and specificity.  Chance can generate complex unspecified information, and chance can generate non-complex specified information.  What chance cannot generate is information that is both complex and specified.  Once the improbabilities (i.e., complexities) become too vast and the specifications too tight, chance is eliminated.(13)   The molecular mechanisms of even the simplest cell system aptly demonstrates this.

The objections to design cannot properly be called scientific objections.  They do not, for instance, find fault with design by arguing that specified complexity (the criterion for detecting design) is imprecisely defined or cannot be empirically tested.  The objections are better called “gatekeeper” objections.  They find fault with design because of the threat that design is said to pose to science and not because the theoretical or empirical case for design is substandard.(14) 

Another objection to intelligent design is that it is nothing but scientific creationism in disguise. However, intelligent design does not have any prior religious commitments and interprets the data of science only by accepted scientific principles.  Contrary to most evolutionists, it was not their beliefs which led these scientists to intelligent design, but their scientific findings which led them to their beliefs.  

Although there are many Christians within the Intelligent Design movement, the IDM exists primarily to refute Darwinian evolution. It does not exist to promote Christianity or biblical creation.  The Intelligent Design Movement has limited its scope to the single question of whether something is designed or not.  It does not endorse any particular religious view.  There is certainly no scientific proof that a Supreme God does not exist, so logically and scientifically, the possibility that the discovered intelligence is a product of a Supreme Being cannot be dismissed.