Darwin's Black Box
Virtually all serious scientists accept the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution. While the fight for its acceptance has been a long and difficult one, after a century the battle is over. Biologists are now confident that their remaining questions, such as how life on Earth began, or how the Cambrian explosion could have produced so many new species in such a short time, will be found to have Darwinian answers. They, like most of the rest of us, accept Darwin's theory to be true. But should we? What would happen if we found something that radically challenged the now-accepted wisdom? As Behe engagingly demonstrates, using the examples of vision, blood-clotting, cellular transport, and more, the biochemical world comprises an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there must have been a series of mutations, each of which produced its own working machine, that led to the complexity we can now see. The more complex and interdependent each machine's parts are shown to be, the harder it is to envision Darwin's gradualistic paths. Michael Behe is not a creationist. He believes in the scientific method, and he does not look to religious dogma for answers to these questions. But he argues persuasively that biochemical machines must have been designed - either by God, or by some other higher intelligence.
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- In response to your comment, it's important to clarify several misconceptions about evolutionary biology and the synthetic theory of evolution. This theory is not a scam nor inherently atheistic; rather, it's a scientific framework that integrates genetics with Darwin's theory of natural selection to explain biological diversity.
First, evolution, through natural selection and genetic variation, is indeed capable of innovation. Complex structures and functions can arise incrementally over time. Features that provide a survival or reproductive advantage are more likely to be passed on to subsequent generations, gradually leading to complex adaptations.
The analogy of DNA needing to be like a program, CDROM, reader, and printer all in one cell is an oversimplification that misunderstands molecular biology. DNA replication, transcription, and translation are complex processes facilitated by a variety of proteins and enzymes, which themselves evolved.
Regarding Prof. Michael Behe's arguments in "Darwin's Black Box," while thought-provoking, they have been widely critiqued and refuted in the scientific community. Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity" has been shown not to preclude evolutionary origins, as numerous studies have demonstrated how complex biochemical systems can evolve from simpler precursors through natural processes.
Lastly, it's critical to approach scientific topics with an understanding based on evidence and consensus among experts. While there are always unanswered questions in science, the theory of evolution remains one of the most robust and universally accepted scientific theories, based on overwhelming evidence across different fields including genetics, paleontology, and molecular biology.
- You recommend Behe's book; I read his earlier book "Darwin's Black Box"a while back. I found it interesting, well-written, and superficially convincing but fundamentally flawed and ultimately a waste of time.
- I read "Darwin's Black Box" over 20 years ago so I can't give a lot of details. His fundamental idea was "irreducible complexity", a system that won't work if you take away any piece, such as a mousetrap. He claimed that a lot of biological mechanisms were like this. The fundamental argument was that something irreducibly complex can't be formed by evolution because it won't work if is anything missing, so you can't evolve part way. E.g. a mousetrap that lacks the spring doesn't work at all. Therefore, evolution couldn't create the irreducibly complex mechanisms found in biology. QED.
The big flaw that I see is that he looks at the problem of creating irreducibly complex mechanisms by addition, but they can easily be produced by subtraction. As an analogy, an arch is irreducibly complex because if you take out any stone, it collapses, so you can't build it one stone at a time. But you don't build an arch this way. Instead, a support is built and the stones are put on top of the support, one at a time. When you take the support away, now you have an irreducibly complex structure. Similarly with biology, something can evolve step by step with redundancy, and then pieces are removed by evolution, ending up with an irreducibly complex mechanism that Behe views as impossible.
I should reiterate that I read the book decades ago so I'm probably wrong on the details of Behe's argument. I figured I should answer your question but I'm not particularly interested in having a debate on evolution.
- Examples from Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box:
Blood's ability to coagulate is a cascading system with over 30 parts. Remove one part and it's fatal for the individual. How could a system like that evolve gradually over time?
He lists quite a few such systems. Bacteria having motors, the cell's operational system, the anti-body system (again a cascading system of large complexity).
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