Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Beheis an American biochemist, author, and intelligent designadvocate. He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known for his argument for his stance on irreducible complexity, which argues that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on.
In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.
If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines the basis of life developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life's foundation has paralyzed science's attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism's universal reach.
In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.... Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.
As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.
As can be seen even by this limited number of examples proteins carry out amazingly diverse functions.
This fact immediately suggested a singular event - that at some time in the distant past the universe began expanding from an extremely small size. To many people this inference was loaded with overtones of a supernatural event - the creation, the beginning of the universe.
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
The question of how the eye works - that is, what happens when a photon of light first impinges on the retina - simply could not be answered at that time.
When you start putting constraints on science, science suffers.
The fact that most biology texts act more as cheerleaders for Darwin's theory rather than trying to develop the critical faculties of their students shows the need, I think, for such statements.