Timothy Wilken, MD
The words ‘evolution’ and ‘Darwin’ are powerful polarizing triggers even in today's (2002) so called modern world. This has been primarily because Darwin’s theory of evolution and the evolutionary science that developed from it seem at first glance to refute the Holy Bible’s narrative of God’s creation of Heaven and Earth and to threaten one’s belief in God. Scientist Michael Behe writing in 1996:
From the time it was first proposed, some scientists have clashed with some theologians over Darwin's theory of evolution. Although many scientists and theologians thought that Darwinian evolution could be reconciled rather easily with the basic beliefs of most religions, publicity always focuses on conflict. The tone was probably set for good when Anglican bishop Samuel Wilberforce debated Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and strong advocate of evolution, about a year after Darwin's seminal book was published. It was reported that the bishop—a good theologian but poor biologist—ended his speech by asking, I beg to know, is it through his grandfather or grandmother that Huxley claims his descent from a monkey? Huxley muttered something like, The Lord has delivered him into my hands, and proceeded to give the audience and the bishop an erudite biology lesson. At the end of his exposition Huxley declared that he didn't know whether it was through his grandmother or grandfather that he was related to an ape, but that he would rather be descended from simians than be a man possessed of the gift of reason and see it used as the bishop had used it that day. Ladies fainted, scientists cheered, and reporters ran to print the headline: War Between Science and Theology.
The event in America that defined the public perception of the relationship of science to theology was the Scopes trial. In 1925 John Scopes, a high school biology teacher in the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee, volunteered to be arrested for violating a previously unenforced state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The involvement of high-profile lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense and three-time losing presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution guaranteed the media circus that ensued. Although Scopes's team lost at trial, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. More importantly, the publicity set a tone of antagonism between religion and science.
The Scopes trial and the Huxley-Wilberforce debate happened long ago, but more recent events have kept the conflict simmering. Over the past several decades groups that, for religious reasons, believe that the earth is relatively young (on the order of ten thousand years) have tried to have their viewpoint taught to their children in public schools. The sociological and political factors involved in the situation are quite complex—a powerful mix of such potentially divisive topics as religious freedom, parental rights, government control of education, and state versus federal rights—and are made all the more emotional because the fight is over children.
Because the age of the earth can be inferred from physical measurements, many scientists quite naturally felt that the religious groups had entered their area of expertise and called them to account. When the groups offered physical evidence that they said supported a young earth, scientists hooted it down as incompetent and biased. Tempers flared on both sides, and much ill will was built up. Some of the ill will has been institutionalized; for example, an organization called the National Center for Science Education was set up a dozen years ago-when several states were passing laws congenial to creationism—to battle creationists whenever they try to influence public school policy.
These and numerous other examples of historical events in which scientists have clashed with religious groups are real and cause real emotional reactions. They make some well-meaning people think that a demilitarized zone should be maintained between the two, with no fraternization allowed. However, the importance of the historical clashes for actual scientific understanding of the development of life is essentially zero. (1)
If we are going to heal ourselves and solve our human crisis, we must not fall into the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. This is just another example of ‘either/or thinking’ and ‘mixing levels of organization’. Many humans including a number of otherwise good scientists are presently caught up in this trap.
One false assumption that results from this trap is the belief that science must explain everything about life and its origins. After all if ‘God’ is the alternative explanation for all in universe. Then our ‘either/or’ thinking requires that for ‘evolutionary science’ to be true, it too must explain all in universe. However recall from the science section that to explain ‘ALL ’ in universe is very large task indeed.
Evolutionary science (2002) does explain a great deal and many of its aspects have been scientifically corroborated. However, Darwin offered no explanation for the origin of life. And, evolutionary science (2002) while explaining how simple organisms can become more complex organisms, and how organisms have adapted to better fit their environments, has not provided a clear step by step explanation for the beginnings of life nor provided proven explanations for the development of complex organs like the human eye.
When scientific theory does not answer a question placed to it, one of two conditions may exist. First, the theory is incomplete and when more is discovered and the theory expanded, it will better answer the question. Or, two the theory may be wrong and there exists an alternative explanation that better answers the question.
I believe that the first condition exists here. I believe that evolutionary science (2002) is young and like many young theories it is still incomplete. For example, it clearly needs integration with synergic science. And, I believe when and as we discover more, we will come to understand life and evolution better, and I predict we will then develop better answers to these important questions.
However, there are a number of humans including some very good scientists who believe the second condition exists here. They believe that an alternative explanation exists that better explains life.
Intelligent Design
Michael Behe argues for intelligent design as a better explanation for life:
The impotence of Darwinian theory in accounting for the molecular basis of life is evident not only from the analyses in this book, but also from the complete absence in the professional scientific literature of any detailed models by which complex biochemical systems could have been produced. In the face of the enormous complexity that modern biochemistry has uncovered in the cell, the scientific community is paralyzed. No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institutes of Health, no member of the National Academy of Sciences, no Nobel prize winner—no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have developed in a Darwinian fashion. But we are here. Plants and animals are here. The complex systems are here. All these things got here somehow: if not in a Darwinian fashion, then how?
Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory. Graduate students in untied tennis shoes scraping around the lab late on Saturday night; postdoctoral associates working fourteen hours a day seven days a week; professors ignoring their children in order to polish and repolish grant proposals, hoping to shake a little money loose from politicians with larger constituencies to feed — these are the people that make scientific research move forward. The knowledge we now have of life at the molecular level has been stitched together from innumerable experiments in which proteins were purified, genes cloned, electron micrographs taken, cells cultured, structures determined, sequences compared, parameters varied, and controls done. Papers were published, results checked, reviews written, blind alleys searched, and new leads fleshed out.
The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell — to investigate life at the molecular level — is a loud, clear, piercing cry of design! The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in quanta. The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of Eureka! from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take a day off.
But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.
Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the coin is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God. (2)
Behe argues that intelligent design is necessary to any satisfactory explanation for the complexities of molecular biology. Design has also been offered by many others as the only satisfactory explanation for complex biological organs like the human eye.
The arguments for design presented by Behe and other advocates usually involve three issues: 1) Complexity—The probability that life could originate by chance, or that the complexity of molecular biology or the human eye can be explained by random chance is enormously unlikely. 2) Intelligence—There is evidence for intelligence in the form of controlled choice which can be found in all life forms—plants, animals, and humans—which cannot be explained by random choice. And, 3) Purpose—There is evidence of purpose in the form of goal seeking behavior which is found in all forms of life and which cannot be explained by random chance.
Complexity, intelligence, and purpose are all strong arguments against random chance. Therefore evolution stands refuted, and the only alternative offered to explain life is design.
However, all these arguments at least in part presume that Darwinian theory and evolutionary science is based on random chance. Is Darwinian theory and evolutionary science based on random chance?
Evolution Does Not Equal Random Chance
British scientist Richard Dawkins, one of world’s leading experts on evolutionary biology, discusses this presumption in his 1996 book Climbing Mount Improbable:
One of Britain's most famous physical scientists, Sir Fred Hoyle frequently expresses a similar view with respect to large molecules such as enzymes, whose inherent ‘improbability’—that is the probability that they'd spontaneously come into existence by chance—is easier to calculate than that of eyes. Enzymes work in cells rather like exceedingly numerous machine tools for molecular mass production. Their efficacy depends upon their three dimensional shape, their shape depends upon their coiling behaviour, and their coiling behaviour depends upon the sequence of amino acids which link up in a chain to make them. This exact sequence is directly controlled by genes and it really matters. Could it come about by chance?
Hoyle says no, and he is right. There is a fixed number of amino acids available, twenty. A typical enzyme is a chain of several hundred links drawn from the twenty. An elementary calculation shows that the probability that any particular sequence of, say 100, amino acids will spontaneously form is one in 20 x 20 x 20 ... 100 times, or 1 in 20100, This is an inconceivably large number, far greater than the number of fundamental particles in the entire universe. Sir Fred, bending over backwards (unnecessarily, as we shall see) to be fair to those whom he sees as his Darwinian opponents, generously shortens the odds to 1 in 2020. A more modest number to be sure, but still a horrifyingly low probability. His co-author and fellow astrophysicist, Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, has quoted him as saying that the spontaneous formation by 'chance' of a working enzyme is like a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and spontaneously having the luck to put together a Boeing 747. What Hoyle and Wickramasinghe miss is that Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection, Why, I wonder, is it so hard for even sophisticated scientists to grasp this simple point?
Darwin himself had to contend with an earlier generation of physical scientists crying ‘chance’ as the alleged fatal flaw in his theory. William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was perhaps the greatest physicist of his day and Darwin's most distinguished scientific opponent. Among his many achievements he calculated the age of the Earth based on rates of cooling, assuming that it had once been a part of the 'fires' of the Sun. He concluded that the Earth was some tens of millions of years old. Modern estimates put the age up in the thousands of millions of years, it is no discredit to Lord Kelvin that his estimate was one hundredth part of the right answer. Dating methods using radioactive decay were not available in his time, and nuclear fusion, the true ‘fire' of the Sun, was unknown, so his cooling calculation was doomed from the start. What is less forgivable was his lofty dismissing, 'as a physicist', of Darwin's biological evidence: the earth wasn't old enough; there hadn't been enough time for the Darwinian process of evolution to have achieved the results we see around us; the evidence of biology must simply be wrong, trumped by the superior evidence of physics. Darwin might just as well have retorted (he didn't) that the biological evidence clearly indicates evolution, therefore there must have been time for evolution to occur, therefore the physicist's evidence must be wrong!
To return to the point about 'chance', Lord Kelvin used the prestigious platform of his Presidential Address to the British Association to quote, with approval, the words of another distinguished physical scientist, Sir John Herschel, who also, by the way, referred to Darwinism as ‘The Law of Higgledy-Piggledy':
We can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variation and natural selection as a sufficient account, per se, of the past and present organic world, than we can receive the Laputan method of composing books (pushed à I’outrance) as a sufficient one for Shakespeare and the Principia.
Herschel's allusion was to Gulliver's Travels in which Swift had mocked the Laputan method of writing books by combining words at random. Herschel and Kelvin, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, my anonymously quoted physical scientists and any number of Jehovah's Witness tracts all make the mistake of treating Darwinian natural selection as though it were tantamount to Laputan authorship. To this day, and in quarters where they should know better, Darwinism is widely regarded as a theory of 'chance'.
It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and elbow joints and the other living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve. It solves it by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch. Only God would essay the mad task of leaping up the precipice in a single bound. And if we postulate him as our cosmic designer we are left in exactly the same position as when we started. Any Designer capable of constructing the dazzling array of living things would have to be intelligent and complicated beyond all imagining. And complicated is just another word for improbable—and therefore demanding of explanation. A theologian who ripostes that his god is sublimely simple has (not very) neatly evaded the issue, for a sufficiently simple god, whatever other virtues he might have, would be too simple to be capable of designing a universe (to say nothing of forgiving sins, answering prayers, blessing unions, transubstantiating wine, and the many other achievements variously expected of him). You cannot have it both ways. Either your god is capable of designing worlds and doing all the other godlike things, in which case he needs an explanation in his own right. Or he is not, in which case he cannot provide an explanation. God should be seen by Fred Hoyle as the ultimate Boeing 747.
The height of Mount Improbable stands for the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in eyes and enzyme molecules (and gods capable of designing them). To say that an object like an eye or a protein molecule is improbable means something rather precise. The object is made of a large number of parts arranged in a very special way. The number of possible ways in which those parts could have been arranged is exceedingly large. In the case of a protein molecule we can actually calculate that large number. Isaac Asimov did it for the particular protein haemoglobin, and called it the Haemoglobin Number. It has 190 noughts. That is the number of ways of rearranging the bits of haemoglobin such that the result would not be haemoglobin. In the case of the eye we can't do the equivalent calculation without fabricating lots of assumptions, but we can intuitively see that it is going to come to another stupefyingly large number. The actual, observed arrangement of parts is improbable in the sense that it is only one arrangement among trillions of possible arrangements.
Now, there is an uninteresting sense in which, with hindsight, any particular arrangement of parts is just as improbable as any other. Even a junkyard is as improbable, with hindsight, as a 747, for its parts could have been arranged in so many other ways. The trouble is, most of those ways would also be junkyards. This is where the idea of quality comes in. The vast majority of arrangements of the parts of a Boeing junkyard would not fly. A small minority would. Of all the trillions of possible arrangements of the parts of an eye, only a tiny minority would see. The human eye forms a sharp image on a retina, corrected for spherical and chromatic aberration; automatically stops down or up with an iris diaphragm to keep the internal light intensity relatively constant in the face of large fluctuations in external light intensity; automatically changes the focal length of the lens depending upon whether the object being looked at is near or far; sorts out colour by comparing the firing rates of three different kinds of light-sensitive cell. Almost all random scramblings of the parts of an eye would fail to achieve any of these delicate and difficult tasks. There is something very special about the particular arrangement that exists. All particular arrangements are as improbable as each other. But of all particular arrangements, those that aren't useful hugely outnumber those that are. Useful devices are improbable and need a special explanation. R. A. Fisher, the great mathematical geneticist and founder of the modern science of statistics, put the point in 1930, in his usual meticulous style (I never met him, but one can almost hear his fastidiously correct dictation to his long-suffering wife):
An organism is regarded as adapted to a particular situation, or to the totality of situations which constitute its environment, only in so far as we can imagine an assemblage of slightly different situations, or environments, to which the animal would on the whole be less well adapted; and equally only in so far as we can imagine an assemblage of slightly different organic forms, which would be less well adapted to that environment.
Eyes, ears and hearts, the wing of a vulture, the web of a spider, these all impress us by their obvious perfection of engineering no matter where we see them: we don't need to have them presented to us in their natural surroundings to see that they are good for some purpose and that, if their parts were rearranged or altered in almost any way, they would be worse. They have 'improbable perfection' written all over them. An engineer can recognize them as the kind of thing that he would design, if called upon to solve a particular problem.
This is another way of saying that objects such as these cannot be explained as coming into existence by chance. As we have seen, to invoke chance, on its own, as an explanation, is equivalent to vaulting from the bottom to the top of Mount Improbable's steepest cliff in one bound, And what corresponds to inching up the kindly, grassy slopes on the other side of the mountain! It is the slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants that Darwin called natural selection, The metaphor of Mount Improbable dramatizes the mistake of the sceptics quoted at the beginning of this chapter, Where they went wrong was to keep their eyes fixed on the vertical precipice and its dramatic height. They assumed that the sheer cliff was the only way up to the summit on which are perched eyes and protein molecules and other supremely improbable arrangements of parts. It was Darwin's great achievement to discover the gentle gradients winding up the other side of the mountain.
But is this one of those rare cases where it is really true that there is no smoke without fire? Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process—mutation, Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it is usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the 'randomness' of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation ran be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. (3)
Complexity, Intelligence and Purpose
Behe and others use the term design to explain their evidence of complexity, intelligence and purpose. When we find complexity, intelligence and purpose in a human made tool or artifact, we speak with great assurance that a human designer of that tool or artifact exists. And, that the complexity, intelligence and purpose that we find in our tool or artifact represents the complexity, intelligence and purpose of the human designer. And when we look for evidence of a human designer, we find it. We find the design plans for the tool or the blueprints for the artifact. We find the workshop of the designer or maybe his studio. And often, we find the designer himself perhaps even in the act of designing.
However, while we find complexity, intelligence and purpose in our examination of universe — in our examination of heaven and earth — in our examination of life and human — we have not found evidence of a designer of universe — evidence of a designer of heaven and earth — evidence of a designer of life and humanity — we just haven’t found it.
Our failure to find a designer or even evidence of designer is not proof that no designer exists or even that there is no evidence of design. However, we have found complexity, intelligence and purpose and this by itself is highly meaningful to the human mind.
Humanity has used the term God to represent ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. We have used the term God to represent ‘that’ which is the source of Universe — ‘that’ which is the source of Heaven and Earth — ‘that’ which is the source of Life and Humanity.
I make no argument against the existence of God. I am in full belief that there exists ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. I am in full belief that there is a ‘source’. And I also call that source God. Let us agree then that the source of Universe — the source of Heaven and Earth — the source of Life and Humanity — is God. This agreement does not require that we define or describe God in anyway.
Evolution Does Not Prove a Godless Universe
Scientists in 2002 are as human as their fellow inhabitants of the planet, and most are just as ignorant of synergy. Sensitivity to ‘both-and’ thinking requires knowledge of synergy. This is why many scientists make mistakes of ‘either/or’ thinking. They are just as caught up in the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. Their failure to find evidence of a designer and their desire to be ‘good’ scientists — true to their intellect — compels them to deny God. Therefore they miss the fact that to explain universe will require both God and evolution.
So let us agree to end this false argument of ‘evolution versus creationism’. Let us further agree that humanity — individual or collective — scientific or religious has no ability to limit God as to what mechanism or mechanisms the act of creation or the workings of the universe will take. The mechanisms that we discover through the careful use of the scientific method will by definition be God’s mechanisms.
Synergic Evolution —One of God’s Mechanisms
In our earlier discussions we found that life’s power is to create syntropy. This ability to ever increase order, organization, pattern, and form is a defining characteristic of life. Life evolves towards ever-increasing syntropy — ever increasing order — ever increasing organization, form, pattern, and heterogeneity.
Young’s Theory of Process explains that this transition is from simple process to complex process — from light to particles, from particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules, from molecules to plants, from plants to animals, and from animals to humans. This process of synergic evolution then is another of the defining characteristics of life. This brings us to a new definition of evolution:
Evolution—def—> The transition of process from a state of lower syntropy—order, organization, pattern, and form to a state of higher syntropy—order, organization, pattern and form.
Science in 2002 has discovered that evolution is synergic. Then the purpose of life is to evolve—to transition from a state of lower syntropy to a state of higher syntropy. Life advances through actions both small and large. And purpose is the driving force behind all actions. So purpose is found everywhere in both both small and large amounts.
Sources:
1) Michael J Behe, DARWIN’S BLACK BOX—The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996
2) Michael J Behe, DARWIN’S BLACK BOX, 1996, ibid
3) Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company, New York-London, 1996
