Michael Behe is a Biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and a Catholic by faith. His book is subtitled “The biochemical challenge to evolution.” I have heard a number of positive reviews of Behe’s book over the years, and it certainly is significant that here you have a Biologist by trade raising a challenge to the assumptions of his own discipline.
Strengths
I have an odd commendation for Behe -a wealth of detailed scientific information, excellent sources, all so impressive that I could hardly understand a word of it. Perhaps this is more an enchantment with my own ignorance now that I think about it -if I genuinely know so little about biochemistry, who am I to judge that he knows what he’s talking about? My assumption is, you can’t hold a post at a university and be an ignoramus in your own discipline at the same time: as far as I can tell, Behe does a good job of backing up his arguments with solid science. At numerous points, Behe does encourage his reader to familiarize himself with a basic textbook on biochemistry -oboy, I’ll get right on it, and while I do, I’m going to get a root canal! All the more material for my posts on human suffering...
The gist of Behe’s argument is easy enough to follow: understand the notion of “irreducible complexity”, and apply that to various biological systems explained in minute detail with inaccessible scientific jargon. Simply put, a) evolution requires gradual, successive steps of change. However, b) nature is replete with “irreducibly complex” systems. That is, you cannot reduce these systems to single parts, for if you removed one part, the whole system becomes useless. An eye requires many parts working simultaneously in order to function. If you take only one of these parts away, the whole thing ceases to have any utilitarian value. Now, how could evolution, which depends on the functional value of mutations, possibly explain this? For these many parts, until joined to the whole, have no useful function at all. This is Darwin’s black box Behe claims: Darwin knew nothing of the nature of cells, and now that science has uncovered the “irreducible complexity” of biological life, his whole theory has become enormously implausible.
I like Behe’s argument. It’s pretty intuitive, and though I couldn’t follow all of the details of the examples he provided, I generally got the idea as he demonstrated how bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, etc, all require the functioning of numerous parts all at the same time, and how taking one of these parts away destroys the functionality of the entire system.
Behe challenges evolution, and supplies a bit of an alternative: “Intelligent Design”. Since Darwin’s theory cannot adequately explain the discoveries of Biochemistry, what can? An intelligent designer: Behe is arguing for the admittance of “Someone intelligent made this” into the arsenal of scientific theories that help us explain the world around us. He doesn’t say this is necessarily God: he says the theory of “Intelligent Design” could go almost anywhere: it could be God, it could be aliens, it could be ourselves going back in time and making life happen. The point is, mere natural laws cannot explain life, but an intelligent designer can. Moreover, the “Intelligent Designer” has left us no more knowledge of himself other than the fact that he’s intelligent, so scientists need not get their knickers in a knot that religion is trying to horn in on the goings-on of the laboratory.
Weaknesses
Behe is a bit of a one-trick pony. He puts all of his eggs in the “irreducible complexity” basket. For someone who desires to learn more to speak intelligibly to the creation/evolution debate, it seems unreasonable for me to settle the issue in my mind with the close of Behe’s book. I don’t believe in putting all of my eggs in one basket; why is Behe comfortable with this violation of common-sense laws of belief forming?
Simply put, it’s because Behe accepts the notion of “common descent”. That is, those intently looking for solid scientific ground to stand on to reject the insulting notion that we are descended from primates will find no sympathy in Behe, for he accepts that human beings descended from primates.
Of course, if “common descent” is in fact true, this is hardly a weakness in Behe’s position: it’s simply uncomfortable for those hoping to find in Behe a rigorous challenge to the “goo-to-you” version of evolution. So if Behe is right, we have confirmation that biology is trapped in Darwinian orthodoxy despite scientific progress. Yet, we also have confirmation in Behe that the main body of Darwin’s theory is correct.
My overall evaluation of Behe is that he isn’t what a lot of Christians expect. If you’re bound and determined to reject the theory of evolution, Behe is good evidence to support a suspicion that the scientific enterprise is caught up in an unwarranted enchantment with Darwin. Other than that, Behe is largely an endorser of Darwinism, for good or ill.
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