The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [115]
“When you analyze the entire experiment, the result is exactly what you would expect of irreducible complexity requiring intelligent intervention. Unintentionally, he has shown the limits of Darwinism and the need for design.”
WHIRLPOOLS AND TORNADOES
“What about other alternatives to Darwinian gradualism?” I asked. “How about self-organization? Maybe there’s some sort of self-organizational property in biochemistry that encourages the parts of molecular machines to self-assemble.”
“Just like natural selection explains some things, self organization explains some things too. The controversy arises when they’re used to explain big things or everything,” Behe said.
“It’s true that if you pull out the plug in your bathtub, the water forms a little whirlpool. That’s self-organization: the water is moving in an organized fashion whereas it wasn’t before. Tornadoes organize themselves. If you mix chemicals together in a certain way, you get a system that acts like a clock. It will turn blue, five seconds later it will turn colorless, and it will oscillate back and forth. So it’s clear that there is such a thing as self-organization.
“The question is, can it explain more complicated phenomena? Can it explain the genetic code? Scientists trying to solve the riddle of the origin of life have been exploring self-organizational properties for decades. Yet today they’re more confused about the origin of life than fifty years ago. They haven’t come up with any explanation for how self-organization could account for something as complex as even the first primitive living organism.
“Right now, there’s only one principle that we know can come up with complex interactive systems, and that’s intelligence. Natural selection has been proposed, but there’s little or no evidence backing that claim. Some people had high hopes for self-organizational properties or complexity theory, but there’s no evidence that these can explain something as complicated as the cell. The only force known to be able to make irreducibly complex machines is intelligent design.
“So scientists are in the curious position of ignoring something they know to be capable of explaining what they see in biology, in favor of phantom or totally unproven explanations. Why ignore intelligent design when it’s a good match to the data? Yes, we have to keep an open mind in science, but we shouldn’t be ignoring the most obvious explanation for all the evidence we have today.”
“One reason some scientists are reluctant,” I said, “is because they claim intelligent design is not falsifiable.” I was referring to the belief among many philosophers and scientists that a theory cannot truly be scientific unless there are potential ways to prove it false through experiments or other means. 16
“That’s silly,” Behe replied.
“But I hear it over and over,” I insisted. “The National Academy of Sciences said: ‘Intelligent design . . . [is] not science because [it’s] not testable by the methods of science.’ ” 17
“Yes, I know,” he said, “but what’s really ironic is that intelligent design is routinely called unfalsifiable by the very people who are busy trying to falsify it! As you just pointed out, Miller proposed a test that would falsify the claim that intelligence is needed to produce an irreducibly complex system. So I don’t see the problem. Intelligent design’s strong point is that it’s falsifiable, just like a good scientific theory should be. Frankly, I’d say it’s more falsifiable than Darwinism is.”
“Come on,” I said. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes, I do, and I’ll give you an example,” he replied. “My claim is that there is no unintelligent process that could produce the bacterial flagellum. To falsify that claim, all you would have to do would be to find one unintelligent process that could produce that system. On the other hand, Darwinists claim that some unintelligent process could produce the flagellum. To falsify that, you’d have to show that the system could not possibly have been created by any of a