http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2...01/25/title_17


Irreducible Complicity: Disappointing Darwin

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. ~Thomas Henry Huxley


Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches outer space for confirming material evidence?

Answer: A scientist.

Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches inner space for confirming material evidence?

Answer: A religious nut.

Surprised? You should be. How can the exact same methodology be both touted as scientific and doubted as religious? Are radio telescopes searching for Morse code-like evidence of space aliens inherently scientific while electron microscopes discovering source code-like evidence of design in the cell are not? Why are alien hunters with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) permitted to infer intelligence if ever they find evidence of specified complexity, but microbiologists who actually find such evidence are lambasted for inferring the same cause?

An honest assessment of our odd state of affairs explains the discrepancy by revealing a most unpleasant fact of modern science: an unholy alliance between institutions of science and the philosophy of naturalism. Science illogically rejects evidence of cellular design because it has taken upon itself the mantle of Godless (but not godless) naturalism, deeming all non-material causes non-scientific, regardless of the evidence. By unnecessarily championing the cause of a belief system, science has been duped into fronting for one set of philosophers, while being derisively dogmatic against another. Darwin would be disappointed to find his eponymous ism has driven such a venomous schism.

Ironically, science evolved to its current state of complicity between Darwinism and naturalism by scientists exhibiting behavior exactly opposite that of Darwin. Despite all the evil heaped upon Darwin for the results of his legacy, Darwin himself was an honest scientist. Consider, for example, in Origin of Species Darwin openly welcomed challenges to his theory. Taking almost half of his book to do so, he recognized and faced head-on numerous "difficulties" with his theory--difficulties that remain today. But unlike Darwin, current Darwinists enforce their ism like any good ism worth enforcing by suppressing the exact criticism Darwin welcomed. By political power, judicial rulings, and professional threats, Darwinists today have effectively shut down any criticism or critical analysis of Darwinism in the classroom--Darwin's own critical analysis would land him in court were he to teach it today! Criticism is strictly off limits due to Darwinism's vaulted position--unique in science--as non-challengeable dogma. Not un-challengeable, mind you, but non-challengeable. It is not so much that evidence, particularly cellular evidence, does not point to a designer, it simply can not.

The irony is doubled, and the complicity redoubled by the work of molecular biologist Michael Behe. Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, and author of the book Darwin's Black Box, Professor Behe's work beautifully responds to Darwin's famous challenge: "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." Although framed so as to require proving a negative, Darwin's challenge is nevertheless a good scientist's attempt to pose a testable hypothesis. Holding his theory tentatively (a trait that defines good science), Darwin provided future scientists with a way to test his theory (a trait that defines a good scientist), to keep his theory from becoming presupposition-enforced dogma (a trait that defines good religion).

What scientist would not want to engage in the scientific activity of theory testing? Apparently many--contemporary academia is fraught with those bent on protecting Darwin from his own challenge. The rhetoric of fear sounds from anthropology to zoology because institutions of science are filled with those who are Darwinists first and scientists second. Those like Professor Behe who are scientists first are the most to be feared by Darwinists. Behe studied complex cellular machinery (a feature Darwin never imagined), and based on his observations formulated a scientific hypothesis that certain complex features of the cell could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications. Specifically, Behe found molecular "machines" that show signs of what he calls "irreducible complexity." By irreducible complexity Behe means a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced gradually by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition nonfunctional. Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on. With no reason to evolve separately in numerous, successive, slight modifications, the parts of the machines Behe found seemed to indicate an "organ" meeting Darwin's challenge. Science at its best, one would think.

Think again. Those like Professor Behe who attempt to buck Darwinism's blood-brother bond to naturalism can expect to be pilloried in the scientific literature, popular and unpopular alike. Even though asked for by their own patron saint, Behe's scientific response to Darwin's personal challenge has been ridiculed by contemporary Darwinists at every turn, one California professor calling Behe a "screwball." In Behe's words, critics of his book and his concept of irreducible complexity have remarkably similar reactions, varying in intensity depending on the personality of the people involved. The first reaction of most critics is to say, "Well, this is just thinly veiled creationism." In reviews of his book scientists often speak about the first chapters of Genesis and the Arkansas Creation Trial, none of which he mentions in his book. Darwinists simply cannot see a distinction between arriving at a conclusion simply from observation of the physical world, as a scientist is supposed to do, and arriving at a conclusion based on scripture or religious beliefs. Because Behe's material evidence led him to conclusions unsanctioned by the high priesthood of Darwinism his science ran afoul of the anointed dogma of naturalism, relegating him to the realm of religious nuts. Irony unbounded.

Perhaps if the religious nut had a catchy acronym like SICI, the Search for Intracellular Intelligence, he would get more respect. Perhaps not. Even though Behe's and SETI's criteria for detecting intelligent design are essentially the same (much to the chagrin of the respectable SETI scientists), respect, in this case, is less a function of the criteria as it is the assumed source of design. Unknown intelligent being designing coded signals in outer space? Cool. Unknown intelligent being designing coded signals and complex machinery inside a cell? Impossible. Science has ruled out such a notion in the name of its illicit complicity with naturalism, deeming such philosophically impossible ideas as silly speculation at best, and dangerous doctrine at worst.

Dangerous doctrine indeed. Darwinists lose credibility by the day as their adopted creed jeopardizes the integrity of science itself. By baptizing the scientific method in the water of naturalism, the altered method of religious Darwinists turns off objective onlookers--students, parents and browbeaten educators easily perceive the obtuseness of denying cellular machinery (not to mention confirmed coded information in DNA) as strong evidence of intelligent design. To reject confirmed material evidence showing that life on earth may be a product of an intelligent being while simultaneously looking for evidence of the same kind as evidence of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe is at minimum a profound contradiction in scientific reasoning. But reason is the enemy of a science that adopts a creed, and the creed of naturalism which Darwinism requires to survive against the evidence is a greater science stopper than any implications of a non-material cause ever have or ever will be.

Like irreducible complexity in which the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning, naturalism and Darwinism are the ultimate example of irreducible complicity: one cannot survive long without the other. Without an insistence on naturalism Darwinism has no defense against the growing weight of material evidence, and without Darwinism naturalism loses its standing as a coherent philosophy, its worldview stripped of a creation story. But science daily delivers blows to that creation story, and while those who are Darwinists first and scientists second will no doubt contrive to survive, those who drop the duplicity for scientific objectivity will find reason to thrive.


Roddy Bullock is the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio (www.idnetohio.com) and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by Access Research Network. Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.


Darwin's Challenge found at Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species, A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 189.