The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [116]
That isn’t the only objection that Behe has turned on its head. While Darwinists often accuse intelligent design proponents of letting their religious beliefs color their science, Behe once told a newspaper reporter: “It has been my experience . . . that the ones who oppose the theory of design most vociferously do so for religious reasons.” 18
“What did you mean by that?” I asked.
“It seems that the folks who get the most animated when talking about Darwinian evolution are the ones most concerned with the philosophical and theological ramifications of the theory, not the science itself,” he explained.
“Scientists propose hypotheses all the time. No big deal. But if I say, ‘I don’t think natural selection is the driving force for the development of life; I think it was intelligent design,’ people don’t just disagree; many of them jump up and down and get red in the face. When you talk to them about it, invariably they’re not excited because they disagree with the science; it’s because they see the extra-scientific implications of intelligent design and they don’t like where it’s leading.”
Behe shrugged. “I guess that’s okay,” he added. “These are important issues and people can get emotional about them. But we should not use what we want to be true to dismiss arguments or try to avoid them.”
THE ARROW OF PROGRESS
Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity is at once a negative and a positive argument. First, he has taken Darwin at his own word and demonstrated how these interconnected biological systems could not have been created through the numerous, successive, slight modifications that his theory demands. The result has been a staggering—some say lethal—blow to Darwinism.
Second, Behe has pointed out that there is an alternative that does sufficiently explain how complex biological machines could have been created. Once again, as with the previous experts I had interviewed on cosmology, physics, and astronomy, the evidence conspires to point toward a transcendent Creator.
“My conclusion can be summed up in a single word: design,” Behe said as we came to the end of our interview. “I say that based on science. I believe that irreducibly complex systems are strong evidence of a purposeful, intentional design by an intelligent agent. No other theory succeeds; certainly not Darwinism.
“Based on the empirical evidence—which is continuing to mount—I’d agree with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger that ‘the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. . . . [They] point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before.’ ” 19
“Your book has been out for several years now,” I said. “How well do you think it has endured so far?”
“I’m very pleased with how things stand,” he said, leaning back in his chair and casually folding his arms over his chest. “It has attracted a lot of attention from people who have tried to knock it down, but they haven’t been able to do it. Complex biological systems have yet to be explained by naturalistic means. That’s a fact. Even Darwinists admit that in their candid moments. And as science advances, we’re continuing to find more and more complexity in the cellular world. This, Lee, is the arrow of progress.
“I do hear occasional complaints that science needs to pretend that everything works by natural law and that intelligent design is ‘giving up.’ I’ve never seen the logic of that. The purpose of science, it seems to me, is to find out how things got here and how they work. Science should be the search for truth, not merely the search for materialistic explanations. The great scientists of history—Newton and Einstein, for instance—never thought science’s job was to come up with some sort of self-sufficient explanation for nature. This is a recent innovation, and not a good one—especially in light of discoveries during the last