By David H. Rogstad, Ph.D.

The intricate design present in biological systems never ceases to amaze. A few months ago I wrote about molecular motors present in biological cells and how they are giving insight to researchers in nanotechnology, either providing them with improved motor designs or actual devices to use in driving man-made miniature machines. In addition, Fuz Rana’s recently released book, The Cell’s Design, is filled with examples of similar biochemical design taken from all areas of cell function.

Scientists have known for some time about the design of the flagellum, the tiny corkscrew-like propeller and motor that some bacteria use for locomotion. With a stator, rotor, shaft, bushings, and a universal joint, this microscopic motor looks a lot like those that engineers design for running our home appliances, such as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners.

Recently, researchers discovered that the flagellum motor in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis also has a clutch that allows the rotor to disengage. Reporting in the latest issue of Science (see a press release here), a research team from Indiana University Bloomington and Harvard University led by biologist Daniel Kearns learned of this capability by accident. Kearns and colleagues were actually interested in how B. subtilis ceased its wandering activity when it took up residence in stationary assemblages called biofilms. The stability of a biofilm can be jeopardized if the flagella continued to spin. Understanding biofilm formation may prove useful in combating infections.

When the scientists realized that a particular protein, EpsE, was involved in repressing the flagellar motion, they proposed two possible explanations. One was that the EpsE acted as a brake, locking up the moving and nonmoving parts; the other was that EpsE worked like a clutch, disengaging the parts from each other. They were able to devise an experiment where the tail end of the flagellum was attached to a glass slide. They observed what happened in the presence and absence of EpsE. Since the cells stopped but could still rotate passively in the presence of EpsE, they concluded that it functioned as a clutch.

“We think it’s pretty cool that evolving bacteria and human engineers arrived at a similar solution to the same problem,” said Kearns. “How do you temporarily stop a motor once it gets going?”

Their press release concluded: “The discovery may give nanotechnologists ideas about how to regulate tiny engines of their own creation. The flagellum is one of nature’s smallest and most powerful motors—ones like those produced by B. subtilis can rotate more than 200 times per second, driven by 1,400 piconewton-nanometers of torque. That’s quite a bit of (miniature) horsepower for a machine whose width stretches only a few dozen nanometers.”

While these scientists attribute this remarkable capability to an evolutionary process, in light of the superior design in evidence, it seems far more likely that it reveals the hand of a Master Designer.

By Mario A. Lopez

Michael J. Behe is Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. Behe’s current research involves delineation of design and natural selection in protein structures.

In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, he has also written editorial features in Boston Review, American Spectator, and The New York Times. His first book, Darwin’s Black Box discusses the implications for neo-Darwinism of what he calls “irreducibly complex” biochemical systems. The book was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and recently named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

His latest book, The Edge of Evolution presents landmark evidence that devastatingly disproves random mutation as a major part of evolution and shows that life developed non-randomly from cells to animals.

Through a combination of experimental evidence, genome research, and mathematical law, Behe analyzes three key case studies of the tens of thousands of generations of malaria, E. coli, and the HIV virus, and the human genomic response to those invaders. We now know exactly what mutations have occurred in the struggle between these parasites and their human hosts. We know their rate of occurrence. We know all possible types of mutations, and their natural rate of occurrence. Armed with all this, it is a simple matter of extrapolation to determine the limits of Darwinian randomness in the entire tree of life on earth.

Behe has presented and debated his work at major universities throughout North America and England.

This interview was originally conducted by Mario A. López for the pro-ID Spanish website, Ciencia Alternativa:

Mario López (ML): Dr. Behe, for people who aren’t familiar with your work, what exactly is the argument you are making in The Edge of Evolution?

Michael J. Behe (MJB): In Darwin’s Black Box I argued that at least some very complex biochemical systems found in cells required purposeful design. However, some aspects of biology are simple, and could have appeared by chance in a Darwinian fashion. In The Edge of Evolution I try to draw a general line between the types of biological systems that would require design and those that wouldn’t.

ML: How does this book differ from you previous book, Darwin’s Black Box?

MJB: The Edge of Evolution makes the case that design is not just needed for the fanciest biological systems, but for almost all of them. In other words, unlike Darwin’s Black Box, The Edge of Evolution argues that design extends very deeply into biology.

ML: Your critics have called your design hypothesis the “Great” or “Divine Mutator.” Is this a fair representation? Why or why not?

MJB: Well, critics tend to use silly-sounding phrases to make ideas they disagree with look bad. In The Edge of Evolution I argue that life had to be designed to a very great degree of detail in order to exist. So, if one believes (as I do) that the designer is God, then God planned life on earth down to the molecular level. If that means the designer is a “Great Mutator”, so be it. Don’t forget, the astronomer Fred Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” to ridicule a scientific hypothesis he disagreed with, but the idea survived and prospered because of its merits.

ML: In The Edge, you make a defense for common descent (p.182) and later attribute it to a non-random process (p. 72). Considering the convergent evolution of the digestive enzyme of lemurs and cows, hemoglobin of human and mice, and in your own work resistance mutations that also arise independently (p77), why such a commitment to common descent? Isn’t genetic convergent evolution or even common design (considering your view of mutations) good alternative explanations to common descent?

MJB: I don’t think so. Although those other explanations may be true, I think that common descent, guided by an intelligent agent, is sufficient to explain the data. It has the great advantage of being easily compatible with apparent genetic “mistakes” shared by organisms, such as the pseudo-hemoglobin genes I wrote of in The Edge of Evolution.

ML: I know that you are well liked and respected by other ID proponents, but how do your ID colleagues feel about your commitment to common descent? Have they ever addressed that issue with you?

MJB: We have discussed it briefly and cordially, and have agreed to disagree.

ML: If you found a compelling argument against common descent, would you ever reassess your current position? How about your position on ID?

MJB: Sure. Science is always supposed to reassess its conclusions in light of the best available evidence. If new evidence came to light, or old evidence reinterpreted in a compelling way, then I would change my position on common descent, intelligent design, or any scientific conclusion.

ML: Is the repeated independent evolution of nylonase in two different strains of flavobacterium and of pseudomonas aeruginosa a good example of an increase of information in the genome? Does this refute the main contention of your book?
MJB: No. Those enzymes are very simple ones which simply hydrolyze precursors to nylon. That’s a very simple task, which can be done even by small organic catalysts.

ML: How will your work affect the way science is done?

MJB: I think the most practical effect will be to show the scientific and medical communities that the range of changes that random mutation can effect in disease-causing organisms like malaria is quite limited. Thus if we concentrate on finding impediments to the few effective mutational pathways in the most deadly organisms on earth, we may be able to conquer completely some of mankind’s oldest scourges.

Dr. Behe’s books:
Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press, 1996).
The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (The Free Press, 2007).

Posted at IdeaCenter.org

By C.S. Lewis Society

Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, “Public Education and Intelligent Design,” in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line here (fee for access US $29.95).

Prof. Nagel’s paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America’s highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity, not the emotional advocacy excitement for any side — that it is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel’s article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.

As anyone who has watched TV’s Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man’s death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes — not an accident, in other words — but was the product of an intelligence — a perpetrator.

But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can’t tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data — fingerprint or DNA banks — it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the “I.Q.” of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. The mental and conscious processes going on in the criminal’s mind are outside the scope of the sciences of chemistry and physics.

Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it. Everyone who has read or watched a Sherlock Holmes story knows this.

Prof. Nagel applies this principle to the evolution/intelligent design debate. Assuming, for purposes of argument, even though he himself is an atheist, to label the intelligence “God,” he says “the purposes and intentions of God, if there is a god, and the nature of his will, are not possible subjects of a scientific theory or scientific explanation. But that does not imply that there cannot be scientific evidence for or against the intervention of such a non-law-governed cause in the natural order” (p. 190). In other words, Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence — a person — did the act that killed the victim, even if he can’t use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime.

Therefore, Prof. Nagel says, it potentially can be scientific to argue that the data of DNA and life points to an intelligent designer, even if science cannot tell you the identity of the designer or what is going on in the designer’s mind.

Click here for the full article.

By Fazale Rana, Ph.D.
Part Two of Two

Last week I mentioned that in graduate school I studied and conducted research on cell membranes. The fluid mosaic model for the structure of cell membranes that I learned in the mid 1980s was conceived only about a decade earlier. And as I noted last week, within the last decade the view of the cell membrane has changed radically. Scientist viewed cell membranes as haphazard, disorganized systems, but now we know that the membranes are actually a careful arrangement of molecular pieces that result in exquisite organization that is integral to many functions performed by cell membranes.

As I argue in The Cell’s Design, ordering and organization of the cell membrane is one of a long list of characteristic features in biochemical systems that provide evidence for the work of a Creator.

In graduate school I focused most of my attention on the outer membrane of the gram negative bacterium Salmonella typhimurium. As a consequence, I learned quite a bit about bacteria. At that time, microbiologists viewed bacteria as simplistic “vessels” containing an assortment of life molecules randomly dispersed inside the cell. In short, microbiologists did not think that these organisms possessed any type of internal organization. This perception of bacteria stood in sharp contrast to the remarkable internal organization displayed by the complex cells (eukaryotes) that make up the multicellular fungi, plant, and animal kingdoms, as well as the single-celled protozoans.

Like the view of cell membranes, traditional understanding of prokaryotes is changing. Microbiologists now recognize that these microbes display a remarkable degree of internal organization. However, this organization doesn’t involve subcellular structures like with eukaryotic cells. Rather, the organization occurs at the molecular level—both spatially and temporally. (I detail some examples of this in The Cell’s Design.)

New work in microbiology has added to this insight. Researchers demonstrated that tmRNA, a special type of RNA molecule, displays a time-dependent spatial organization that varies through the course of the cell cycle. This biomolecule interacts with the ribosome during protein synthesis. It turns out that tmRNA organizes into a helical structure during the G1 phase and dissipates during DNA replication. The protein SmpB co-localizes and interacts with tmRNA. This organization appears to be critical and may affect how tmRNA interacts with ribosomes. This RNA molecule plays a key role in regulating protein synthesis and rescuing stalled ribosomes during the protein production process.

Common experience teaches that it takes thought and intentional effort to carefully organize a space for functional use. Instead of being a jumbled mess, the interior of the simplest cell is best described as a factory that has been carefully organized to efficiently carry out life’s most basic processes. For this reason, the surprising internal organization of bacterial cells points to the work of a Mind.

By Casey Luskin

A 1982 poll found that only 9% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes. Two years later, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued its first Science and Creationism booklet, stating that science and religion occupy “separate and mutually exclusive realms.”1 Public skepticism of evolution remained high—a 1993 poll found that only 11% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes.

In 1999 the NAS released a second version of Science and Creationism, again reassuring the public that “science and religion occupy two separate realms.”2 Still public skepticism remains high—a 2004 poll found that only 13% of Americans believe that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes, and a 2006 Zogby Poll found that about 70% of Americans support including scientific criticism of evolution in public school curricula.

Fearing the public’s unyielding skepticism of evolution, the NAS has now issued another ex cathedra edict promoting misinformation about intelligent design (ID) and bluffs about the scientific status of Darwinian evolution. What follows is a discussion of some of the errors in Science, Evolution, and Creationism.

With a picture of a cute baby chimp on its cover, the NAS’s new Science, Evolution, and Creationism booklet states, “Evolutionary biology has been and continues to be a cornerstone of modern science.” This sweeping statement does not speak for all NAS members. As NAS member Philip Skell wrote in The Scientist in 2005:

“Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit. None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however, mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.”3

Some evolutionary biologists would also disagree with the NAS’s claims in its new booklet that evolution has provided much agricultural, medical, or other commercial benefits to society. As evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne admitted in Nature, “improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’.”4

Click here for the full article and active footnotes.

By Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

Many science-fiction movies feature aliens with slight bodies and enormous brains. Such portrayals support the theme that an extraterrestrial ecosystem might permit the existence of a superintellect race that could develop the technology for interstellar space travel. These creatures may look impressive on screen, but this theme violates the laws of physics in two ways.

First, as demonstrated in the Reasons To Believe book Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men,¹ no animal bigger than an inch can physically survive an interstellar journey in any conceivable spacecraft that is smaller than a planet or a large moon. Second, it is not possible for a land animal to possess a brain-to-total-body-mass ratio significantly larger than that manifested in humans.

A new research study not only provides additional evidence that the human brain is at the maximum size possible, but also shows that the human brain is designed for maximum intelligence performance. Before this particular study emerged, physiologists had determined that the human brain receives about a third of the body’s blood flow and that its functions account for about a fifth of the body’s energy consumption. This incredibly high expenditure of bodily resources sustains an organ that, even for a slender adult, comprises no more than two percent of body mass. Yet this two percent ranks the highest among all animals.

Huge blood flow provides the necessary energy to the brain and keeps it sufficiently cool. If not for the human body’s bipedal structure, slim build, lack of excess hair, efficient sweating capacity, and large blood flow, the human brain would cook and lose much of its mental abilities. Considering these requirements plus the challenge of passing a baby’s head through the birth canal, it is not physiologically possible for the human brain-to-body-mass ratio to be any larger than it is.

The new study directly measured, for the first time, the energy cost of the brain’s information processing systems.² These systems involve the rapid flow of electrical charges across neuronal membranes. Sodium, potassium, and calcium ions carry the charges. In turn, the ion flow in the brain is carried by electrochemical gradients maintained by ionic pumps.

Through simulations of brain function, previous energy budget calculations determined that the ionic pumps ran at about 25 percent efficiency, which is equivalent to the best-designed human machines. In the new study three German neurophysiologists used functional brain imaging measurements on the rat hippocampus to determine the relative kinetic properties of the sodium and potassium ion pumps. Their measurements showed that the energy utilization was three times less than what the earlier energy budget calculations had indicated. An “energy demand per action potential of only 1.3 times the theoretical minimum”³ implies that the ion pumps are perfectly optimized.

Where did this optimization come from? The German neurophysiologists credit “evolution.” They conclude that their results are “in line with considerations that in evolution the economy of neural processes tends to be optimized.”⁴ A more accurate statement is that the economy of neural processes appears to be optimized in all species of birds and mammals. However, they lack any evidence that the economy of neural processes evolved from suboptimal to optimal. Given this evidence deficiency, it is more reasonable to conclude that a supernatural Creator intentionally designed neural processes to be optimally efficient and that he repeated this optimal design throughout all species of birds and mammals.

The study by the German neurophysiologists yields additional support for the design of the human brain for the best possible intellectual prowess. The human brain already is receiving the maximum possible supply of energy that is physiologically possible. The researchers’ discovery establishes that the energy supply is being exploited in the most efficient manner possible for information processing.

In a different context, the human brain reveals additional evidence that it has been designed for maximum intellectual performance. In nonhuman mammals, significant fractions of the brain mass are devoted to supporting muscles and the five senses. (About forty percent of a dog’s brain supports its sense of smell.) But the human brain is partitioned to deliver the maximum possible resources to intellectual activities. It looks like the Creator designed the internal structure of the human brain in a manner seen in no other species, so that humanity would have the greatest possible intellectual capabilities.

References:

1. Hugh Ross, Ken Samples, and Mark Clark, Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002).
2. Henrik Alle, Arnd Roth, and Jörg R. P. Geiger, “Energy-Efficient Action Potentials in Hippocampal Mossy Fibers,” Science 325 (September 11, 2009): 1405-8; Pierre J. Magistretti, “Low-Cost Travel in Neurons,” Science 325 (September 11, 2009): 1349-51.
3. Alle, Roth, and Geiger, 1405.
4. Ibid., 1408

By Fazale Rana, Ph.D.

As a junior in college I experienced love at first sight. (No, I didn’t meet my wife then; that encounter happened during my sophomore year. I fell in love with my wife—who is also a biochemist—because there was such good chemistry between the two of us. But I digress.)

During my junior year I became enthralled with cell membranes. Of all the remarkable biochemical systems that constitute life, I found life’s molecular boundaries to be the most fascinating. In graduate school, I decided to focus my studies on cell membrane systems. Each day, I delighted in the opportunity to spend virtually all of my waking hours doing experiments and thinking about the structure and function of biological membrane systems, ultimately becoming an expert in the biochemistry and biophysics of cell membranes.

Cell membranes consist of hundreds of different phospholipid species and proteins organized as a bilayer. About a decade before I entered graduate school, S. J. Singer and Garth Nicolson proposed the fluid mosaic model to describe the structure of cell membranes. This description views the bilayer as a two-dimensional fluid composed of a complex mixture of phospholipids. The bilayer serves as both a cellular barrier and a solvent for a variety of integral and peripheral membrane proteins.

According to the fluid mosaic model, membranes are little more than haphazard, disorganized systems with proteins and lipids freely diffusing laterally throughout the bilayer.

It is remarkable how science progresses. The latest advances indicate that the fluid mosaic model is an incomplete depiction. Biochemists now acknowledge that cell membranes consist of a careful arrangement of molecular pieces that result in exquisite organization at the molecular level. This organization is integral to many functions performed by cell membranes.

Recent work adds to the evidence for cell membranes as a highly organized systems consisting of numerous structurally and functionally discrete domains. These domains, in turn, appear to be organized into supradomains, reflecting a hierarchy of order and organization. The unique functional role of each domain is dictated by distinct lipid and protein compositions.

Biochemists have discovered a special type of domain in cell membranes called lipid rafts. These domains are solid-like regions of the membrane that “float” in more fluid regions, like a raft on the sea. Typically, lipid rafts are enriched in cholesterol and sphingomyelins. Presumably, interactions between the lipid head groups maintain the structural integrity of the lipid raft.

Again, this organization is integral to many functions performed by cell membranes. For example, specific types of proteins, usually those involved in signal transduction, are associated with lipid rafts. High levels of protein receptors are embedded in lipid rafts. These receptors bind molecules in the environment and, in turn, initiate biochemical pathways that elicit a response by the cell in response to changes in its surroundings.

These new insights captivate my interest today, as much as they did when I was in college and a burgeoning scientist. New discoveries like these excite me for another reason. As I argue in The Cell’s Design, ordering and organization of the cell membranes is just one of a long list of a characteristic features of biochemical systems that provide evidence for the work of a Creator. Common experience teaches that it takes thought and intentional effort to carefully organize a space for functional use. By analogy, the surprising internal organization of cell membranes bespeaks of intelligent design.

By Mario Seiglie

We are living in momentous times, whether we know it or not. A scientific revolution is beginning to take place before our very eyes. Exciting information is coming out almost daily about “intelligent design,” a concept challenging the reigning worldview of Darwinian evolution in classrooms and the media, not to mention in the biology labs.

“We are in the very initial stages of a scientific revolution,” said Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute, a think tank supporting intelligent design. “We want to have an effect on the dominant view of culture” (Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive, The New York Times, Aug. 21, 2005).

The strength of this scientific revolution can be seen by the recent comment from U.S. President George W. Bush that intelligent design should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.

“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” he said. Asked whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Mr. Bush replied that he did, “so people can understand what the debate is about” (”Bush Remarks Roil Debate Over Teaching of Evolution,” New York Times, Aug. 3, 2005).

A few days later, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is also a physician, made the same point. He said teaching both intelligent design and evolution in schools “doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone” and that “in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future” (”Show Me the Evidence,” New York Times, Aug. 28, 2005.).

Responding to President Bush’s remarks, Dr. Meyer went on to say: “We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biblical origins. It’s extremely timely and welcome because so many scientists are experiencing recriminations for breaking with Darwinist orthodoxy” (”Bush Remarks Roil Debate Over Teaching of Evolution”).

How did this revolution begin? The story is fascinating.

Origin of the movement

As with most scientific revolutions, this one didn’t take place with someone casually doing some abstract thinking.

Galileo started a scientific revolution when he used the recently invented telescope and saw moons orbiting around the planet Jupiter. This went against the reigning scientific worldview of that day, which taught that everything in the starry skies revolved around the earth. The discovery led to his backing the sun-centered theory, which sparked a scientific revolution in astronomy and general culture.

Isaac Newton also began to question the typical explanation of the movement of the heavens when he noticed an apple falling from a tree in his garden. (The legend that an apple fell on his head does not have much credible evidence to back it up, but that an apple fell in front of him certainly does.)

Albert Einstein developed some of his theories because of his fascination with magnets and swirling tea leaves in a cup.

Charles Darwin also developed his theory of evolution from his observations during an around-the-world trip on the ship The Beagle and from his fondness of breeding different varieties of pigeons.

The recent intelligent design revolution also started because of practical observations rather than abstract musings. In certain biology labs, scientists couldn’t explain by evolutionary theory what they were seeing inside the cell.

“Modern design arguments,” writes Canadian science writer and journalist Denyse O’Leary, “stem from 20th century science findings about the complexity of life that Darwin and his followers did not expect. The modern case for design is based on information theory [which] provides a tool for distinguishing between mere order, which can occur without design, and complex order, which probably cannot” (”By Design or By Chance?” 2004, p. 172).

Of course, just as with previous scientific revolutions, this one started when a courageous group of scientists questioned the dominant theory in a field of science and offered the evidence to unseat it. They faced strong opposition from the reigning authorities, who felt their prominent position, reputations and power were being threatened.

Revolutionary pioneers

In the 1980s, several scientists began meeting together to try to explain the incredible complexity they were witnessing inside the cell—and especially the vast amount of information in the form of a language imbedded in the DNA molecule. They began to challenge the theory of evolution within their own field of biology rather than from a religious point of view.

One of those scientists, biochemist Charles Thaxton, coined the term “intelligent design” to explain the need for intelligence behind the elaborate information found inside DNA. “Just when it seemed that natural causes might suffice to account for all natural phenomenon,” he notes, “there were breakthrough discoveries in both mathematics and biology” (A New Design Argument, Cosmic Pursuit, March 1, 1998).

The intelligent design movement gained momentum when New Zealand molecular biologist Michael Denton, a medical doctor and agnostic, carefully examined the main arguments for Darwinian evolution and found them very deficient.

He wrote in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis that the problems with the theory of evolution “are too severe and intractable to offer any hope of resolution in terms of the orthodox Darwinian framework” and that the accepted traditional view “is no longer tenable” (1985, p. 16).

He then concluded at the end of the book, “Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century” (p. 358).

In England , a University of California at Berkeley law professor on sabbatical, Philip Johnson, read The Blind Watchmaker, by prominent British zoologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, who advocated evolution as the real designer behind all living things.

Professor Johnson’s legal mind quickly noticed the flimsy and emotional arguments in the book, bereft of solid evidence. He wondered why a noted scientist would resort to such trickery if the theory was on such solid ground. Here was a challenge, he thought.

Professor Johnson began a thorough investigation of the evolutionary literature and was astounded with what he found. As a famous fable says, truly the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes! He began publishing his findings about Darwinian evolution in popular books such as Darwin on Trial (1991) and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (1997).

Meanwhile, at a biology lab in a Pennsylvanian university, biochemist Michael Behe was also puzzled by the astounding complexity he found inside the cell. On reading Dr. Denton’s book, he was angered about the suppression of such evidence by the scientific community. He wrote a bestseller, Darwin’s Black Box (1996), exposing major scientific weaknesses in the theory of evolution.

Another biologist, Jonathan Wells, also was incensed with the faulty information being perpetuated by Darwinian evolutionists in schools and universities. He wrote the book Icons of Evolution (2000), which exposed how some of the major “scientific” examples used to teach Darwinian evolution are in fact fraudulent or misrepresented.

Since then the intelligent design movement has gained notable influence on the public. A 2005 poll showed that a majority of Americans believe in it, and another poll of medical doctors found that 65 percent think intelligent design should be allowed or required to be taught in schools along with evolution. Now a growing number of U.S. school boards are beginning to insist that intelligent design be taught alongside evolution.

“This year,” says The New York Times, “the National Center for Science Education has tracked 70 new controversies over evolution in 26 states, some in school districts, others in the state legislatures” (Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey, Aug. 31).

What is the basis for the intelligent design revolution? There are four main aspects to it: information theory, irreducible complexity, the anthropic principle and the design inference. Let’s briefly consider each of these.

1. Information theory

In the 1960s, some scientists began to look at information as something different from matter and energy. For example, a book contains information, but the ink and paper of the book are not the information itself and can only transmit it. Thus, the means of transmission is entirely different from the message itself.

As George Williams, himself an evolutionary biologist, states: “Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn’t have bytes. You can’t measure so much gold in so many bytes . . . This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms” (John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, 1995, p. 43).

Interestingly, matter, energy and information all unite in living things. Without information, an organism cannot live. In fact, at death, all the biochemical ingredients are still there, but the information is no longer being effectively relayed to the trillions of cells in the body—so the complex biological machinery shuts down.

One of the main points of the intelligent design revolution is that evolution has not been able to explain either the origin of life or the information in our cells, since neither life nor information has been shown to spontaneously arise from matter or energy.

“Science doesn’t have the slightest idea how life began,” says Gregg Easterbrook, senior editor of The New Republic. “No generally accepted theory exists, and the steps leading from a barren primordial world to the fragile chemistry of life seem imponderable” (quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, p. 41).

“It was once expected,” adds Dr. Behe, “that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated than television cameras and automobiles.

“Science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science’s attempt to explain their origins” (Darwin’s Black Box, 1996, p. x).

So not only the problem of the origin of life but also the dilemma of the information inside the DNA molecule defies Darwinian explanation and argues powerfully for intelligent design.

Recently, one of the world’s most renowned atheists, Sir Antony Flew, renounced his atheism because of the compelling evidence of the DNA molecule.

“It now seems to me,” he remarked, “that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design . . . Biologists’ investigation of DNA has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved.”

In the end, explained Professor Flew, he “had to go where the evidence leads” (Famous Atheist Now Believes in God, Dec. 9, 2004, Associated Press report).

2. Irreducible complexity

In The Origin of Species, Darwin acknowledged that “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.”

Intelligent design theorists have demonstrated that living things are full of such examples at the molecular level.

Dr. Behe coined the term “irreducible complexity” to explain that complex systems will work only if all the components operate at once. He explains that you could not get an intricate, interrelated system from successive and slight modifications, as Darwin proposed.

For instance, blood clotting needs 20 different proteins to work together in sequence for the process to occur. If only one of the proteins is missing, the result is hemophilia, where blood does not clot as it should.

Eukaryotic cells, which digest nutrients or excrete waste, contain an elaborate traffic system that directs proteins to the right places—another irreducibly complex system.

The bacterial flagellum has some 40 working parts, all carefully coordinated and interacting together. But by removing any of its key components, the whole mechanism grinds to a halt. So how did all 40 parts evolve into a complex interrelated system when none of the parts on their own, whether fully or partially developed, offered any evolutionary advantage?

This is one example of molecular “machines” inside living beings that could not have appeared in a step-by-step evolutionary process. They are, in fact, obvious evidence of intelligent design.

3. The anthropic principle

Since Darwin , it has been common for scientists to believe that the earth is a planet with no special characteristics and that conditions in the universe simply allowed life to evolve from natural processes.

As atheist Sir Julian Huxley said during the Darwin Centennial in 1959: “The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion” (quoted by Denyse O’Leary, p. 133).

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe,” added Carl Sagan, the late astronomer, “are challenged by this point of pale light [upon our world]. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark” ( Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994, p. 7).

Yet now the scientific evidence has revealed that we occupy a very privileged position in the universe. To explain this cosmic fine-tuning, scientists coined the term “anthropic principle,” which describes a universe designed for life—and, in particular, human life.

This principle states that all the constants in physics are precisely the values required if you want to have a universe capable of supporting life.

Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, an agnostic, reluctantly admitted that the universe appears to be delicately tuned for life: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as the chemistry and biology [of the universe] . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question” (quoted by Denyse O’Leary, p. 41).

As it turns out, our planet is a very special place in the universe. “We’ve found,” says astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, “that our location in the universe, in our galaxy, in our solar system, as well as such things as the size and rotation of the Earth, the mass of the moon and sun and so forth—a whole range of factors—conspire together in an amazing way to make Earth a habitable planet” (quoted by Lee Strobel, p. 164).

This is also a powerful argument for intelligent design. “It is quite easy to understand,” says Walter Bradley, author of the landmark book The Mystery of Life’s Origin, “why so many scientists have changed their minds in the past thirty years, agreeing that the universe cannot reasonably be explained as a cosmic accident. Evidence for an intelligent designer becomes more compelling the more we understand about our carefully crafted habitat” (quoted by Lee Strobel, p. 127).

4. The design inference

Another tool intelligent design advocates are using is a precise, scientific method to determine what is intelligently designed from what is not.

Dr. Behe explains this concept: “The basic idea is that by looking at features from natural systems, you can discern an intelligent agent was involved in setting up the system. A good example in the U.S. is a mountain called Mt. Rushmore .

“On the face of this mountain have been carved the faces of four American presidents. If you were from another country and never heard of Mt. Rushmore , and were driving down the road when suddenly you see these faces on the mountain, you would know they were not formed by erosion, wind or any other unintelligent sources. You would know a mind was involved, some culture was out there and made that.

“The same idea applies in any area of nature. Suppose you’re an astronomer and you’re studying the radio waves that fill the universe. Most of them are static, but you have your antennae focused, and all of a sudden you hear radio waves that are conveying a message—something like ‘We would like pizza, too’ or ‘Greetings from Alpha Centauri’—then it would be dumb to ascribe those to random physical forces. You would ascribe them to intelligent space aliens.

“Now if you are a biologist and you think the cell is a glob of protoplasm but you go on to investigate it and you find out that instead of being simple, it is filled with these elegant machines—machines of greater sophistication than we are capable of making—that is telling us something.

“The intelligent design hypothesis says we can infer that a mind was at work there, too— that matter and energy and natural processes are not sufficient to explain how the cell came to be arranged that way” (interview in The Good News, May-June 2005, p. 8).

Where does it go from here?

Linus Pauling, twice a Nobel Prize winner, once wrote, “Science is the search for truth, the effort to understand the world” ( No More War, 1958, p. 209).

The pursuit of truth, however, has a price. It is not always going to be received with open arms. Deeply entrenched beliefs, whether in science or religion, are hard to give up.

What the Bible says about truth in another context also applies here. It says that “no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:21) and also, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). These verses are talking about being set free from falsehoods that distort our thinking and present a counterfeit reality.

Yet it will be a struggle to be free of strongly held but erroneous academic beliefs misidentified as science. This is evident by what Harvard zoologist Richard Lewontin candidly admitted:

“We take the side of science [as he calls it] in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, and in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism . . . we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (quoted by Denyse O’Leary, p. 222, emphasis added).

Kansas State immunologist Scott Todd adds, “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic” (Nature, Sept. 30, 1999, p. 423). Yet true science is the pursuit of truth, not merely the pursuit of a materialistic explanation despite evidence to the contrary.

So the scientific revolution now taking place—which includes the very meaning of science— will be a long and difficult battle. Yet, hopefully, the evidence in the fields of biology, chemistry, astronomy and physics will prevail to show that a supposedly blind and purposeless process like evolution cannot possibly account for the complexity, beauty and harmony we see all around us.

From the orderly pattern of the enormous universe, the galaxies and our planet with its amazing creatures, to the equally wondrous and complex microcosm of the cell, the evidence shouts an unmistakable message: We are the result of a Master Designer!

By Stephen Meyer, Ph.D.
This video lasts 3:35