Evolution
by Design, Part 2
By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
The Catholic Church sees no controversy between belief in God and evolution.
However, discoveries over the past several decades have led some scientists
to challenge the theory of evolution as a complete explanation for everything
that has come into being since the beginning of time.
The new evidence has caused at least one prominent atheist scientist to
conclude that some form of intelligence must be responsible for the creation
of life.
While the theory of evolution continues to gather more and more credible
evidence in the field of natural science, so has the discovery of a sophisticated
fine-tuning in the way our universe is put together. Catholics and others
who believe in God can reconcile the two views. Atheists are having a
harder time.
One of the most startling discoveries of the 20th century occurred in
1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the genetic structure
inside the nucleus of a human cell. We call this genetic material DNA,
which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.
As scientists began to decode the material in a human DNA molecule, what
emerged was a highly complex “language” consisting of three
billion genetic letters. The amount of information stored in the code
of human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
or 384 volumes — which is enough to fill 48 feet of library shelving.
Yet the actual size of the molecule is only two-millionths of a millimeter
thick.
According to Michael Denton, a molecular biologist and the author “Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis,” a teaspoon of DNA could contain all the information
necessary to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that
have ever lived on the earth — and “there would still be enough
room left for all the information in every book ever written.”
Even Bill Gates, the famous founder of Microsoft, has commented that “DNA
is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we’ve
ever devised.”
The discovery of DNA sent shock waves through the scientific community
for more than one reason. Who — or what — could have devised
such a code, and how is it possible that something that sophisticated
could have happened “by accident,” through evolution?
Unable to answer that question, some of Darwin’s staunchest defenders
felt the earth move under their feet.
That has been especially true for neo-Darwinists — those who do
not believe in God, and consider living creatures to be machines that
are the result of nothing more than chance and necessity.
One such scientist was 81-year-old Anthony Flew, a British philosopher
and professor who had been a leading champion of atheism for more than
a half-century.
Flew startled the scientific world when he acknowledged that the discovery
of the incredible complexity of DNA had finally convinced him that some
form of intelligence is responsible for the creation of life.
That conviction of Flew’s, and some of his colleagues, is now known
and advanced as “intelligent design” — a label that
has recently been assigned by its proponents to decades of scientific
advances that reveal a startling complexity in the way the world is designed.
A high level of ultra-fine tuning occurs on all levels of existence, from
the cosmos to “the extraordinarily precise relationship of planets
in our solar system to the delicate balances in our own planet,”
writes Benjamin Wiker in Crisis magazine.
Wiker calls that precision “suspiciously calibrated as part of some
kind of conspiracy of order to produce life — indeed intelligent
life.”
For instance, if the nuclear force that holds together the protons and
neutrons in the nucleus of an atom were a tad weaker, elements other than
hydrogen would be unlikely or impossible. A tad stronger, and we wouldn’t
have hydrogen, he says.
“Fiddle a smidgeon with the expansion rate of the universe,”
Wiker writes, “and you either cause it to collapse or exceed the
ideal rate at which galaxies and, hence, solar systems, can form.”
Wiker goes on to expound on how the earth “just happens” to
have the right combination of atmospheric gases to block out almost all
of the harmful radiation of the sun, yet “opens like a window”
to let in visible light. And, he says, the planet Jupiter is placed and
sized in such a way that it not only balances the earth’s orbit
but also acts as a kind of space-dust magnet that keeps the earth from
being pummeled.
Further, he says, our moon is just the right size and distance to stabilize
the earth’s axial tilt, so that we have seasonal variations but
not wildly swinging temperature changes.
It is the discovery of such exceptionally precise fine-tuning that is
beginning to point some formerly athiest scientists toward belief in an
intelligent designer, rather than toward a random event — which
many of them have long considered the “big bang theory” to
be — or to the long, slow process of evolution known as natural
selection.
Suddenly, there seem to be just too many of those minute pieces, in a
puzzle too gigantic, for all of them to “just happen” to fit
together precisely the way they’re supposed to fit.
The astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle was so astonished by the amount
of remarkable coincidences necessary just to produce oxygen that he concluded:
“A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super
intellect monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and
that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”
The story becomes especially intriguing when we consider scientific advances
in the field of cellular biology, which is the basic blueprint for life.
Michael E. Behe, a Lehigh University professor of biochemistry and the
author of the best-selling “Darwin’s Black Box,” explains
that 100 years ago, in Darwin’s age, not much was known about the
inner-workings of the cell.
However, much of what we now know makes the evolutionary theory of natural
selection highly unlikely, although not entirely erroneous, he contends.
Behe told a group of scientists at the American Museum of Natural History
in April 2003: “It’s not that evolution doesn’t explain
anything. It’s that evolution doesn’t explain everything.”
He went on to explain the discovery of “irreducibly complex systems”
in the cell. Using bacterial flagellum as an example, he used slides to
show how they were equipped with a kind of “outboard motor”
that enabled the bacteria to swim.
“The flagellum has a large number of parts that are necessary for
its function — a propeller, hook, drive shaft, and more,”
he said. “Thorough studies show that it requires 30 to 40 protein
parts, and in the absence of virtually any one of these parts, the flagellum
doesn’t work .”
Therefore, it seems highly improbable that such a sophisticated little
engine could have come about by evolution’s unguided methods of
natural selection, he said.
For the less scientifically astute, Behe uses the example of a mousetrap,
which is an “irreducibly complex system” — meaning that
if we remove any one of its several interacting parts, it doesn’t
work. If someone did not design this mousetrap, how did it come into being?
According to Darwin, it would have evolved over time, starting out as,
perhaps, a wooden platform, Behe said.
Would it have gradually acquired something to trip the mouse, and then
eventually add a holding bar to make it more efficient? Irreducibly complex
systems “only acquire their function when the system is essentially
complete.” These systems are a “real headache” for neo-Darwinists,
Behe said.
As one writer put it, trying to explain that kind of complexity as the
result of random evolution is like saying it’s possible to write
Shakespeare while blindfolded and throwing darts at an alphabet board.
Neo-Darwinists are holding fast, but their grasp is weakening.
Franklin Harold, a biochemist from Colorado State University wrote in
his book, “The Way of the Cell,” that “we should reject
as a matter of principle the substitution of intelligent design . . .
but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts
of the evolution of any biochemical systems, only a variety of wishful
speculations.”
Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615.