Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [106]
An additional weakness in their argument can be seen in IDers’ arrogant and indolent belief that if they cannot think of how nature could have created something through evolution, it must mean that scientists will not be able to do so either. This argument is not unlike those who, because they cannot think of how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, these structures must have been built by Atlantians or aliens. It is a remarkable confession of their own inabilities and lack of creativity. Who knows what breakthrough scientific discoveries await us next month or next year? The reason, in fact, that Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, has had to focus on the microscopic world’s gaps is that the macroscopic gaps have mostly been filled. They are chasing science, not leading it. Also, sometimes we must simply live with uncertainties. A scientific theory need not account for every anomaly in order to be viable. This is called the residue problem—we will always have a “residue” of anomalies. It is certainly acceptable to challenge existing theories and call for an explanation of those anomalies. Indeed, this is routinely done in science. (The “gaps” that creationists focus on have all been identified by scientists first.) But it is not acceptable in science to offer as an alternative a nontestable, mystical, supernatural force to account for those anomalies.
Self-organization, emergence, and complexity theory form the basis of just one possible natural explanation for how the universe and life came to be the way they are. But even if this explanation turns out to be wanting, or flat-out wrong, what alternative do Intelligent Design theorists offer in its stead? If ID theory is really a science, as IDers claim it is, then the burden is on them to discover the mechanisms used by the Intelligent Designer. And if those mechanisms turn out to be natural forces, then no supernatural forces (ID) are necessary, and IDers can simply change their name to scientists.
4. Irreducible Complexity. According to Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box: “By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” Consider the human eye, a very complex organ that is irreducibly complex—take out any one part and it will not work. How could natural selection have created the human eye when none of the individual parts themselves have any adaptive significance? Or consider the bacterial flagellum, the IDers type specimen of irreducible complexity and intelligent design—it is not like a machine, it is a machine, and a complex one at that, without antecedents in nature from which it could have evolved in a gradual manner.
There are a number of answers that refute this argument. Starting general, Michael Behe concludes his discussion of irreducible complexity by stating: “An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.” Philosopher Robert Pennock, in his 1999 book Tower of Babel, noted that Behe here employs a classic fallacy of bait-and-switch logic—reasoning from something that is true “by definition