The Evidence for Design from Biology

Michael J Behe Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA USA

Disclaimer: The opinions presented here are solely my own, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Lehigh University or any of its departments or employees.

Sawtooth mountains, Idaho

Old Man of the Mountain, New Hampshire

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Dawkins R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, p. 1 Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Dawkins R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, p. 21

We may say that a living body or organ is well designed if it has attributes that an intelligent and knowledgeable engineer might have built into it in order to achieve some sensible purpose, such as flying, swimming, seeing [A]ny engineer can recognize an object that has been designed, even poorly designed, for a purpose, and he can usually work out what that purpose is just by looking at the structure of the object.

Dawkins R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, p. 21 Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.

July 1996

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, p. 158 If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

The Bacterial Flagellum

Voet & Voet, 1995

Cell (1998) 92, table of contents.

The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists, Bruce Alberts Polymerases and the Replisome: Machines within Machines, Tania A Baker and Stephen P Bell Eukaryotic Transcription: An Interlaced Network of Transcription Factors and Chromatin-Modifying Machines, James T Kadonaga Mechanical Devices of the Spliceosome: Motors, Clocks, Springs, and Things, Jonathan P Staley and Christine Guthrie Molecular Movement inside the Translational Engine, Kevin S Wilson and Harry F Noller The Hsp70 and Hsp60 Chaperone Machines, Bernd Bukau and Arthur L Horwich

Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 205

We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity (Behe 1996); but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.

Dawkins R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, p. 21 Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.

An In-duck-tive Argument

Encyclopedia Brittanica Online, http://search.eb.com/

Inductive reasoning. When a person uses a number of established facts to draw a general conclusion, he uses inductive reasoning. This is the kind of logic normally used in the sciences. An inductive argument, however, is never final: It is always open to the possibility of being falsified. It is by this process of induction and falsification that progress is made in the sciences.

A conclusion of intelligent design is

Rationally Justified

Blood coagulation cascade

Doolittle, R. (1997) A Delicate Balance Boston Review, Feb/March, pp. 28-29. Recently the gene for plaminogen [sic] was knocked out of mice, and, predictably, those mice had thrombotic complications because fibrin clots could not be cleared away. Not long after that, the same workers knocked out the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice. Again, predictably, these mice were ailing, although in this case hemorrhage was the problem. And what do you think happened when these two lines of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes, the mice lacking both genes were normal! Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed. Music and harmony can arise from a smaller orchestra.

Bugge, T. H., et al. (1996)Loss of Fibrinogen Rescues Mice from the Pleiotropic Effects of Plasminogen Deficiency, Cell 87, 709-715.

Mice deficient in plasminogen and fibrinogen are phenotypically indistinguishable from fibrinogendeficient mice.

Symptoms of gene-knockout mice:

Effects of all clotting gene knockout experiments in mice tested thus far:

For all practical purposes, the mice lacking both genes were normal! Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed.

Ruse, M, Answering the creationists: Where they go wrong and what theyre afraid of, Free Inquiry, March 22, 1998, p. 28.
For example, Behe is a real scientist, but this case for the impossibility of a small-step natural origin of biological complexity has been trampled upon contemptuously by the scientists working in the field. They think his grasp of the pertinent science is weak and his knowledge of the literature curiously (although conveniently) outdated. For example, far from the evolution of clotting being a mystery, the past three decades of work by Russell Doolittle and others has thrown significant light on the ways in which clotting came into being. More than this, it can be shown that the clotting mechanism does not have to be a one-step phenomenon with everything already in place and functioning. One step in the cascade involves fibrinogen, required for clotting, and another, plaminogen [sic], required for clearing clots away.

Greenspan, Neil S. Not-so-intelligent design, The Scientist, March 4, 2002, p. 12.

The Design advocates also ignore the accumulating examples of the reducibility of biological systems. As Russell Doolittle has noted in commenting on the writings of one ID advocate, mice genetically altered so that they lack either thrombin or fibrinogen have the expected abnormal hemostatic phenotypes. However, when the separate knockout mice are bred, the double knockouts apparently have normal hemostasis (reducible complexity after all), at least in the laboratory

Greenspan, Neil S. Not-so-intelligent design, The Scientist, March 4, 2002, p. 12.

These results cast doubt on the claim by proponents of ID that they know which systems exhibit irreducible complexity and which do not.

The shoe is on the other foot The mistake shows the unrestrained Darwinian imagination: they indulge in wishful speculation so much that they cant recognize difficulties for their own theory.

http://behe.uncommondescent.com/