Our "Fact of the Month" this month is a guest column by GREGORY J. RUMMO. His web site is"
http://hometown.aol.com/gjrum/Index.html
Earlier this year I wrote a column in support of the teaching of creationism and Darwinian Evolution side by side in science classes in the public schools in Kansas.
That column ran in this newspaper and in two others in New Jersey. After presenting numerous scientific and philosophical reasons for questioning the theory of evolution, I concluded, "Belief in evolution requires an incredible leap of faith. It is simply not science. It is a religion with a scientific façade."
The firestorm of letters to the editor, which followed in the ensuing weeks, proved my point.
Evolutionists are quick to defend their most hallowed theory.
When I challenged the theology of evolution, its staunch adherents felt that their worship at the feet of Darwin had been threatened-even only slightly-by a journalist with a master's degree in organic chemistry.
This was considered blasphemy-heresy-and absolutely intolerable, demanding an immediate response from the congregation.
One letter writer who challenged most of the difficulties I raised with Darwinian Evolution took specific exception to my argument from the laws of thermodynamics and the natural tendency for the entropy or randomness of systems to increase. To illustrate the point, I had suggested in my column, "Open a window in a drafty room and a stack of baseball cards left on the windowsill blows all over the floor. The cards do not spontaneously alphabetize themselves in a neat pile on the shelf."
The letter writer agreed that the stack of cards would not necessarily need to alphabetize itself, but then wrote that one might end up with a David Cone next to a Derek Jeter and "that's all that would be necessary to get the ball rolling," implying that if only the simplest organic molecules were formed in the evolutionist's primordial broth by some unnamed, random process, further molecular complexity would naturally follow and eventually lead to life.
Of course, no mechanism was offered for such an eventuality.
But our letter writer shouldn't feel singled out.
Klaus Dose, a prominent worker in the field of origin-of-life research comments, "More than 30 years in the field of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life here on Earth rather than its solution. At present, all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in confession of ignorance."
The silence about a mechanism for molecular evolution-how simple organic molecules could spontaneously rearrange themselves into the complex proteins, enzymes, and cellular structures necessary for life-from even the highest ivory towers of academia is deafening.
The reasons for the silence are elucidated in a well researched and truly moving book entitled, "Darwin's Black Box," written by Lehigh University professor of Biochemistry Michael J. Behe.
Behe describes in elegant detail the staggering complexity of what were once thought to be simple biological processes. He demonstrates unequivocally the impossibility that such processes could arise gradually, through random and natural selection.
"If you search the scientific literature on evolution," writes Behe in the opening chapter of his book, "and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines - the basis of life - developed, you find an eerie and complete silence."
The author likens these molecular machines to a "Black Box"-"a whimsical term for a device that does something but whose inner workings are mysterious." Like a computer, even when the cover is removed, most people still cannot explain what it is that is actually happening inside the various components soldered on to the motherboard.
In Darwin's day, very little was known about biochemical processes. Two contemporaries of Darwin, Schwann and Schleiden had discovered that plants and animals consisted of small bodies called cells, but even they concluded, ".The primary question is, what is the origin of this peculiar little organism, the cell?"
Since the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thompson in the late nineteenth century, and the invention of the electron microscope decades later, a window to a "Lilliputian world" has been opened and our knowledge of biochemistry has grown in complexity. The black box of the cell has been opened and we are able to take a look inside. What was discovered was a series of smaller black boxes, one inside the other.
Things that were once thought to be simple biological machines-the flagellum of a bacteria or the cilium of a paramecium are now known to be extraordinarily complex biochemical processes.
"This level of discovery," writes Behe, "began to allow biologists to approach the greatest black box of all. The question of how life works was not one that Darwin or his contemporaries could answer. They knew that eyes were for seeing but-how exactly do they see? How does blood clot? How does the body fight disease? The complex structures were themselves made of smaller components. What did they look like?"
The development of X-ray crystallography occurred shortly after the invention of the electron microscope and was the next step that allowed scientists to look one level deeper-into the next black box.
Behe comments, "What was seen was more complexity. It was thought that proteins would turn out to be simple and regular structures like salt crystals. Upon observing the convoluted, complicated bowel-like structure of myoglobin, however, Max Perutz groaned, 'Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral an object?'"
Behe then introduces an important concept in the book-"irreducible complexity." Rather than attempt to define it, I will illustrate it the same way the author does.
A mousetrap may be thought of as being irreducibly complex. It is composed of 5 basic elements: a hammer which impacts and kills the mouse, the spring which provides the force to drive the hammer, a trigger upon which the mouse steps, a latch which keeps the trap from springing closed until the right time and a wooden base upon which the whole contraption is assembled.
A mousetrap is irreducibly complex because in order for it to work, all of its components must be present and assembled. Remove one of the five components and you no longer have a functioning mousetrap.
Behe extends this simple notion of the irreducible complexity of a mousetrap to a number of complex biochemical systems, among them: vision in the human eye, the clotting of human blood and the immune system, demonstrating in each case the irreducible complexity of the process and the impossibility of function without all of the components being present simultaneously.
The conclusion is obvious.
Writing about the biochemical cascade of events necessary for the coagulation of human blood, the author states," The absence of or significant defects in any one of a number of components causes the system to fail: blood does not clot at the proper time or at the proper place."
Writing about the immune system, the author further explains, "Whichever way we turn, a gradualistic account of the immune system is blocked by multiple interwoven requirements. As scientists we yearn to understand how this magnificent mechanism came to be, but the complexity of the system dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration."
The author also deals with several of the many biochemical processes that are not irreducibly complex such as the 13-step biosynthesis of adenosine monophosphate (AMP), an important precursor for DNA, for example, and masterfully explains the chemical and mathematical improbability of their appearance by an evolutionary mechanism.
Behe's book is must reading for anyone who considers himself an open-minded scientist, willing to lay aside the religion of Darwinism and accept the intellectual challenge of the implausibility of the theory of evolution at the biochemical level. It is written in a comfortable style and the author refers to many simple, every-day examples-the mouse trap, a bicycle, tinker toys and snap lock beads to name several-in order to make his thesis understandable for the scientist and the layman alike. However, portions of the book are highly technical-as any text on biochemistry must be in order to be thorough. The author shows compassion for the common man here, and suggests that these portions can be skimmed or skipped altogether if they become too cumbersome without destroying the thesis.
"Darwin's Black Box," is not a book about creationism nor is it written from a religious perspective. Behe is clear on this issue when he writes in the chapter entitled Intelligent Design, "The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself-not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs."
Nonetheless, while reading through various parts of the book I found myself echoing the Psalmist who wrote: "I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14)
An edited version of this column appeared in THE INDEPENDENT NEWS on November 24, 1999. It was subsequently selected in March 2000 as the first prize winner of $1,000 in a writing contest sponsored by The Amy Foundation.