|
Michael Behe, professor of biology at Lehigh University, has made several compelling arguments questioning the entire Darwinian hypothesis. In his first book on this topic, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe argued that the irreducible complexity of the cell cannot have been a product of chance. There is a case for design that can be made. His second book on the topic, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, explores the limits of the Darwinian hypothesis. At bottom, his argument is that random mutation and natural selection are not an adequate or exhaustive description of the path life has taken in its development.
In a helpful review of Behe’s new book, Stephen Webb of Wabash College comments: “Darwinians are fond of using the metaphor of an arms race to describe evolution. In an arms race, each side (predator and prey) responds to the other by improving their position, which means that their relative positions remain the same, even as their individual performances improve. Gazelles that run the fastest will pass more of their genes along to the next generation, for example, resulting in faster gazelles overall, but the lions that chase them will do the same thing. Darwinians use this metaphor to illustrate how species advance even as their role in the predator-prey scheme remains the same.” But what if the metaphor is really trench warfare! “In trench warfare, anything goes for immediate gain. Species fight each other without any lasting improvements in their biological structures.” Behe writes: “If the enemy can be stopped or slowed by burning your own bridges and bombing your own radio towers and oil refineries, then away they go. Darwinian trench warfare does not lead to progress—it leads back to the Stone Age.” Behe demonstrates that this is exactly what occurred in the human attempt to disarm malaria. When chloroquine was first made widely available, it slowed down the spread of this tropical disease, but the malarial parasite soon evolved an effective defense against the drug. However, this battle did not result in a new and improved malarial cell. Instead, when chloroquine was no longer a threat, malaria reverted to its old ways. Its protective mutations deteriorated; they did not create anything new.
Changes at the molecular level require long jumps that cannot be traversed by random mutations. For Behe, we are now at the limits of evolution. He writes: “The more immediate evolutionary steps that must be climbed to achieve some biological goals without reaping a net benefit, the more unlikely a Darwinian explanation.” Behe is an advocate of Intelligent Design, and for that reason, scorned by most scientists. But he is demonstrating the limits of evolution in both of his books. He is not critiquing the hypothesis from the perspective of theology; he is critiquing it from the discipline of science itself. Are there limits to the Darwinian hypothesis? Behe argues rather persuasively that there are.
See Webb’s review in www.christianitytoday.com (27 March 2008). |
