Founding Rocks, Part VI

Still Speculating After All These Years

It's worse or better, depending upon your point of view.  Michael J Behe has written a postscript to his book Darwin's Black Box in which he reviews ten years of controversy since its first publication.  The basic thesis of the book is that molecular biology has now known revealed to the world that living cells are so complex that they imply a designer--an intelligent designer.  This stands in stark contrast to the ruling paradigm: that living cells exist by a process random, brute mutation.

What has happened over the past ten years?  Lots.  Ten years is a long time when it comes to molecular biology.  If scientists thought cells were complex back in the mid nineties, they now realise that are far, far more complex than they thought back then.

Progress in elucidating genomes has been matched by progress in understanding how the machinery of life works.  Most proteins in the cell are now known to work as teams of half a dozen or more, rather than by themselves.  Ten years ago the regulation of the activity of genes was thought to be the job just of proteins.  Now a new, unimagined category of nucleic acids calls micro RNAs have been discovered that helps control many genes.  The mechanisms cells used to construct the cilia and flagella described in Chapter 4 were almost totally obscure when this book was first written.  Today they're known to be stunningly sophisticated molecular systems themselves, like automated factories that make outboard motors.

In short, as science advances relentlessly, the molecular foundation of life is not getting any less complex than it seemed a decade ago; it is getting exponentially more complex.  As it does, the case for the intelligent design of life becomes exponentially stronger.  [Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 10th edition (New York: Free Press, {1996}, 2006), p.256.] 

Why is this increasingly complex molecular cellular structure important?  Because evolutionists believe this enormously complex cell came into existence by random mutation, by chance--a contention that has never been demonstrated experimentally or explained or warranted theoretically anywhere.  It just is, bro!   The often unspoken working paradigm of evolutionism postulates a developmental path that has moved from the simple to the complex.  The smallest life forms were supposed to be the most simple--amoeba in the primordial swamp--then through a process of random mutation cells gradually adapted, changed, evolved and developed into the wonderfully complex being that is us.

It's a great story, but all pure fabrication.  It turns out that the smallest amoeba are not simple at all, but their cellular composition is incredibly complex.  Moreover, Behe argues that it is irreducibly complex, by which he means that if any one tiny component of a cell were not there, the whole cellular structure would not work; it would fail. 

This, says Behe requires a far more reasonable hypothesis: that the cell of the amoeba and all other living cells were designed to be complex from the get-go.  The simplest cells show a purposeful arrangements of all their constituent parts.  They all work together so that the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.

It is important to realize that evolutionists also talk about the purposeful design of life.  Listen for a few minutes to one of David Attenborough's monologues and you will find it laced with descriptions of how everything in nature purposefully works together for certain outcomes.  Attenborough--a committed evolutionist--cannot avoid describing such things with a tone of wonder.  Richard Dawkins agrees:

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."  Thus spoke Richard Dawkins on the first page of the first chapter of his classic defense of Darwinism, The Blind Watchmaker.  Let me repeat, Dawkins says that the very definition of biology--the study of things that appear designed. . . . Dawkins doesn't just grudgingly acknowledge some faint impressions of design in life; he insists that the appearance of design, which he ascribes to natural selection is overpowering. (Ibid, p. 274)

Dawkins believes strongly in a universe that appears to be designed--actually designed, by a blind watchmaker--natural selection.  Which is to say it has been designed by chance.  The bow being drawn has now got exceedingly long.  The more scientists discover about the complexity of molecular cells, the longer and longer the bow gets.  And recall--there is not experimental evidence or explanations of how cells moved, changed, adapted and evolved from simple cells to more complex ones.  It is just a working assertion, albeit an incredible one.

Behe concludes with this valid point:

A crucial, often-overlooked point is that the overwhelming appearance of design strongly affects the burden of proof: in the presence of manifest design, the onus of proof is on the one who denies the plain evidence of his eyes.  For example, a person who conjectured that the statues on Easter Island . . . were actually the result of unintelligent forces would bear the substantial burden of proof the claim demanded. . . . Any putative evidence for the claim that the images were actually the result of unintelligent processes (perhaps erosion shaped by some vague, hypothesized chaotic forces) would have to clearly show that the postulated unintelligent process could indeed do the job.  In the absence of such a clear demonstration, any person would be rationally justified to prefer the design explanation.  (Ibid., p. 265f.)

And that, as they say, is that.  It is the evolutionist who increasingly appears to be irrationally motivated.