Reflections on Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box

2003-04-26

Behe’s book is divided into three parts. The first part is an introduction to the study. This is the Lilliputian biological world. As science progressed, opportunities of study grew much larger as scientists learned that living things are made from the same building blocks as non-living things, and they could see things in the cellular level. They kept on opening these ‘black boxes’ until they get to the fundamental level, the atomic world. We can understand much more about science than the scientists could in Darwin’s day in the 19th century.

The second part of the book is examining what we have found now that we can open that final ‘box’. The main thrust of the conclusion Behe reached was that of irreducible complexity. The eye, the cilia, the flagellum, and blood clotting were some of the things that he looked at in detail. He concluded that these things could not truly function they way they ought if there is one part missing. He likened this to many examples, like the mousetrap, the ludicrous examples of the devices that were to attack the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, and the likewise technical Rube Goldberg devices. Take one part away from any of these three examples, and they will no longer service the function they were designed for. The same can be concluded about the blood clotting, for example. One person wrote a thesis on the matter, but many steer clear of trying to argue Darwinian evolution from this. The system is irreducibly complex, that is, there is no evolutionary ‘step’ before the way the blood clotting system works in our bodies today.

The last part of Behe’s book deals with the necessity of some sort of intelligent design. The intricacy of these molecular systems can not be the product of evolution as many scientists state. Even in biochemistry textbooks, they either fail to mention evolution in the text, or they explain evolution as a foundation to a world view, and then ignore it thereafter. Scientists refuse to go to intelligent design as a model for many reasons. There is an allegiance to those in their field, and there is a tendency in history for the scientist to stay within the natural world alone. There also is a long history of the scientist and the theologian disagreeing, such as in the Scopes trial. They are afraid that the elephant that crushed the man, as the analogy goes, is going to be God.

I found the point of view of Behe quite interesting. He says he is a Roman Catholic (p. 239). He holds to evolution to some way, and also an old earth of billions of years old, as he stated in the beginning of the book. He seems to be split between two worlds. This simply does not work, though the contribution of this book is excellent. The thought of intelligent design as a conclusion from irreducible complexity could be a revolutionary design to get scientists to think in a different way then they ever had before. What I am gathering, though, such as seen in Dawkin’s The Blind Watchmaker as an answer to Paley’s analogy of finding a watch in nature, or even the way that some scientists seem to dismiss Behe as seen in Sarfati’s Refuting Evolution 2, the scientific world has become quite calloused toward anything that is found outside the natural world. Of course, Behe argues that some 90% of people believe in God in America, and I have heard similar statistics elsewhere. But we must wonder about this. Did the survey have a good representation in it? And what do we decide God is? We have a precise definition of who God and what some of His characteristics are. The average Joe does not have this concept, nor does the sophisticated scientist.

As for me, I can see Behe’s examples and conclusions only one way. Of course God created these things! And of course He did not choose evolution as a model for His creation. Blood clotting was apart of the human being since Adam, or at least an ‘addition’ included by God in Adam in the post-fall world.

There is a lot I would use in ministry. I cannot go up against the scientist with the ammunition of a few books I have read, but perhaps I can get a scientist that I might meet along the way to think in a way to analyze his own research, worldview, and even scientific method in a new way. This is the best way; to be informed about basic tenets of science, keep learning, so I can be ready to give a defense of the living God when the time comes.