DOUG AX, BIOLOGY, AND THE BELEAGUERED THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Even from a biological perspective, evolution is unable to bridge the gap between reality and any naturalistic explanation of it. In his new book, Undeniable: How Biology confirms our Intuition that Life is Designed, Douglas Ax argues that “functional coherence,” like “irreducible complexity,” argues against gradualistic evolution. How? Ax argues that many coordinated biological components have to be in place before the organism can have an “adaptive advantage,” before a trait can confer any survival value or even survive. Ax provides the example of photosynthesis within a single celled organism:

·       The photosynthetic apparatus in relatively simple single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria has hundreds of molecular parts that are precisely positioned to enable the apparatus to gather photons from the sun and convert their energy into the chemical energy in sugar. The photosystem’s overall function depends on an extensive hierarchy of subfunctions, all “contributing in a coordinated way to the whole.” (Jonathan Wells, Salvo Magazine, #39, Winter 2016, 45)

Ax concludes that this “makes accidental invention fantastically improbable and therefore physically impossible,” and that these designs “can only come from deliberate, intelligent action.”

Biologist Jonathan Wells observes:

·       Natural selection has never been observed to produce anything more than minor changes within existing species, but higher forms of life contain many more inventions than we find in cyanobacteria. (45)

Ax concludes that because such inventions involve high levels of complex additions, explaining them is like the problem of explaining the origin of life:

·       “Because each new life form amounts to a new high-level invention, the origin of the thousandth new life form is no more explicable in Darwinian terms than the origin of life.”

Consequently, the problems seem to be overwhelming the beleaguered theory of evolution.

LIFE AND THE ABANDONMENT OF THE NATURALISTIC HYPOTHESIS

Is the evolution of life inevitable when the right circumstances collaborate? Astronomer Hugh Ross has warned us to not expect it, anywhere in the universe:

·       The probability of life originating naturalistically on a habitable planet is mathematically indistinguishable from zero. Since zero times any other factor or set of factors equals zero, then, from a naturalistic perspective, the number of civilizations besides our own that exist in the universe is zero. (Salvo Magazine, Winter 2016, 35)

Why might Ross have calculated that the chances of life occurring naturalistically as zero? Here are several considerations:

Biologist Michael Denton points out the immensity of the machinery involved in even the simplest forms of life:

·       “If a cell were magnified a thousand million times…in every direction we looked, we would see all sorts of robot-like machines…the task of designing even one such molecular machine would be completely beyond our capacity.”

Richard Kleiss observes that:

·       “The mathematical probability that the precisely designed molecules needed for the simplest bacteria could form by chance arrangements of amino acids is far less than 1 in 10 followed by 450 zeroes.”

This is just a matter of the building blocks and not even the cellular machinery. He adds that:

·       “The coded instructions contained in the DNA of a human cell would fill 4,000 encyclopedia-sized books.”       

Interestingly, there is no evidence whatsoever that a single protein or segment of DNA has ever been found to occur naturally. Kleiss maintains that these products need to be produced within a living cell, but the cell first needs these building blocks:

·       “To make DNA, you have to have DNA in the first place…This leads to the conclusion that cells could never have evolved, they simply had to have been created with the DNA code already in them!”

Consequently, the naturalistic hypothesis might have to be abandoned.

IF MATURE DISCUSSION IS TO TAKE PLACE ABOUT ID, STRAWMEN ARGUMENTS MUST BE REJECTED

Atheists commonly charge theists, especially Christians, of being mindless:

·       For all we know that believer is arguing from ignorance. "I can't explain this, therefore God." or "I cannot believe that it can be anything but God, therefore God" or on circular cases "I believe it is God because I know. Why? Because I know."

This is inaccurate. I do not believe because I don’t understand but because I do. When I compare naturalism (non-design) to ID (design), I find the ID paradigm far superior. For one thing, everyone, even Carl Sagan, admits that we are surrounded by artifacts having the appearance of design. This is what our senses and experience tell us:

• "A living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architecture. Seen through a microscope there is an appearance of almost frantic activity. On a deeper level it is known that molecules are being synthesized at an enormous rate. Almost any enzyme catalyzes the synthesis of more than 100 other molecules per second. In ten minutes, a sizeable fraction of total mass of a metabolizing bacterial cell has been synthesized. The information content of a simple cell had been estimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." (Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894)

Furthermore, we consider our sensual data – what we see around us – as more authoritative than what scientists tell us we should see, unless we can understand scientific findings in a way that does not contradict our senses. For example, if scientists tell me that I do not have freewill, my experience of freewill takes precedence over what they tell me. This experience is so basic that to deny it is also to deny other things that I know on an experiential/perceptual basis – that I exist and that the material world exists.

There is absolutely no evidence against our perceptions of design (ID). Even if macro-evolution is true (which I don’t believe), there is no evidence to discount the possibility that ID had been behind it. If this is so, then there is no evidence that anything has ever happened “naturally” without ID.

If so, why not go with our thousands of perceptions of ID? In fact, many scientists have affirmed the credibility of ID based upon the evidence for ID. Physicist Paul Davies, concluded that chance events could not account for what he had been observing:

• “Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs (of which there are 40) must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn’t exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleus and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life.”

British astrophysicist George Ellis also sees the scientific evidence pointing to ID:

•  “Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”

Nobel Laureate in physics Arno Penzias came to the same conclusion:

•  “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”
  
  

Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, recounts:

• “When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.” (All these quotations have been taken from: http://ubcgcu.org/2013/03/05/mind-expanding-quotes-on-fine-tuning/

In light of the above, I think that it is essential to move past the straw-man arguments against ID, like, "I can't explain this, therefore God," if thoughtful discussion is to occur.

IF IT LOOKS DESIGNED, PERHAPS IT IS DESIGNED

Kyle Butt has written:

·       Richard Dawkins stated: “Living things are not designed, but Darwinian natural selection licenses a version of the design stance for them. We get a short cut to understanding the heart if we assume that it is designed to pump blood” (2006, p. 182, emp. added). Did you catch that? He said that things weren’t designed by any intelligence, but we can understand them more readily if we assume they were. http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=1691

·       University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne, in his book Why Evolution is True, wrote:  “If anything is true about nature, it is that plants and animals seem intricately and almost perfectly designed for living their lives” (2009, p. 1, emp. added).  He further stated, “Nature resembles a well-oiled machine, with every species an intricate cog or gear” (p. 1). On page three of the same book, he wrote: “The more one learns about plants and animals, the more one marvels at how well their designs fit their ways of life.” Atheist Michael Shermer, in his book Why Darwin Matters, stated: “The design inference comes naturally. The reason people think that a Designer created the world is because it looks designed” (2006, p. 65, ital. in orig.).

What are the implications of the appearances of design? Well, it suggests that these things might have actually been designed.

And why shouldn’t we believe what our senses tell us? Is it more reasonable to put our faith in the findings of an experiment? In this case, we are compelled to place our faith in the experimenter. However, in order to do this, we also have to also place our faith in our senses to read or hear about this “finding.” Doesn’t it make more sense just to believe in what our senses tell us directly?

Besides, have evolutionists or naturalists ever performed an experiment excluding God from the picture? No! Well, why then do we exclude Him? Perhaps we want to!

CAN SCIENCE PROVE GOD?

While most atheists acknowledge that science cannot disprove God, they claim that neither can it prove Him.

Since "proof" seems to convey finality or certainty, I will use the the more modest term "evidence." Yes, science does provide evidence for an intelligent Designer.

Had science revealed a world of chaos instead of order and design, I think that the atheist and science would be able to discount the existence of an intelligent Designer. However, all of the findings of science tell us just what our senses have always told us - that this cannot possibly be a world fashioned by chance.

In fact, science has taken us further than our immediate senses have. Science has shown us that life is more than a haphazard ball of jelly. Instead, it is a collection of cells, each containing an irreducibly complex array of machinery. Even the molecular components - proteins and DNA - are so complex and functional that they laugh at any naturalistic explanation.

Science has also revealed the fine-tuning of the universe, its constants calibrated just right to support life.

Even the exercise of science depends on the bedrock of the immutable, universal, and elegant laws/forces of science. Without these wonderfully designed laws, there could be no science at all. Consequently, the very fact that we can do science and accumulate knowledge depends on a God who has designed it all - the very God we stubbornly deny.

And what immutably maintains these laws/forces in a world of molecules-in-motion?

Everything we observe cries out "design," even the "natural" laws we now look towards as our Creator-substitutes.

Does science prove God? Science cannot utter a syllable without God. All of its findings should be labeled, "Disclosed and Made by the Designer."

In fact, the evidence for the Designer is so compelling, that it has compelled many to abandon atheism as a failed hypothesis. Former atheist and astronomer Alan Sandage wrote:

·       "As I said before, the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. . . . The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect."

In "There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," Antony Flew concluded that DNA requires an intelligent cause:

·       “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

·       “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together."

Flew had become a theist based upon the evidence of science. Meanwhile, science offers no evidence in favor of non-design, especially at science's most seminal levels.

If science offers no evidence against the existence of the Designer, why is His existence denied? Purely by choice!

To this, the atheist responds:

·       "Science doesn't have anything to say about the non-existence of the good-tooth-fairy or the spaghetti-monster either, nor should it."

This objection misses the point. The spaghetti-monster is not a concern of science unless the atheist claims that this is the name of the Intelligent Designer.

Science, in regards to ID, is addressing a fundamental question of origin - did the world come into existence by itself or was it designed by a transcendent being? Besides, is it possible to invoke natural causation if the natural hadn't already existed?

To these questions, the spaghetti-monster is irrelevant.