All this book does is show how Darwinism, basically a relic of the
19th Century, is blown apart by what Darwin (and even Richard Dawkins) did not
anticipate: the revolutionary field of biochemistry. We are able to see life
at the base level, something Darwin could never do, and what we find there are
numerous examples of life FRUSTRATING Darwinian explanations (here, we must
give a nod to Walter ReMine, who has argued the same thing in his --The Biotic
Message-- Vindication!)
The reason this is so shattering to evolution is that people like
Dawkins have been saying for years that life LOOKS designed, but there are
naturalistic explanations for it. Even further, Dawkins has said if he were
ever shown even a SINGLE case of a complex organ that could not have been
formed by "numerous successive slight modifications," he would cease to
believe in evolution.
Now, Behe has provided Dawkins with a whole bunch of them! What we see
at the biochemical level is "irreducible complexity," which means something
"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."
But how did these exceedingly complex systems, which look even more
intelligently designed than what Darwin or Dawkins saw, arise? It challenges
credulity to think that gradualism could do it (and Behe explains why), and
you can rule out punctuationism altogether.
And you can do another thing: you can scan the scientific literature
till the cows evolve (ahem), and you won't find ANY paper offering a testable,
Darwinian scenario for the evolution of these complex systems. (Behe has an
entire chapter on this).
This is truly where the "naturalism of the gaps" meets its OK Corral.
Post Behe, it can no longer plausibly be maintained that nature could have
done this. As Glenn Morton likes to say, we can't dismiss "what we see with
our eyes." And what we see is design, without any naturalistic explanations.
Behe has done nothing less than shift the entire playing field.
Evolution can no longer be discussed on the anatomical level alone. Just think
how this affects things like the fossil record:
<<[B]iochemistry offers a Lilliputian challenge to Darwin. Anatomy is, quite
simply, irrelevant to the question of whether evolution could take place on
the molecular level. So is the fossil record. It no longer matters whether
there are huge gaps in the fossil record or whether the record is as
continuous as that of U.S. presidents. And if there are gaps, it does not
matter whether they can be explained plausibly. The fossil record has nothing
to tell us about whether the interactions of 11-cis-retinal with rhodopsin,
transducin, and phosphodiesterase could have developed step-by-step. Neither
do the patterns of biogeography matter, nor those of population biology, nor
the traditional explanations of evolutionary theory for rudimentary organs or
species abundance.>> [DBB, pg. 22]
So what are we left with? Intelligent design theory, of course. Behe
spends a couple of chapters on this, explaining and then dealing with some of
the standard objections (e.g., pseudogenes, vestigial organs, the argument
from imperfection, etc.) These chapters are brilliantly done. Just as
perspicacious is his final chapter on the philosophic and psychological
reasons "science" has such trouble with intelligent design. It is a matter of
"scientific chauvinism" and "understandable emotion," but facts are facts and
we need to be grown up about them.
Science once "disturbed" some cherished religious beliefs, and we had
to deal with it. Now, science is disturbing the cherished beliefs surrounding
evolution. We must deal with those as well.
Humanity, concludes Behe, can certainly endure the opening of Darwin's
black box.
Jim