Truth Really Matters

The polar bear was classed as a species separate from the brown bear, in 1774, but later observations proved that the two could produce viable offspring together. And so they were both placed in the genus Ursus, together with the North American black bear.

A key question lingered . . . How did the polar bear’s ancestors develop the abilities to thrive in an extreme climate? Of course, we should never use words like “develop” that imply intent or design if we’re looking for a naturalistic or evolutionary explanation. The polar bear’s unique characteristics derive from mutations (or, perhaps, designed-in variations) in a gene named APOB, which governs the metabolism of fat in mammals, including humans. The same mutations in mice or humans lead to high cholesterol and heart disease. But the diet of polar bears is very high in fat, from seal blubber. The mutations in polar bear APOB actually degrade the function of the protein that the genes encode. But in extreme cold, the net result is advantageous.

A second mutated polar bear gene, LYST, produces the blanched white fur, a degradation (or variation) with respect to the ancestral brown fur. In fact, of 17 mutated polar bear genes (in comparison with brown bears), about three fourths of them have mutations that damage the normal function of the proteins they encode.

Michael Behe’s conclusion, in his book Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution (2019), is that the polar bear “has adjusted to its harsh environment mainly by degrading genes that its ancestors already possessed. Despite its impressive abilities, rather than evolving, it has adapted predominantly by devolving.”

Now, from a creationist perspective, it seems clear that the polar bear diverged from his brown forebears after the Genesis Flood, during the massive climate changes that resulted in the polar icecaps. Whether these were truly random mutations or, perhaps more likely, programmed-in variations from God on His original design, anticipating the climate changes, is an open question. The main point from Behe is germane, though . . . the new genes are somewhat degraded versions of the original.

As I’ve noted in essays on Behe’s two previous books, Darwin’s Black Box (1996), and The Edge of Evolution (2007), Behe is not a Biblical creationist. He stands firmly in the Intelligent Design (ID) camp, embracing deep time (billions of years) and common descent. His contributions to supporters of a truly Biblical worldview are in demonstrating that all of biology, from proteins and DNA to organelles to cells to tissues to organisms to ecosystems, require design and intelligent intervention at every level. Random physics and chemistry cannot do the job.

Evolutionary biology, as Behe observes, is “cloaked by a thick pretense of knowledge.” Evolutionary assertions infest articles, textbooks, documentaries, indeed our entire culture, but with no evidential support. Behe cites for example a Scientific American writer who pondered the differences between people and primates, writing, “Humans have evolved a sense of self that is unparalleled in its complexity.”

An honest declaration would have been, “Humans have a sense of self that is unparalleled in its complexity.” Behe notes that there have been no studies showing how evolutionary processes (mutations, natural selection) could produce self-awareness. The word “evolved” is pure bluster, paying religious homage to a materialistic worldview disconnected from experimental science, detached from reality.

He also cites a technical journal article on protein folding, in which the author blows similar evolutionary smoke: “Another important constraint is the inability of a cell to tolerate significant amounts of unfolded, nonfunctional protein. As a result, every cell has evolved mechanisms that identify and eliminate misfolded and unassembled proteins.”

In Behe’s previous books he made the overwhelmingly compelling case that random biochemical processes – mutations – have no ability to build complexity, to create new and novel proteins, not to mention complexes of proteins and processes that could produce new tissues, organs, or organisms. But the evolutionist must always deny the beauty and the brilliance of the Creator’s hand, and so worships blind, imaginary processes to avoid facing his God.

Behe’s blood pressure, of course, isn’t spiked by the spiritual implications. For him the evolution scam is about bad science. Which it is. But it’s much more, too.

One of Behe’s themes is what he calls the Principle of Comparative Difficulty: “If a task that requires less effort is too difficult to accomplish, then a task that requires more effort necessarily is, too.”

If a motivated, well-trained long jumper can barely reach 20 feet, for example, it would be silly to expect him, suddenly, to jump 30 feet . . . or 40. Similarly, Behe notes, economists who miss stock market booms and busts are not trustworthy in forecasting the nation’s economy over the decades ahead.

Also, since nutritionists continue to be confounded over some dietary factors that affect humans today, then how can “biologists claim they know which – if any – of countless environmental factors drove evolutionary changes in innumerable organisms in the distant past?” I agree with the author – it’s ludicrous.

Behe suggests a hierarchy of scientific models – Levels of Explanation – with some examples. I’ll expand on his thoughts from my own experience. The simplest first, followed by the more difficult . . . as I interpret it, difficult from the viewpoint of a deterministically inclined mathematical modeler . . .

Regular direct – Newton’s laws for the motion of a body. All of basic physics falls into this category. It’s interesting that physics is the most basic level, basic because you can actually use math to get precise answers. Only a fraction of students are content to delve into the deep math required to do physics, but it’s only the simplest physics problems that allow precise mathematical models.

Regular indirect – Thermodynamics, statistical physics for gases, solids, materials. Answers here are useful for engineering, but gloss over the details of what’s happening among the molecules in order to make macro-level predictions.

Manageably irregular – Observational studies in biology, like smoking / cancer studies. These problems are just too complex for math modeling, but gross observations and correlations can be found without a clear understanding of causes or mechanisms. Ironically, biologists don’t have to learn as much math as physicists do where is the best place to buy accutane online because biology is far more complicated than physics, so complicated that only the crudest math is useful in analyzing only the grossest observable effects.

Hopelessly irregular – Detailed long-term weather forecasting; “evolution” or variability in populations over time.

Spandrels of intelligence – Traffic jams; stock market bubbles. A “spandrel” is the triangular space between the outer curves of adjacent arches in classical architecture. The idea of a spandrel is that it is not designed to be there, but is just the consequence of the design of arches. And so traffic jams and stock market bubbles are not intended, but result naturally from human actions aimed toward other goals.

Intelligent causes – Complex machinery, software. In all of human experience when you see machinery and information that produces function or displays clear purpose, there always is an intelligent cause.

Behe considers the market booms and busts of recent decades, particularly in technology stocks. The booms and busts are the results of speculative buying and selling, of course. “But what explains the technology whose ownership was being traded? What explains a computer operating system? Or the construction of a website? Or a cell phone?” Only thinking people, engineers, scientists, of course, “whose intellectual work is utterly irreducible to lower-level causes.”

Extending the principle to biology, while some evolutionists suggest that patterns of mutations are explained as spandrels of the operations of molecular machinery in cells over deep time, what explains the existence of the molecular machinery in the first place? What explains the DNA codes and programs and signals and motors and control systems and micro-factories that enable anything and everything in biology to survive? Only an intelligent cause will do.

Powerful tools like electron microscopes, X-ray crystallography, and NMR probe the molecular basis of life to reveal “fathomless elegance – a seemingly never-ending parade of sophisticated structures, brilliant organizational arrangements, and incomprehensibly complex systems.” Humorously, the author observes that we have discovered that our bodies are “endowed with fantastic powers we never suspected.” Our nano-tech turns out to be far superior to that of the fairy-tale Borg of Star Trek.

Behe entertains his reader with several amazing examples of purposeful design. I’ll mention the planthopper (insect) that jumps to heights hundreds of times its body length, engaging gear teeth on its legs, the gears spinning at 50,000 teeth per second. These gear teeth are 1/1000 inch long. The planthopper’s nervous system must deliver an incredibly precise signal impulse to enable simultaneous motion of both legs, or else it would tumble out of control.

Much of life is in motion, with a huge variety of locomotive techniques – walking, hopping, swimming, slithering, jumping, flying. Bacteria who want to move on a surface with only a thin layer of water can’t easily employ their flagella to swim, but they can “twitch” or “glide.” One bacterium excretes a trail of slime from nozzles to propel it forward. Another uses an internal motor to power moving circular treads. Another uses internal rotating helices. Yet another bacterium has centipede-like legs that reach out, grip a surface, and pull. Who is the engineer who designed these brilliant mechanical systems? Behe won’t say, but I will – it’s the Lord Jesus.

One more spectacular example – An ocean-dwelling bacterium packs seven flagella together inside a tube with counterrotating gears to make a powerful engine to propel the bug at ten times the speed of a normal flagellum.

The designs of nano-machines must be encoded in the DNA, in the genes. Consider some elements of sophistication . . . Genes are broken up into fragments of DNA. The fragments that encode proteins and RNA are called exons, which are separated by ‘spacer’ DNA segments called introns. Let the numbers below represent exons and the ‘x’es represent introns. If . . .

(1)xx(2)xxx(3)x(4)xxxx(5) represents a simplistic chunk of DNA, then the exons could be spliced out in multiple ways. Both (1)(2)(5) and (1)(3)(4) might serve to encode two entirely different proteins for different functions. Splicing can also run backwards! Thus, the approximately 20,000 genes in the human genome code for about 100,000 different proteins! The most brilliant software engineers on the planet would never attempt such complexity . . . nor the cleverest authors, who could, by such a method, write multiple novels in a single volume by splicing out words or sentences in different orders.

Now, some genes are controlled in their expression by other genes, sometimes several other genes located in distant sections of the DNA. To facilitate gene synergy, protein scaffolding structures can fold DNA to bring different sections close to each other in 3-D space. So there is a 3-D component of the cell’s information content related to the structural and regulatory processes of the cell. There are also protein insulators that mark boundaries to keep some sections of DNA from expressing themselves to interfere with other genes.

Such complexities are matters of current research that may take decades to unravel. These are nano-machines that we have trouble visualizing or even watching to figure out how they work. This is not random chemistry.

Behe notes an ironic premise in Darwin’s writings, which also shows up in modern attacks on ID and Biblical creation . . . that God wouldn’t have done it that way. Darwin cites the ugliness of parasitic wasps and the torments that cats visit upon mice as examples.

But this is a theological criticism! And it fails to recognize the Fall, that with man’s sin, corruption and death intruded upon God’s perfect creation. You can’t logically use a Biblical viewpoint to criticize Biblical theology and history without accounting for what the Bible teaches. Also, the utter hopelessness of a materialistic / atheistic worldview misses the glorious hope of an assuredly coming New Heaven and New Earth. Death will have no sting then!

Evolutionary dogmatism rejects that Mind comes before life, God’s mind, while rejecting overwhelming evidences from our own experience – “that the purposeful arrangement of parts of a system reliably indicates deliberate design.”

Instead, they insist without evidence, that random chemical variations can convert goo into cellular factories, single-celled creatures into multi-organed invertebrates and fish, scales into feathers, and, frankly, a dead planet into entire ecosystems of nanotechnology along with the human brains to observe it all, to create math for analysis, to use language to communicate, and to generate hopes and dreams to find purpose in life.

Behe makes some comments about Darwin’s famous finches on the Galapagos Islands, studied in depth over the last several decades by Peter and Rosemary Grant. All of the ‘frenetic’ Darwinian evolution observed in these finches results in a mere twofold variation in body length, smaller or bigger beaks . . . and that’s about it. They’re all still finches and obviously always have been.

I find it interesting that Behe buys into the evolutionary party line that these finches have been on the islands for about two million years, rather than embracing a Biblical estimate of a few thousand years at most. Behe neglects the issue of genetic entropy entirely. Over a million generations in any multi-cellular creature’s history would produce a massive and lethal mutational load. Whatever minor variations in body and beak size – which were almost certainly programmed in by God in the original finch population – would be dwarfed by deleterious mutations, driving finches, or any such population into extinction. In humans, for example, each generation adds several hundred mutations to the genome. No matter how inconsequential any individual DNA ‘typo’ might be, a million generations goes way past extinction.

Why do I suggest programmed variations in the genes for body and beak size? What Galapagos finch data have shown is that variations can occur in a single generation as climate conditions change and optimum beak size correlates with the seeds available for feeding. Any evolutionary model would require many, many generations for a random mutation to, hopefully, take over the population and displace the former genome. This doesn’t work in a generation, or two, or three, or even ten. And there’s that nasty genetic entropy effect, too. During the hundreds or thousands of generations necessary for a mutation to take over an entire population, you’re building up many bad mutations.

This principle shows up dramatically in “The Most Definitive Evolution Experiment Ever,” as Behe describes the ongoing bacterial population experiments at Michigan State U, conducted by microbiologist Richard Lenski. In over 25 years now, more than 65,000 generations comprise the bacterial lineage. Genomes are recorded, mutations are tracked and mutated bacteria are isolated. Their physical characteristics and their reproductive performance are measured under various ‘test tube’ environments. The MSU team continually isolated and promoted those mutant strains that would reproduce most prolifically.

The bottom line . . . After tens of thousands of generations, the best reproducers were those who had degraded or broken ancestor genes that slowed down reproduction. Yes, you can find mutants that reproduce faster, but only at the expense of degrading or destroying various genes that promote other health factors. The new mutant strains would not compete at all with the ancestors in the wild, but you can make bacterial cultures with specific properties that promote reproduction. The babies are defective, though.

What didn’t happen? No new bacteria, no new genes, no new information content. Compare corporately selected chickens that plump up for slaughter, but would be totally unviable in a natural habitat.

No evolution at MSU. Just de-volution.

What about dogs in all their intelligently selected breeds? What mutations are involved that breeders decide to select for?

Increased muscle mass in some breeds results from degradation of a gene. Yellow coat color derives from a loss of a functional gene, black coats from a gene deletion. Variations in long or curly fur result from damaging multiple genes. Six different genes control body size; damaging these genes reduces size if the offspring survive. Similarly, short muzzles, white spots, short tails, and even friendliness toward humans come from gene degradation. Quite often, specialized breeds are more sickly, short lived, or suffer in other ways during their lives.

In the Origin of Species Darwin argued that dog breeding, artificial selection, is a good analogy for natural selection. And so it is. They both work by degrading genes. Selection only culls the genome at best. There is no natural mechanism for adding complexity, for improving design features, in any genome. Nanotech is simply too complex. It requires a brilliant Engineer. Natural processes involve only de-volution. That’s what the science shows.

And once a lineage devolves, there’s no going back. Polar bears do not have the genetic capacity to produce brown bears ever again.

One of evolution’s mainstream myths over the last 50 years has been that when a gene accidentally makes an extra copy of itself (indeed, gene duplication does happen on occasion), that the extra copy is then free to mutate and somehow natural selection kicks in and new functional proteins arise. (“arise” – That’s a ‘magic’ word.) But life’s cellular processes involve complexes of processes and highly tuned nanotech protein tools working in concert. Behe’s Principle of Comparative Difficulty “tells us that if minor changes in a single protein are substantially blocked to Darwinian processes, major changes in many proteins will be, too.”

Behe summarizes the research of Joseph Thornton which quantified how incredibly unlikely it is for a functional protein to mutate into a different functional configuration. These nanotech tools are just too precisely designed. They can degrade by mutation, sure. But mutate luckily into a different tool? Incredibly unlikely. Accordingly, can mutations produce complex systems of tools, brand new micro-factories? Ridiculous. An analogy: Convert the blueprints of a Lexus factory and the factory’s operating instructions into binary. Then randomly flip bits in the file. Now rebuild the factory based on the mutated design. Then see whether the new factory successfully produces F-22s.

Michael Behe looks back to the 1996 publication of Darwin’s Black Box and recalls the uproar the book caused. But now 23 years later, “despite much bluster and chest thumping in the media – the situation is unchanged. The literature remains totally devoid of explanations, and Darwinists remain incongruously smug. It seems the two have little to do with each other.”

Behe marvels at the failure of establishment biologists to recognize the hardest problem of their field – “how to explain the origin of the particular sophisticated structures of life.” Evolutionary theorists construct models that don’t account for the physics and chemistry of actual genes and proteins. Experimentalists discover amazing design complexities and simply assume the theorists can account for them.

The author cites a 2013 book by a famous evolutionary biologist, Masatoshi Nei. In Mutation-Driven Evolution Nei points out the obvious, that “particular defined mutations” are necessary to account for particular cellular features. You don’t have a theory unless you can specify what’s going on at the molecular level. Genetics and reproduction are molecularly-based processes. If evolution occurs, it doesn’t happen at the organ level or anywhere above that. All the action is at the nanotech scale.

Behe notes that reviewers were puzzled by Nei’s critique of the community, since he is a pioneer in molecular evolution. One wrote, “Isn’t selection well studied and the well-established driver of adaptive evolutionary change?” Another had to reassure readers that “Nei does not deny the existence of natural selection.”

Behe’s analogy: Studying economics is useful, but it’s ridiculous to imagine that the law of supply and demand called forth the existence of, say, microwave ovens. Economists have to take into account the existence and creativity of engineers. In summary, “No (natural) law explains the commercial products whose trading is studied by economics.”

Again exploring the Principle of Comparative Difficulty, Behe reviews the irreducible complexity of the ‘simple’ mousetrap, a feature of Darwin’s Black Box. In the mousetrap’s integrated design, including just-right-sized spring, hammer, catch, platform, etc., it’s obvious that it won’t function at all unless every component is already there and sized and connected properly. If such a simple machine is irreducibly complex – and intelligently designed – so are automobiles and air conditioners and sewing machines. But so are less complex bicycles, push lawnmowers, and tire jacks.

Now, biological science reveals the enormously complex nano-machines of the cells, many orders of magnitude more sophisticated AND more miniaturized than anything man can do. Typos – mutations – cannot construct such machines. If you say they can, then show me. If you can’t show me, then you don’t have a theory. You have blind, unreasoning faith.

In fact, as Behe reports, evolutionists have not even tried to develop a theory for any biomolecular machine. They haven’t even tried.

Consider the comparative crudeness of a computer micro-chip. Any element of the chip is composed of billions of atoms of silicon or germanium, whose physical properties en masse enable function. But the individual atoms of a given transistor gate could be rearranged randomly, as long as gross specs on the gate are maintained. Just like the atoms in your kitchen table could be arranged a zillion different ways, but the table still works as long as the gross specs are maintained. But biology’s nano-tech machines have every atom in just the right 3-D location, or they don’t work. Our best computer technology doesn’t come close.

Behe asks us to consider the simplicity of a hook-and-eye latch. Neither the hook nor the eye, by themselves, can latch a door, of course. Similarly, the disulfide bond between two cysteines (amino acid residues) acts like a hook-and-eye. Two compatible features are required for functionality. As unlikely as it is for any mutation to produce new functionality, all by itself, when two changes are needed for a new feature, there’s a quantum leap in probabilistic difficulty. More than two . . . it gets exponentially worse. And while you wait for the second and subsequent mutations, it is highly probable that other, damaging mutations hit the same gene. Behe: “Poison-pill mutations will always dominate a Darwinian evolutionary landscape.”

He cites evolutionists who have admitted the challenge of getting just two coordinated point mutations getting selected for new functionality, like the disulfide bond. Always remember that for evolution to work, the new function must so dominate the population that the original genes die out completely. Evolution is about differential reproduction – new features can’t just be somewhat better; they have to out-reproduce the old to extinction. Furthermore, the materialist has to explain where the original, incredibly complex protein nanomachines came from.

The Darwinist claims that his “theory can easily explain an out-board motor – it just has trouble explaining the hook-and-eye latch on the shed where it’s stored.”

Mutations and natural selection work to break bio-machines and drive genomes toward extinction. The much-analyzed and much-cited cases of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, proclaimed as ‘evolution in action’ are, without exception, examples of damage that results in less sensitivity to the antibiotic medicine. A useful analogy is to blow up the bridges outside your city to keep the invading army out. The broken bridges help the city survive against the army, but the city has lost useful functions, hasn’t it? In peacetime, a city without bridges won’t compete favorably. Neither do mutant bacteria in the absence of antibiotics. The MSU experiments show this effect time and again.

Darwinian evolution, mutations and natural selection, to whatever degree it actually happens, is a dead end. It should be called de-volution.

In closing, Behe does a creditable job clobbering Francis Crick’s assertion that all of human experience, our joys, sorrows, ambitions, are just molecules in motion, that we’re just a pack of neurons. Yet everyone knows – axiomatically – that we are conscious, we act with freedom of will, that human life is rich with properties not found in the Periodic Table . . . love, joy, meaning, hope, integrity, morality, beauty . . . Namely, you exist as a person. Science is small in scope. Science is about counting, weighing, and measuring stuff. Human life is richer. We’re made in God’s image. It’s His reality and the big stuff is immaterial . . . spiritual.

Behe: “Life is a product of mind.” He should be so bold as to identify that ‘mind’ as God’s – God as revealed in the Bible. But even Behe’s simple statement, as he reports, produces shock in academia. Establishment academics are committed, stupidly, to materialism while pretending their foundation is science.

Stupid? Yes, since science is built atop other foundations, like mathematics, which is built atop logic. Logic, in turn, along with observational experience – a vital component of science – is built atop rational thought. Rational thought cannot be built on top of brain chemistry. It’s dumb to think so.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com