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Evolution vs. Intelligent Design
Scientific evidence that God is in the details
by Richard A. Wiedenheft
The theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated the
scientific world for almost a century and a half. And while most
evangelical Christians have always disparaged and dismissed the
theory, their arguments have done little to loosen its grip on
the thinking of most scientists, educators, and millions of their
students.
But now evolution is being challenged on a new front by
scientists themselves--not necessarily Chris-tians--who are part
of what is called the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. They
claim that evolution simply cannot explain the incredible
complexity and exquisite pattern so apparent in the natural
world. On the contrary, these could only be the result of
intelligent design.
The roots of this movement can perhaps be traced back to a book
written in 1984 by three scientists. These men challenged the
validity of experiments that supposedly demonstrated that life
could have arisen by chance from some primordial soup. Near the
end of their book they write:
A major conclusion to be drawn from this work is that the
undirected flow of energy through a primordial atmosphere and
ocean is at present a woefully inadequate explanation for the
incredible complexity associated with even simple living systems,
and is probably wrong.
and is probably wrong.1
In his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe, professor of
biochemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
puts it this way:
The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of
life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous,
irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting
realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock
to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking
of life as the result of simple natural laws.2
Irreducible complexity
One of the cornerstones of Behe's arguments is the concept of
irreducible complexity. A system or a mechanism can be reduced to
a point beyond which it becomes a pile of junk. He uses the
example of a mousetrap: It is so designed that removing any one
of its five essential parts renders it utterly useless for
catching mice. Either all the parts are present, properly
connected, and functioning, or the mousetrap doesn't work.
I like to illustrate this principle with a car. It's full of
devices and decorations that aren't essential for transportation.
The radio, the windows, and the chrome bumpers could
theoretically have been added over a long time by gradual
improvements and changes to a functioning car. But remove one of
the four wheels or the steering wheel or the flywheel, and you've
got an expensive pile of junk that won't go anywhere.
All the essential parts of an automobile have to be in place and
operating together at the same time, or it won't function at all
as a means of transport. You can't have a partially evolved
automobile that limps along somehow without any steering control
mechanism until some evolutionary process just happens to create
a steering wheel that just happens to be capable of transferring
its rotation to moveable wheels on the ground!
Geoffrey Simmons, M.D., calls this "all-or-none," or
the "whole-package phenomenon (WPP)."3 The whole
package has to be in place, or nothing gets accomplished.
The living world is full of "whole packages"--intricate
yet irreducibly complex mechanisms and processes. These present a
huge problem for the theory of evolution, which posits that
complex forms of life can develop step by step from simpler
forms, gradually adding functionality as they become more and
more complicated. As Behe says:
An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly... by
slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because
any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a
part is by definition nonfunctional.4
Even Charles Darwin recognized this "Achilles' heel" of
his theory. Behe quotes from The Origin of the Species: "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."5
In Darwin's day, however, scientists were just beginning to
recognize that living organisms were made of cells, which they
understood little about. The cell was an unknown or, as Behe
terms it, a "black box." The presumption was that once
they came to understand the cell, scientists would find simple
structures and processes that would support the theory of
evolution.
"Simple" cells
When I studied biology in high school and college in the 1960s,
teachers talked of simple cells and simple one-celled animals.
The thinking was that amino acids somehow developed into
uncomplicated functioning cells, which eventually adapted to
their environment to become more complicated cells, which
developed into multi-cellular plants and animalsand on and
on until all the life forms as we know them today were developed.
So the theory went.
However, with the advent of the electron microscope in the
mid-twentieth century, scientists could begin to open the
"black box" of the cell. Around the same time, X-ray
crystallography enabled researchers to determine the structure of
various molecules, including complex protein molecules. These
advances revealed far more complexity than anyone had ever
imagined. The simplest of cells is anything but simple.
Geoffrey Simmons estimates that every
cell contains one billion compounds including five million
different kinds of proteins, each one having a unique shape and
characteristics that enable it to play a specific role in the
body. In addition, there are more than 3,000 enzymes critical to
chemical reactions that take place in the body. Cells come in
many varieties and shapes; they serve many different and
specialized functions in the body. Some cells work as individuals
floating in the blood; others connect with identical cells to
form skin or muscles, for example. Still others send out long
extensions to communicate with other cells.6
When one looks into the workings of any one cell, he finds
incredible complexity.
The "simplest" self-sufficient, replicating cell has
the capacity to produce thousands of different proteins and other
molecules, at different times and under variable conditions.
Synthesis, degradation, energy generation, replication,
maintenance of cell architecture, mobility, regulation, repair,
communication--all of these functions take place in virtually
every cell, and each function itself requires the interaction of
numerous parts.7
Behe likens all this activity, accomplished at the molecular
level, to the workings of machinery:
... life is based on machinesmachines made of molecules!
Molecular machines haul cargo from one place in the cell to
another along "highways" made of other molecules, while
still others act as cables, ropes, and pulleys to hold the cell
in shape. Machines turn cellular switches on and off, sometimes
killing the cell or causing it to grow. Solar-powered machines
capture the energy of photons and store it in chemicals.
Electrical machines allow current to flow through nerves.
Manufacturing machines build other molecular machines, as well as
themselves. Cells swim using machines, copy themselves with
machinery, ingest food with machinery. In short, highly
sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process.
Thus the details of life are finely calibrated, and the machinery
of life enormously complex.8
In other words, the simplest cell is a veritable factory of
molecular machines, and evolution offers no mechanism whereby
this factory could have gradually assembled itself over long
periods of time.
Conceptual precursors are not physical precursors
Behe faults evolutionists for failing to look at the details when
they postulate how, for example, a single-celled animal with a
light-sensitive spot could, over a very long time, develop into
an eye. The light-sensitive spot might be a conceptual precursor
to an eye, but when one looks at all the chemical systems in the
eye, there is no way the light-sensitive spot could be a physical
precursor to the eye.
As an illustration, consider the bicycle as a conceptual
precursor to a simple motorized bike. One could postulate that
somehow the bicycle gradually developed into a motor bike. But
looking deeper, one discovers that this progression simply cannot
happen gradually. The motor, for example, is an entire
irre-ducibly complex system consisting of hundreds of parts. If
any one part is missing (a spark plug, for example), the motor is
useless. And even if the motor were somehow available in an
evolutionary junkyard, it would have to be securely mounted on
the frame, and somehow transfer its energy to a drive sprocket,
which would somehow get connected to a wheel sprocket in order to
make a wheel turn. Then there's the problem of fuel, carburetion,
and a starting mechanism. Without all the parts fully assembled,
the motor bike won't function at all. Gradually adding some parts
without the others results in a more cumbersome conveyance that
is less functional than the original bicycle.
The bicycle may help us to conceive of, to conceptualize, a motor
bike, but it cannot be a physical precursor to a motor bike.
Similarly, the light-sensitive spot may be a conceptual precursor
to an eye, but it would have to add many complex functions and
biochemical processes, each of them irreducibly complex, in order
to function as an eye. Evolution is based on the assumption of
physical precursors. But the natural world offers irreducibly
complex systems that function only as a whole and that could have
come about only by Intelligent Design.
An example: cilia
For us non-biochemists, the details of how the body functions at
the molecular level can be hard to grasp. But it is in the
details that evolution faces its greatest challenges, and it is
in the details that we can see the marvel of a creation that
cries out for intelligent design.
One example of an irreducibly complex system, detailed by Behe,
is ciliacells with hair-like extensions that can move like
a whip. The respiratory tract is lined with cilia, helping expel
mucus. Sperm cells are mobile and have cilia to swim. These
apparently simple cells are actually complex molecular machines.
If you cut through a cilium and examine its cross section under
great magnification, you discover that it is composed of a number
of tiny tubes, or microtu-bules. Just inside the "skin"
of the cilium is a circle of nine pairs of these tiny tubes. In
the middle of the cilium is yet another set of two microtubules
linked to each other. All the microtubules are, in fact,
cylinders made up by a circle of even smaller strands or fibers.
The current understanding of biochemists is that the motion of
the cilium depends on two protein molecules that go between a
microtubule of one pair and one of the microtubules of the pair
next to it. One of these proteins is dynein, the
"motor" of the cilium. The other is nexin, which serves
as a link or tie between the adjacent pairs.
Under the right circumstances, the dynein pushes against the
molecules in the microtubule next to it so that the two tend to
slide past one another. In fact, if the microtubule pairs weren't
tied together by the nexin, the dynein molecules would just keep
pushing the adjacent tubule along like a telescoping antenna
until they reached the end. But the nexin connectors prevent that
from happening. With the dynein pushing and the nexin holding,
the microtubules bend. This action of all the dynein motors
pushing over and over again and all the nexin linkers holding on
tight is apparently what makes cilia whip and the cell move.
This is a simplified
explanation of an intricate mechanism, one that, according to
Behe, is irreducibly complex.
All of these parts are required to perform one function: ciliary
motion. Just as a mousetrap does not work unless all of its
constituent parts are present, ciliary motion simply does not
exist in the absence of microtubles, connectors, and motors.
Therefore we can conclude that the cilium is irreducibly
complexan enormous monkey wrench thrown into its presumed
gradual, Darwinian evolution.9
The Clotting of Blood
When you get cut, your life depends on the ability of your blood
to quickly form a clot before all your blood drains out. Just as
important, it has to stop clotting when the bleeding is stopped,
and it has to not clot when there's no wound! That seems like a
relatively simple assignment, but it is not. On the contrary, the
body's mechanism for controlling blood clotting is a marvelous
and intricate series of chemical reactions that is irreducibly
complex. Remove any one of the elements, and blood clotting
simply doesn't work.
Fibrogen is the protein that is used to make up the web, or mesh,
of "fibers" that plays a vital role in clot formation.
Normally, it just floats around in the blood. In order for it to
get involved in clotting, fibrogen has to be altered by another
protein, thrombin, which lops off small pieces of the fibrogen
molecule to expose "sticky patches." This new molecule
is called fibrin. Its sticky patches fit into portions of other
fibrin molecules so they begin to form long strands that cross
over one another to form a web that traps blood cells.
But what keeps the thrombin from lopping off the ends of the
fibrogen molecule all the time creating one massive blood clot?
The answer is that thrombin molecules float around in the
bloodstream in an inactive form called prothrombin. It takes
another protein, called Stuart's Factor, to activate prothrombin.
But what keeps Stuart's Factor from activating prothrombin all
the time? That involves yet another protein molecule, accelerin,
which exists in an inactive form until it is activated
bywell, you get the picture!
In all, there are some twenty chemicals involved in the cascade
of reactions that quickly swings into action when the body is
wounded. The clotting mechanism first forms a soft clot to stop
the flow of blood. Then it turns off the clotting process, then
converts the fragile soft clot into a hard one that is more
durable. Finally, when the wound is healed, it breaks up the
clot. All the chemicals involved are essential to the process. If
any one is missing, the entire process fails to work.
Hemophiliacs, for example, can't stop bleeding because their
blood lacks one of these essential factors.
Referring to the effort of one scientist to explain how this
blood clotting cascade could have evolved gradually, Behe wrote:
The fact is, no one on earth has the vaguest idea how the
coagulation cascade came to be.... Blood coagulation is a
paradigm of the staggering complexity that underlies even
apparently simple bodily processes. Faced with such complexity
beneath even simple phenomena, Darwinian theory falls
silent."10
Other examples of complexity
Behe details other examples of irreducibly complex systems in the
body, including the seemingly simple task of moving proteins
created in one part of a cell to another part of the cell where
they are needed. One method, which he calls a "mind-boggling
process," is vesicular transport
... where protein cargo is loaded into containers for shipment
[from one part of the cell to another].... An analysis shows that
vesicular transport is irreducibly complex, and so its
development staunchly resists gradualistic explanations, as
Darwinian evolution would have it.11
Simmons cites insulin production as a process that is irreducibly
complex as well:
In the process of insulin manufacture, none of the several
"pre-insulin" molecules are useful (envision a car
being made along an assembly line). Not only is this an
all-or-none process, but so are the mechanisms that tell the body
when to secrete insulin, how much insulin to produce or secrete,
for how long, where to send it, how to link it to nutrients in
the blood, how to transport it, and how to turn it off when the
job is done.12
Then, there's the body's immune system and the manufacture of
AMP, a form of one of the four building blocks used to make up
DNA. These are all very complicated, yet irreducible; and
evolutionists offer no explanation as to how they came about.
What does it all mean?
In his conclusion, Behe writes about the implications of all the
knowledge about cell structure and function that has been
accumulated over the past four decades.
The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the
cell--to investigate life at the molecular level is a loud,
clear, piercing cry of "design!" The result is so
unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of
the greatest achievements in the history of science.... The
observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as
the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that
disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in
quanta.... But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped
[to celebrate this discovery]. Instead, a curious, embarrassed
silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell.... Why does
the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling
discovery? ... The dilemma is that while one side of the elephant
is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled
God.13
Behe finds this rather odd given the fact that 90 percent of
Americans say they believe in God and about 50 percent attend
religious services every week and that you regularly hear
references to God from politicians and sports stars.
But the apostle Paul would certainly not have been surprised. He
wrote almost 2,000 years ago of those who "did not like to
retain God in their knowledge" (Romans 1:28). And while the
intelligent design movement is a serious challenge to evolution,
I don't think we should be optimistic that Darwin's theory will
collapse anytime soon, nor that large numbers of scientists will
embrace God as the Intelligent Designer. The mainstream of
society didn't pay much attention to God before Darwin, and I
doubt it will pay much attention after his theory is relegated to
the footnotes of the history of science.
On the other hand, Christians can have greater confidence that
our belief in God is not based on a blind faith that is in
conflict with science. On the contrary, we can glorify God with
the psalmist: "I praise you because I am fearfully and
wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full
well" (Psalm 139:14, NIV). With every advance of science in
understanding the intricate design of the creation, we know more
and more "full well" how wonderful the Creator is.
For since the creation of the world God's invisible
qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have
been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so
that men are without excuse (Romans 1:20).
The more we learn of the exquisite, fantastic design of the
creation, the more clearly we can see the magnitude of the
Creator's eternal power and majesty!
References
1. Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen, The
Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, p. 186
2. Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge
to Evolution (The Free Press, 2003), p. 252
3. Geoffrey Simmons, M.D., What Darwin Didn't Know, p. 34
4. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution, p. 39
5. Ibid.
6. Simmons, What Darwin Didn't Know, pp. 43, 44
7. Ibid., p. 46
8. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution, pp. 4-5
9. Ibid. p. 65
10. Ibid., p. 97
11. Ibid. pp. 109, 115
12. Simmons, What Darwin Didn't Know, p. 37
13. Ibid. pp. 232-233
Richard A. Wiedenheft and his wife, Darlene, live in Falls, PA.
This article is reprinted by permission and is taken from the
March 2005 edition of The Bible Advocate. © 2005 The General
Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day)
"We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I
have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties
and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were not the
concern of the present speakers, and even with laughter. But mere
time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.
The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the
blood of Christ." C. S. Lewis
TSS
July
/ August 2005 The Sabbath Sentinel
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