DARWIN'S BLACK BOX - The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

DARWIN'S BLACK BOX, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

By Michael Behe

New York: The Free Press (1996)

In this book, Michael Behe applies the idea of an irreducibly complex system (ICS) to life. An ICS is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). An example of an ICS is an ordinary mousetrap. It consists of a metal hammer bar that traps the mouse, a spring that powers the hammer bar, a holding bar that holds the hammer bar back, a sensitive catch that retains the holding bar, and a wooden platform on which all is correctly mounted. When these parts are manufactured with the right materials, designed and assembled in the correct proportion to each other, and then baited and armed, it might just catch a mouse. These are what make a functioning mousetrap irreducibly complex. It cannot catch a mouse if one of the components is missing, if it is wrongly manufactured or assembled, or if not set. It does not just catch fewer mice under these conditions, it catches no mice at all. There is no way to start with a simpler component of the mousetrap and evolve it to create the whole system. In other words the spring, by numerous, successive, slight modifications could not evolve into a trap that catches mice.

Behe is a biochemist who, in the course of his research, came to realize that large numbers of biochemical systems are irreversibly complex. Like the mousetrap, there is no way they could have naturalistically evolved from simpler components. Some examples are how vision occurs, the bloodclotting cascade, the swimming motion of the cilium, intercellular transport, the immune system, and rotary flagella.

Rotary flagella are bacteria that move about in fluids by rotating their flagellum, a long hairlike filament that has no counterpart in more complex cells. At the place where this filament joins the cell membrane is a complex rotary mechanism that consists of a rotor and a stator. Unlike our muscles, this rotor, an ICS, is powered by the energy flow of an acid through the bacterial membrane (pp 70-72). The complexity of what was once thought to be a simple, primitive organism is staggering - primitive, yes; simple, no. This mechanism is not only complex, but irreducibly complex. No wonder "no scientist has ever published a model to account for the gradual evolution of this extraordinary molecular machine" (p. 72).

The fact that no scientist has published an evolutionary explanation of the bacterial flagellum is not an exception. It is the rule. An analysis of the articles in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME) shows this. The JME began in 1971 and, as its name implies, publishes research articles exclusively on how life at the molecular level came to be. The result of Behe's analysis is that "none of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual step-by-step Darwinian fashion" (p. 176). Again, this is not the exception, but the rule. Analyses of other research journals would give the same results. There have been abstract explanations that amount to hand waving, but no detailed accounts. Such accounts would have to deal with some very thorny questions such as: "How did the photosynthetic reaction center develop? How did intramolecular transport start? How did cholesterol biosynthesis begin? How did retinol become involved in vision? How did phosphoprotein signaling pathways develop?" (p. 176)

If fundamental biochemical systems like bloodclotting, vision, and the immune response did not evolve, then how did they occur? Behe answers that these systems are the result of supernatural intelligent design. This is a strongly-supported conclusion because biochemists have been designing and engineering the components of life for some time now. They know what intelligent design looks like. Thus they can easily infer that the machinery of life is the result of an intelligent designer, God. This conclusion was not arrived at by examining the fossil record, or by eliminating naturalistic explanations and claiming that the supernatural option wins by default, by evoking abstractions, or by comparing dissimilar systems - apples to oranges. Biochemical systems are being compared with biochemical systems - apples compared to apples. Like the mousetrap, these systems, the nuts and bolts of life, require an intelligent designer. In the past, many scientists have remarked that life is almost a miracle. With Behe pointing out the implications of modern biochemical research, we have to say that life is a miracle.

Behe's book is a bombshell; no intelligent discussion of the origin of life should be made without reference to it. However, because its implications are so inescapable, i.e. that God created life, I expect it to be ignored, or where that is not possible, to be attacked.