by Jeff Treder
Physicist Freeman Dyson has pointed out that there are two kinds of scientific revolutions, those driven by new concepts and those driven by new technologies. A prime example of the former is Einstein’s relativity theories, which arose out of a new way of conceptualizing already existing empirical knowledge. The latter is exemplified by the Copernican revolution, sparked by Copernicus and carried through by Galileo, Kepler and others, which was driven by the new technology of the telescope. The “optic glass” made it possible, over the course of a century or so, to determine empirically that the planets orbit the sun and that their orbits are elliptical. This revolution was resisted by Catholic church officials who thought (I think needlessly) that they had a theological vested interest in the Ptolemaic system, and who resorted to censorship and intimidation in a vain attempt to stem the tide.
We are currently in the early stages of a technology-driven scientific revolution which, I think, closely parallels the Copernican revolution. This is the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in biology. While the Copernican revolution resulted from a new ability to see out among the heavens, ID has been the result of a new ability to see into the workings of organic life at its most basic level. The Copernican revolution showed that the long-reigning Ptolemaic model of the solar system and the universe was inaccurate, and now ID is showing that the long-reigning Darwinian—and more lately neo-Darwinian—theory of biological origins and development is largely inaccurate, resting on impossible foundations. The reaction of the Darwinian establishment to the ID movement, so far, has been strikingly similar to the Catholic church’s reaction four centuries ago.
Darwin, given the level of biological knowledge available to him, made the not unreasonable assumptions that life must have evolved from very simple forms to the very complex forms we are familiar with, and that it must have done so through a long process of innumerable tiny changes. What was new in Darwin was not the idea of biological evolution itself, which had been around since ancient times, but a plausible theory concerning the mechanism by which evolution actually happens. The enthusiasm with which Darwin’s theory was accepted was in direct proportion to how eager people were to find a naturalistic alternative to the long-reigning paradigm of the divine, supernatural creation of the universe, biological life, and human life.
Over the last half century, molecular biochemists have discovered that even the simplest unicellular life forms are fantastically complex, far more complex in structure and efficient in operation than anything humans have designed and built. This great complexity and efficiency are necessary for life to survive at any level.
The time span available for life to have randomly organized on Earth is the window between when the planet cooled enough to support complex organic molecules (about 3.9 billion years ago) and when there is fossil evidence for the earliest bacteria (about 3 billion years ago). However, many scientists have shown that for the first—extremely complex—life forms to have assembled by random chance in less than a billion years is statistically impossible—that is, a chance of less than one in ten to the fiftieth power. The scientists studying this evidence and making the calculations are of various religious views; religion doesn’t affect the math.
Just as the telescope revealed a universe very different indeed from the concentric cathedral in which medieval people thought they lived, so different is the amazingly intricate and ingenious mini-factory that is the biological cell from the simple, homogeneous blob of “protoplasm” that the Darwinians expected (expected because the theory requires simple beginnings). Darwin cannot be faulted for assuming that the first life forms were structurally simple, but on this point his theory is no longer tenable.
Nanotechnology engineers are now trying to copy the designs (what else could they call them?) of various molecular machines within the cell, hoping to fabricate tiny machines that may remotely approach the efficiency of what nature has produced. Exactly how nature has produced them is something between an open question and a mystery. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, warned biologists that they “must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Intentionally or not, he wrongly slipped in the word “evolved,” since Darwinian evolution can only apply where biological reproduction is already up and running. The first cell (or cells) could not have evolved through natural selection; they either came together by random chance or they were formed by a formidable designer. But random chance, in this singularly momentous case, is mathematically nil.
DNA, the famous double helix which is the “brain” of every cell, is in fact a minute but very powerful computer, storing and processing vast amounts of information. It controls all the cell’s activities, and it operates much faster than any human-built computer. Scientists are now recognizing, belatedly perhaps, that information is not a function of physical matter/energy but exists in a separate domain and is a function of intelligence. As ID theorists point out, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is based on this distinction. As SETI astronomers monitor radio signals coming from various parts of the galaxy and beyond, they try to detect patterns in those signals that might indicate an intelligent, as opposed to purely natural, source (the movie “Contact” dramatizes this search). The radio waves are the medium, but only an intelligent source could modulate those waves in such a way as to send a message. Thus intelligence, while it is not a function of matter/energy, can nevertheless be detected empirically. In daily life we do this all the time as a matter of course (which is why we don’t generally notice what we are doing). In DNA, as on a larger scale in the human brain, information caused by intelligence is intrinsically bound up with the physical domain in the warp and woof of organic chemistry.
The source of this information and this intelligence is of course a momentous question. In an attempt to keep supernatural explanations off the table, some scientists who are committed to a materialist philosophy have suggested that matter may have inherent self-organizing properties. But this is simply an appeal to naturalistic miracle: information-rich organic life just spontaneously created itself. With divine miracles, at least you have a cause sufficient to the effect; with naturalistic miracles, you have effects with no cause at all.
While the assumption that life forms evolved gradually was necessary to Darwin’s theory, he was aware that the fossil record, insofar as it was known in his day, did not appear to support such gradualism. His hopeful expectation was that future fossil research would reveal many of the in-between life forms. A century and a half and multitudinous fossil finds later, however, that hope still goes unfulfilled. The record still shows periods in which life forms with distinct body plans appear rapidly (in geologic time scales) followed by long periods of stasis or minor in-species change. The record also includes a number of catastrophic extinction events. Trying to keep Darwinian theory consistent with the fossil record, some evolutionary scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have proposed that evolution proceeds by fits and starts. The trouble with this idea is that the fits—bursts of rapid evolutionary change—strain statistical credibility to the point where, again, we are asked to believe in a long series of naturalistic miracles.
Like the Catholic church around the turn of the seventeenth century, the Darwinian establishment is not pleased by what new technologies have discovered. This current establishment also sees itself with a huge vested interest in the old paradigm. Unable to explain the new discoveries plausibly by means of Darwin’s theory, his followers, like the Curia of old, have resorted to censorship and intimidation. Intelligent Design can’t be taken into consideration, they say, because it’s really just religion tricked out in scientific terms. This charge is wearing thin, however. Biochemistry isn’t religion. ID has religious implications, certainly, but so does Darwinism or any other theory that sets out to explain the origin and development of life, all the way up to human beings. ID theorists cite empirical evidence, not biblical texts. This is precisely the reason why Darwinists are reacting with alarm, even stooping to ad hominem aspersions like Richard Dawkins’ claim that anyone who doubts evolution is either ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked.
In Andersen’s classic tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the con is that only a fool can fail to see the sumptuous new garments. Everyone goes along with the con until a child, not burdened by adult anxieties, shouts out that the old guy is really just stark naked. At the present time, the Intelligent Design movement is a fresh voice pointing out that the scientific establishment is severely underdressed.
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