evolution

I can appreciate that Michael Behe's supporters might fail to grasp the effectiveness of some of the more technical refutations of this book that have been presented. But I'd expect others - like those of cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller, for instance - to be readily understandable by anyone capable of following Behe's own rather difficult arguments.

Miller has won several awards for outstanding teaching, and is co-author of well-received high school and college textbooks. He can communicate. He's also a conscientious Roman Catholic, acutely aware of the conflicts that can arise when sincere religious convictions confront the sometimes disturbing and often counter-intuitive findings of modern science.

A little sampler from Miller's writings may hopefully stir the more conscientious among Behe's sympathizers to look into what Miller and other interested scientists have to say about the book and about the intelligent design argument in general.

In March 2002, Miller and physicist Lawrence Krauss took part in a debate before the Ohio Board of Education. Their opponents were Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells, senior fellows (as is Behe) at the Discovery Institute. The Institute, ID's home base, is a 'think tank' advocating what it calls "the renewal of science and culture". Its primary funding comes from wealthy conservative Christians, notably Christian Reconstructionists Roberta and Howard Ahmanson.

Miller wrote a blow-by-blow account after the debate (the full text is on his website), in which he recalls Krauss' insight that "the two-on-two format of this presentation wouldn't render a fair picture of the sentiment in the scientific community. A more reasonable arrangement .. would have one member of the Discovery Institute on one side, and ten thousand scientists on the other .. two of the Discovery Institute's nine senior fellows were the ID speakers who were there; if they had not been there, the only place to find more advocates for ID would be back at the Discovery Institute. If Krauss or I had not been there, however, we could have been replaced by scores of scientists from just about any college or university anywhere in the state of Ohio."

In another article, "Answering the Biochemical Argument From Design" (also on his website), Miller gives Behe credit for recognizing that "the mere existence of structures and pathways that have not yet been given step-by-step Darwinian explanation does not make much of a case against evolution. Critics of evolution have laid down such challenges before, only to see them backfire when new scientific work provided exactly the evidence they had demanded. Behe himself once made a similar claim when he challenged evolutionists to produce transitional fossils linking the first fossil whales with their supposed land-based ancestors. Ironically, not one, not two, but three transitional species between whales and land-dwelling Eocene mammals had been discovered by the end of 1994 when his challenge was published."

Darwin's theory states that "evolution produces complex organs though a series of fully-functional intermediate stages. If each of the intermediate stages can be favored by natural selection, then so can the whole pathway." Behe argues that due to the "irreducible complexity" of biochemical systems like those described in his book, there can be no fully-functional intermediate stages; all parts must be present for any function at all. Miller asks, "Is there something different about biochemistry, a reason why Darwin's answer would not apply to the molecular systems that Behe cites?

"In a word, no.

"In 1998, Siegfried Musser and Sunney Chan described the evolutionary development of the cytochrome c oxidase protein pump, a complex, multipart molecular machine that plays a key role in energy transformation by the cell. In human cells, the pump consists of six proteins, each of which is necessary for the pump to function properly. It would seem to be a perfect example of irreducible complexity. Take one part away from the pump, and it no longer works. And yet, these authors were able to produce, in impressive detail, "an evolutionary tree constructed using the notion that respiratory complexity and efficiency progressively increased throughout the evolutionary process".

"In 1996, Enrique Meléndez-Hevia and his colleagues published, in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, a paper entitled "The puzzle of the Krebs citric acid cycle: Assembling the pieces of chemically feasible reactions, and opportunism in the design of metabolic pathways during evolution" .. this paper does exactly what Behe says cannot be done, even in principle - it presents a feasible proposal for its evolution from simpler biochemical systems .. what all of this means, of course, is that two principal claims of the intelligent design movement are disproved, namely that it is impossible to present a Darwinian explanation for the evolution of a complex biochemical system, and that no such papers appear in the scientific literature. It is possible, and such papers do exist."

Miller shows in detail that even systems Behe proposes as "irreducibly complex" are not so. "Nature presents many examples of fully-functional cilia that are missing key parts .. this leaves us with two points to consider: First, a wide variety of motile systems exist that are missing parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex structure; and second, biologists have known for years that each of the major components of the cilium, including proteins tubulin, dynein, and actin have distinct functions elsewhere in the cell that are unrelated to ciliary motion .. what this means, of course, is that a selectable function exists for each of the major parts of the cilium, and therefore that the argument [for irreducible complexity] is wrong."

Miller demonstrates similar difficulties with Behe's claim regarding the bacterial flagellum. He concludes, "At least four key elements of the eubacterial flagellum have other selectable functions in the cell that are unrelated to motility .. by demonstrating the existence of such functions, even in just a handful of components, we have invalidated the argument".

Miller's verdict: "Prof. Behe argues that anti-religious bias is the reason the scientific community resists the explanation of design for his observations:
I would suggest that the actual reason is much simpler. The scientific community has not embraced the explanation of design because it is quite clear, on the basis of the evidence, that it is wrong."

The book that basically started it all, where whispers in the scientific community against neo-Darwinism became public discourse. Whether you're an IDist or a Darwinist, this is a good book to have on the shelf just as a reference point.

A lot of people on both sides just talk pass each other, and project their image of the "other" side the way they wish to see it. When Darwinists think of Intelligent Design, they think of 7-Day Creationists who want to burn scientists at the stake. When 7-Day Creationists think of evolution, they think of that athiest Joseph Stalin shoving Christians into Gulags (and Daniel Dennet apparently thinks religious people should be in cages, so maybe that assumption isn't very far off).

Behe's book is not about the Bible, or Christianity, or Creationism, or even anti-evolution. It is anti-aimless natural selection. Behe sets up many examples w/in biology and biochemistry that show how the human cell and its processes are dependent on complex plans that could not have developed gradually. Blood coagulation requires "knowledge" of the end result in order for the process to begin. The immune system requires separate parts to evolve at the same time to meet a common goal w/in the system. There are "blueprints" w/in life that mutation and natural selection cannot explain, especially w/in the timeframe of earth's development. Does this disprove evolution? No. Does it prove the existence of God? No, not necessarily, although you'd have to provide a funky explanation involving (gasp! oh no!) metaphysics. The Power of "Life" as the Grand Unified Theory of Physics, or something. So this book does prove the need for a new explanation that is going to have to account for the borderline miraculous development of life, since life is so "irreducibly complex". Francis Crick, probably seeing the writing on the wall because of his analysis of DNA, jumped on the panspermia bandwagon early on. I always wondered why he did so, because in High School and College I was never told of the weaknesses w/in Darwinism, and here comes Crick w/ this funky idea of panspermia. Why, I thought? Crick's obviously a genius, wasn't he aware that natural selection is flawless and infallible? Now I know why. Of course, panspermia has its own problems, as it just pushes the problems of chaotic life ex nihilo back a couple of galaxies and epochs.

Behe also shows how many of the arguments against Intelligent Design are Strawmen fallacies, such as "Well, God wouldn't have done it that way!" Well, why not? That's not an observation of nature, but a metaphysical argument, and one that comes from Sartrian "bad faith". Behe takes from the bottom up, and shows how the observation of cells and cellular mechanisms leads to planning and design. The identity and characteristics of the Designer--is he perfectly Good or does he have a mean side, is he Deistic or Theistic, would he make the universe perfect from a human perspective or would he make the universe glaring w/ imperfections--is for another book and another time. Like a good Belisarius (the Byzantine commmander who ushered in the strategy of defensive warfare), Behe merely stakes out a sound corner w/in science that orthodox scientific opinion cannot explain (irreducible complexity), and he sits there, secure.

Behe presents a solid challenge to a Darwinian view of how life started on Earth (though he leaves the question of how it could begin elsewhere unchallenged). Unfortunately to do this, he relies on several esoteric biochemical processes (though i think that is the only sort of biochemical processes available to a neophyte like myself). The first half of the book reads as several iterations of the same argument, though delivered with increasing amounts of sarcasm. The second half of the book, in which he delivers his answer to the questions raised earlier, seems rushed. So if you tire of the seemingly endless stream of enzymes and proteins, skip to the second part -- it's much easier reading for the layperson.

Though to say that this book disproves or even dismisses evolution and natural selection as viable scientific theories is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst. Behe even says that beyond a limited set of structures that appear to be evidence of intelligent design, there are many structures that are not clearly designed (and most likely aren't, he admits). To explain these structures and organisms, he gives a variety of options, ending with what is clearly natural selection, though he declines to name it as such. Finally, while criticising evolutionary proponents for attacking a straw man (the watchmaker for darwinists, Richard Dawkins for intelligent design-ists), this is exactly what he does -- since Darwin's followers haven't demonstrated a valid argument/scenario for the basic structures of the cell, then entire theory is invalid (including portions that have been experimentally shown true on an organism level).

Finally, Behe doesn't give any sort of explanation or theory for how some basic structures of the cell are evidence of design, but others are not. He implies that those not showing evidence of design could have evolved, but does not explain why some more complicated structures could be designed before other more basic structures evolved.

Enjoy this book and the questions it opens, but it is far from the final word on the origins and progression of life on Earth (just as Dawkins' books aren't, either).