The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [107]
“No, not a bit,” he said with a good-natured smile. “I agree there are mousetraps with fewer parts than mine. As a matter of fact, I said so in my book! I said you can just prop open a box with a stick, or you can use a glue trap, or you can dig a hole for the mouse to fall into, or you can do any number of things.
“The point of irreducible complexity is not that one can’t make some other system that could work in a different way with fewer parts. The point is that the trap we’re considering right now needs all of its parts to function. The challenge to Darwinian gradualism is to get to my trap by means of numerous, successive, slight modifications. You can’t do it. Besides, you’re using your intelligence as you try. Remember, the audacious claim of Darwinian evolution is that it can put together complex systems with no intelligence at all.”
Behe’s simple explanation seemed sufficient to defeat McDonald’s critique. 6 But there was a stronger challenge to consider. I reached down into my briefcase and removed a copy of Natural History magazine. “Kenneth Miller of Brown University has another objection to your trap,” I said. Then I read him Miller’s comments:
Take away two parts (the catch and the metal bar), and you may not have a mousetrap but you do have a three-part machine that makes a fully functional tie clip or paper clip. Take away the spring, and you have a two-part key chain. The catch of some mousetraps could be used as a fishhook, and the wooden base as a paperweight; useful applications of other parts include everything from toothpicks to nutcrackers and clipboard holders. The point, which science has long understood, is that bits and pieces of supposedly irreducibly complex machines may have different—but still useful—functions. 7
“That’s a strong point,” I said. “Maybe an irreducibly complex system could develop gradually over time, because each of its components could have another function that natural selection would preserve on the way toward developing a more complex machine.”
“That’s an interesting argument,” he said.
I leaned forward. “Doesn’t this dismantle your case?” I asked.
Behe didn’t flinch. “The problem,” he replied, “is that it’s not an argument against anything I’ve ever said. In my book, I explicitly point out that some of the components of biochemical machines can have other functions. But the issue remains—can you use numerous, slight, successive modifications to get from those other functions to where we are?
“Some of this objection seems a bit silly. Could a component of a mousetrap function as a paperweight? Well, what do you need to be a paperweight? You need mass. You need to exist. An elephant, or my computer, or a stick can be a paperweight. But suppose you go buy a paperweight. What would it look like? Most of them are nondescript, roundish things. None of them look anything like a precursor to a mousetrap. Besides, look at what he’s doing: he’s starting from the finished product—the mousetrap—and disassembling it and moving a few things around to use them for other purposes. Again, that’s intelligent design!
“The question for evolution is not whether you can take a mousetrap and use its parts for something else; it’s whether you can start with something else and make it into a mousetrap. The problem for evolutionists is to start with a less complex system and build a more complex system. Even if every component could theoretically have a useful function prior to its assembly into the mousetrap, you’d still have the problem of how the mousetrap becomes assembled.”
“Explain further,” I said.
“When people put together a mousetrap, they have the disassembled components in different drawers or something, and they grab one from each drawer and put it together. But in the cell, there’s nobody there to do that.
“In molecular machines, components have portions of their shape that are complementary to each other, so they connect with each other in the right way. A positive charge can attract a negative charge, and an oily region can attract another oily region. So if we use the