Foundering Rocks, Part II

The More We Know, The Harder it Gets

The burgeoning science of biochemistry, aided by the technological ability to study bio-molecules that has been developed of the past fifty or so years, has been startled with the complexity of living cells.  Not only are they complex, the actions they perform and the results they produce are "mission critical".  Failure is not an option in many cases. 

Most, if not all, of these complex functions are taken for granted by human beings.  Take one very ordinary function: blood clotting.  Biochemistry has established that this ordinary function is far, far more complex than ever previously thought.  The huge scientific challenge for evolutionists is to demonstrate how it came to be--by means of natural selection. They need to demonstrate how natural selection actually worked.  To date, even though the vast majority of biochemical scientists profess to be evolutionists, the silence is deafening. 

Michael J Behe endeavours to explain the complexity of the clotting "system" and the subsequent problem for evolutionary theory:

Blood clotting is on auto-pilot, and blood clotting requires extreme precision.  When a pressurized blood circulation system is punctured, a clot must form quickly or the animal will bleed to death.  If blood congeals at the wrong time or place, though, then the clot may block circulation as it does in heart attacks and strokes.  Furthermore, a clot has to stop bleeding all along the length of the cut, sealing it completely.  Yet blood clotting must be confined to the cut or the entire blood system of the animal might solidify, killing it.  Consequently, the clotting of the blood must be tightly controlled so that the clot forms only when and where it is required. [Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 10th edition (New York: Free Press, {1996}, 2006), p.79.]

Behe then continues, describing all the protein "players" in the game of blood clotting and their roles.  Failure on the part of any one means the system will not work and death or severe debilitation is the result .  Now recall that Darwinian theory requires that each of these players and their attendant complexities must have previous (simpler) prototypes.  But, and there is the problem: living forms are not machines.  If any one prototype were to fail, death would result.  The clotting system is either enormously complex from the get go, or there would be no get to go at all. 

Yet the objections [to evolutionary explanations] raised so far are not the most serious.  The most serious, and perhaps the most obvious, concerns irreducible complexity.  I emphasize that natural selection, the engine of Darwinian evolution, only works if there is something to select--something that is useful right now, not in the future. . . .

[Professor of biochemistry] Dr Doolittle's scenario implicitly acknowledges that the clotting cascade is irreducibly complex, but it tries to paper over the dilemma with a hail of metaphorical references to yin and yang.  The bottom line is that clusters of proteins have to be inserted all at once into the cascade.  This can only be done by postulating a "hopeful monster" who luckily gets all of the proteins at once, or by the guidance of an intelligent agent. . . . The fact is, no one on earth has the vaguest idea how the coagulation cascade came to be.  (Ibid., p. 96f. Emphasis, author's.)

Where does all this leave us?  It leaves us with the evolutionist paradigm under increasing threat.  Well, not really.  Evolutionism is a cosmology, not a science.  It has been maintained for philosophical or religious reasons, not scientific.  But the more scientific research into the complexities of living cells continues, the greater the strain and the pressure upon the prevailing orthodoxy.  Eventually the dam will break--as it always does.  We predict that within a hundred years evolutionism will be consigned to the same dusty archive as medieval alchemy.

That is not to say that scientific orthodoxy will acknowledge the necessary existence of the Creator.  Far from it.  The acknowledgement of God requires a new birth from above, a reformation from prejudice.  After all many "credible" scientists have offered alternatives to the theory of evolution:  Francis Crick suggested aliens.  Other suggest Big Bangs.  Still others posit an infinite number of parallel universes. 

The Emperor is disrobing.