LiveScience "examines" Intelligent Design - Part II

Author: Jonathan Sampson

Darwin wrote, “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.” What Darwin is referring to is sometimes called Irreducible Complexity (IC). If an organism, or structure, consists of numerous parts which all depend on one another for functionality, then the system, organism, can be labeled IC. One of IC’s main scientists is Dr. Michael Behe – professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University.

We learned from Krauss – in Ker Than’s previous article – that “these people”, referring to ID proponents, “are not scientists”. Today, LiveScience wishes to expose the faulty perspective “these people” have on IC systems and their origins.

Every since Behe published his hart-hitting book, “Darwin’s Black Box: A Biochemical Challenge to Evolution”, the evolutionists have been lining up to give him a piece of their mind. Behe has given countless examples, and the protestors have made their accusations and alleged scientific evidence against Behe’s suggestions. Unfortunately, we see nothing more than a cycle of common “answers” circulating around the behe-bonfire. These claims have found themselves inside Ker’s second installment.

Ker begins by saying, “Darwin himself admitted that if an example of irreducible complexity were ever found, his theory of natural selection would crumble.” Viewing the trend of evolutions evolution, I would slightly disagree with Darwin. If an example of IC were found, evolutionists would change the process of evolution to include these superficially IC systems. They would never claim that evolution cannot build an IC system – to do so would be blasphemy at its highest. Ker continues by asserting “no true examples of irreducible complexity have ever been found. The concept is rejected by the majority of the scientific community.” Although “the concept” may in fact be “rejected by the majority of the scientific community,” that doesn’t determine it’s truthfulness. Numbers don’t determine truth. There was once a time where the materialistic scientific majority rejected the Big Bang Theory – calling it a religious notion. I predict that IC will be “non-science” only until some evolutionist can come up with a neat idea of how a slightly different evolution model could account for IC systems, and then their fellow evolutionists will hop on the bandwagon and embrace IC as a product of evolution – the slightly modified theory.

Evolutionists are trying to travel a road of explanation when it comes to IC systems. Their answer today is co-option. Or the idea that parts could be borrowed from other systems, and put together in a new system. Kenneth Miller, the Roman Catholic evolutionist puts his words in, “The logic of their argument is you have these multipart systems, and that the parts within them are useless on their own. The instant that I or anybody else finds a subset of parts that has a function, that argument is destroyed.”

Ker ends his IC segment with “Evolution takes pieces and parts and re-uses them.” But how great is the co-option explanation? Behe and Miller have butted heads several times in the past, and both have been subjects in each other’s books as well. Interested parties may want to check out more of Behe’s responses to Miller’s assertions. Scott Minnich, an associate professor of Microbiology at the University of Idaho states that in the bacterial flagellum, 10 of the 40 components can be explained by co-option. However, according to Minnich, the remaining 30 components are new. The strictly sequenced process of assembly requires other machines as well.

Following the trend of revisiting old ideas, Ker resurrects the Nylon-eating Bug idea as evidence for evolution. “Nylon-eating bacteria poses a problem for ID proponents” says Ker. In 2003, Answers in Genesis published in the Technical Journal an answer to the Nylon-eating subject. In the article “The adaptation of bacteria to feeding on nylon waste”, Dr. Don Batten gives clear insight to this subject, and offers several stumbling blocks for atheistic evolutionists. I wonder who told Ker that the nylon-bug is a problem?

In closing, we get back to why ID is “the death of science.” Provine, a Science Historian at Cornell says that “ID is…utterly boring,” claiming “Everything that’s complicated or interesting about biology has a very simple explanation: ID did it.” What Provine is missing is that the same goes for Darwinism – “Where did this tree come from?”, “It evolved.” “Okay then, where did this fish come from and how did it get these weird lights”, “They evolved sometime during the fishes evolution – as it evolved.” So in a sense, “ID did it” is no more convicted than “It evolved.”

In closing, Provine claims that ID “would become the death of science if it became a part of science.” But is that true? The entire idea of a Rational Creator is what fueled scientific discoveries all throughout history. It’s because the fathers of modern science had a strong desire to learn more about their Creator’s creation that they were able to make scientific advancements – not because they felt they had slipped down from a tree naked and lost a few traits in the process. In closing, the idea of a Creator is the life of science; evolution is nothing more than a squeeze on the lungs of advancement.