The same goes for the call to, essentially, produce a high-quality videotape of the pool shark in action. That demand is often issued by the same people who excuse themselves from identifying the detailed steps that random mutation and natural selection putatively would take to complex biological structures. Reviewing Darwin’s Black Box in 1996 for Nature, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne wrote, “There is no doubt that the pathways described by Behe are dauntingly complex, and their evolution will be hard to unravel…. We may forever be unable to envisage the first proto-pathways.” If anyone thought it was hard to unravel ten years ago, it’s far worse now. Those who stick with Darwinism even if they can’t rigorously envisage supposed random pathways to complex systems are in no position to demand that design theorists escort the designer to the next science conference.
Both additional demands—for hard-and-fast predictions or for direct evidence of a theory’s fundamental principle—are disingenuous. Philosophers have long known that no simple criterion, including prediction, automatically qualifies or disqualifies something as science, and fundamental entities invoked by a theory can remain mysterious for centuries, or indefinitely. Isaac Newton famously refused to speculate about the nature of gravity; the basis for biological variation remained hidden for a century after Darwin; the cause of the Big Bang remains unknown even today. The strident demands heaped on the head of intelligent design by those hostile to it are simply attempts at verbal gerrymandering—trying to win by words what can’t be won by evidence. Yet science is not a word game that’s decided by definitions—it’s an unsentimental, no-holds-barred struggle to understand nature.
Of course, although prediction and testing aren’t nearly as straightforward as some simplistically assert, they nonetheless do play a critical role in science. If a theory has no implications for nature at all, or is completely disconnected from testing, then one can never have confidence that it is correct. Although philosophers of science agree that it is virtually impossible to falsify a theory directly, some tests of any theory’s basic expectations can make it far less credible. The Michelson-Morley experiment didn’t directly falsify the theory of the ether. The theory still might have been tinkered with, so that the failed experiment could somehow be shown to be consistent with it. But the failure to find an expected major effect of the ether severely and rightly shook scientists’ confidence.
The intensive studies of malaria discussed in this book are the equivalent of a Michelson-Morley experiment for Darwinism. Darwinism implicitly entails the strong, broad, basic claim that, given enough chances, random mutation and natural selection can build the sorts of complex machinery we see in the cell. Intelligent design implicitly entails an equally strong, broad, basic prediction, that random mutation cannot do so. Design denies not only that some specific piece of machinery (say, the bacterial flagellum) would be produced by random mutation, but that any complex, coherent molecular machinery would. Although random processes can account for small changes, there are real limits. Beyond those limits, design is required.
Darwin and design hold opposite, firm expectations of what we should find when we examine a truly astronomical—a hundred billion billion—number of organisms. Up until recently, the magnitude of the problem precluded a definitive test. But now the results are in. Darwinism’s most basic prediction is falsified.
THE EDGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Squabbles about what makes a theory scientific interest mainly philosophers. Does design make any practical difference? If it doesn’t, then why should anyone care?
The question is misbegotten. Although some people value science chiefly for the control it affords us over nature or the technological benefits it brings, that’s not its primary mission. The purpose of science is simply to understand the universe we live in, for its own sake. If that understanding leads to practical benefits, great. If not, that’s okay, too. Science is an intellectual adventure, not a business trip. If at the end of the scientific day we simply know more about the world than at the beginning, our chief goal has been met.
Nonetheless, although a scientific theory doesn’t have to have important practical implications, intelligent design does have them. As we’ve seen, nature plays hardball. A million people a year, mainly small children, die from malaria. Many more die from HIV and other infections. In order to counter such biological threats, we have to use every scrap of knowledge we have. We must understand both the capabilities and the limitations of nature.
In recent years, to educate the public about the medical importance of Darwin’s theory, some scientific organizations have emphasized the role of random mutation and natural selection in the development of antibiotic resistance. They are quite right to do so. Tiny, single changes in a target protein can destroy its ability to bind an antibiotic, rendering the antibiotic ineffective. For public health purposes, that’s a critical biological fact to understand.
But antibiotics that require multiple changes are far more resistant to Darwinian processes. That’s a critical fact to understand, too. Malaria requires several mutations to deal with chloroquine, so it’s a far better drug than ones that are stymied by a single mutation. And chloroquine is not the only case. Recently, former University of Rochester microbiologist Barry Hall examined various antibiotics in a class called “carbapenems,” which are chemically similar to penicillin.26 With unusual clarity of thought on the topic of evolution, Hall wrote, “Instead of assuming that [the chief kind of enzyme that might destroy these antibiotics] will evolve rapidly, it would be highly desirable to accurately predict their evolution in response to carbapenem selection” (emphasis added). Using clever lab techniques he invented, he showed that, although most of the antibiotics quickly failed, one didn’t. The reason is that neither single nor double point mutations to the enzyme allowed it to destroy the certain antibiotic (called “imipenem”). Wrote Hall, “The results predict, with >99.9% confidence, that even under intense selection the [enzyme] will not evolve to confer increased resistance to imipenem.” In other words, more than two evolutionary steps would have to be skipped to achieve resistance, effectively ruling out Darwinian evolution.
If antibiotics could be found that required a double CCC to counter, they would likely never lose their effectiveness.
On matters of public health, Darwin counsels despair. A consistent Darwinist must think that random mutation will get around any antibiotic eventually—after all, look at all that magnificent molecular machinery it built…. But intelligent design says there’s always real hope. If we can find the right monkeywrench, just one degree more difficult to oppose than chloroquine, it could be a showstopper.
In dealing with an often-menacing nature, we can’t afford the luxury of elevating anybody’s dogmas over data. In medical matters, it’s critical that we understand what random mutation can do. And it’s equally critical that we locate the edge of evolution.
WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE
Here’s something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts. C-Eve’s children died in her arms partly because an intelligent agent deliberately made malaria, or at least something very similar to it.
What sort of designer is that? What sort of “fine-tuning” leads to untold human misery? To countless mothers mourning countless children? Did a hateful, malign being make intelligent life in order to torture it? One who relishes cries of pain?
Maybe. Maybe not. A torrent of pain indisputably swirls through the world—not only the world of humans but the world of sentient animal life as well. Yet, just as undeniably, much that is good graces nature. Many children die, yet many others thrive. Some people languish, but others savor full lives. Does one outweigh the other? If so, which outweighs which? Or are pleasure and pain, good and evil, incommensurable? Are viruses and parasites part of some brilliant, as-yet-unappreciated economy of nature,
or do they reflect the bungling of an incompetent, fallible designer?
FIGURE 10.2
A Malawian mother holds her malarious child.(Courtesy of Stephenie Hollyman, www.blazingcontent.com.)
Whether on balance one thinks life was a worthwhile project or not—whether the designer of life was a dope, a demon, or a deity—that’s a topic on which opinions over the millennia have differed considerably. Each argument has some merit. Of the many possible opinions, only one is really indefensible, the one held by Darwin. In a letter to Asa Gray, he wrote: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living body of caterpillars.”
Wasp larvae feeding on paralyzed caterpillars is certainly a disquieting image, to say nothing of malaria feeding on children. So did Darwin conclude that the designer was not beneficent? Maybe not omnipotent? No. He decided—based on squeamishness—that no designer existed. Because it is horrific, it was not designed—a better example of the fallacy of non sequitur would be hard to find. Revulsion is not a scientific argument.
Darwin could have learned something from the hard-boiled Yiddish proverb, “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.” Maybe the designer isn’t all that beneficent or omnipotent. Science can’t answer questions like that. But denying design simply because it can cause terrible pain is a failure of nerve, a failure to look the universe fully in the face.
THE TRUMAN SHOW
In the late 1990s the actor Jim Carrey starred in a clever movie called The Truman Show. Truman Burbank is a man who was raised since birth in a city on an island he has never left. At the start of the movie he’s a thirtyish, married, childless insurance salesman leading an unremarkable life. He goes to work, listens to the radio in his car, is nagged by his mom about grandchildren, and endures the usual quotidian joys and sorrows. Unbeknownst to himself, however, Truman is actually the star of TV’s biggest reality show. The entire island is a set—concealing thousands of miniature TV cameras that broadcast his every move to a faithful audience—and the island’s population, including his wife and best friend, are actors. What Truman at first innocently takes as an unplanned world is actually elaborately designed around him. As the movie unfolds Truman becomes increasingly suspicious, finally figures it all out, and leaves the island.
So, is our universe The Truman Show writ large? Is humanity playing Jim Carrey’s role, and is the earth the island? If so, what might that mean for our quotidian lives? Are we really just puppets, pulled this way and that by invisible strings?
From what science has discovered, the universe is indeed elaborately designed around us, so in that sense the earth really is much like Truman’s island, strange as that may seem. But even so, from the bare conclusion of design, I see no necessary major implications for our daily lives. Even on Truman’s artificial island, he made up his own mind, overcame or yielded to his fears, decided when to stay or go. When he became suspicious that the island was designed, he didn’t flinch; he strove to discover the facts. In the most basic sense, within the borders of the set, he lived his own life.
And we live our own lives. We have as much control over our daily lives as did people in the nineteenth century, before the fine-tuning of nature was discovered. Within the boundaries of the society in which we participate—family, friends, culture—we make our own decisions, and enjoy or suffer the consequences, as we always have. Unlike on the movie island, our neighbors are not actors. They are other striving people, and our choices can affect not only ourselves, but them, too. In that regard, at least, the progress of science has changed nothing of our daily lives. We have as much opportunity to do right or wrong, to despair or hope, to help or hurt, as we ever did.
All the world may indeed be a stage, as Shakespeare wrote. Without a stage there would be no play and no actors. Yet the stage seems set for improvisational theater. The actors’ lines are spontaneous, not scripted, and, on that dangerous, living stage, they make of the play what they will.
Appendix A
I, Nanobot
Understanding the immense hurdles facing random mutation requires at least a passing familiarity with aspects of the molecular foundation of life. For those who might not remember their high school biology, in this appendix I present—as minimally, painlessly, and entertainingly as I can—a thumbnail sketch of the structure of protein and DNA, and an outline of how they work.
GRAY GOO
An electronic computer in the 1940s would fill a large room. By the late 1970s the antiquated clunkers had given way to personal computers that were thousands of times faster and could fit comfortably on a desktop. Today’s computers are thousands of times more powerful than the first PCs, and even smaller and sleeker. Faster, smaller, better—the trend for electronic machines seems relentless. Where will it lead? Some futurists have envisioned a, well, future when humanity can construct machines on the atomic scale. Molecular-sized robots will manipulate molecules, the idea goes, to build infinitesimally small machines that can themselves manufacture other machines.1 The field of the tiniest machines has been dubbed “nanotechnology.”
Tiny robots might do humanity much good. Yet in his 1986 book Engines of Creation Eric Drexler worried about the dark side: What if self-replicating nano-sized robots (nanobots) escaped the lab? The nanobots might replicate uncontrolledly, eating everything in sight, becoming an ever-expanding “gray goo” that takes over the universe. With admirable understatement he warned, “We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents.”
Today the field of nanotechnology is hot, but as reported in Nature, the sci-fi worries of Drexler from twenty years ago still dog workers (stirred up by the 2002 Michael Crichton novel Prey that detailed a gooey catastrophe).2 “Nanotechnology researchers are sick of hearing about ‘grey goo.’ Their research is still largely speculative, yet the notion that swarms of tiny self-replicating robots could escape from laboratories and destroy our world comes up time and time again when nanotechnology is discussed with the public.” Drexler himself, weary of the hysteria, recently avowed, “I wish I had never used the term ‘grey goo.’”
But just imagine—self-replicating nano-scale robots! Robots that can manipulate single molecules at a time! Tiny robots that could fill the earth! Wow, what a glorious future it will be—a glorious future that looks a lot like the glorious present and the glorious past, where nanobots already do all those things, and have been doing them for billions of years. You see, in biology nanobots are called “cells.”
Most people don’t think of cells as robots, probably because cells are made of organic materials rather than metal. But cells truly are self-replicating nanoscale robots.3 Self-replicating, because of course they reproduce themselves. Nanoscale, because most cells are quite tiny and all can manipulate single molecules. Robots, because their activities are carried out unconsciously and automatically by precision machinery that follows ordinary physical laws. And like Drexler’s frightful gray goo, biological nanobots would be more than happy to take over the world. Consider that a few single-celled malarial parasites injected into a human by the bite of a mosquito can multiply to a trillion in a short time, consuming much of the victim’s blood in the process. They would gleefully fill the earth if they could.
For most of our history humanity did not comprehend that the earth was filled with nanobots, or that assemblies of nanobots composed the mysterious creatures that could be seen by the unaided eye—mushrooms, lobsters, turnips, catfish, people. The realization that gray goo (or rainbow goo, anyway) had already taken over the world dawned on us slowly, after centuries of investigation. To drive home the critical point that the foundation of life is a congeries of ultrasophisticated molecular machinery gathered inside the nanobots called cells—and to give some background for showing what Darwinian evolution can and can’t do in the realm of the nanobots—in this appendix I’ll recount some highlights from the history of biology and take a loo
k at how some work gets done in a real nanobot. We’ll start with the large and work downward because, in one sense, the science of biology did what computer science has done more recently: focused first on big machinery and then worked its way down to the nano-scale.
THE PROMISE AND THE PERIL
Most people these days can learn of the basic underpinnings of life in a year, usually in their high school biology class. But it was not always so. It is only because of centuries of work by dedicated naturalists that we can open a book and learn about the different categories of plants and animals, the organization of the circulatory system, the structure of the vertebrate eye, the genetic code, the action of muscles, the chemical basis of life, and so on. Thousands of years ago no biology textbooks had been written, and the ancients had to puzzle out the structure of life for themselves.4 The first firm steps on that long, hard, sometimes dangerous path arguably were taken by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle knew that to understand nature, you had to pay close attention to it. And very close attention he did pay. Consider the formidable powers of observation reflected in his description of octopus reproduction.5
The octopus breeds in spring, lying hid for about two months. The female, after laying her eggs, broods over them. She thus gets out of condition since she does not go in quest of food during this time. The eggs are discharged into a hole and are so numerous that they would fill a vessel much larger than the animal’s body. After about fifty days the eggs burst. The little creatures creep out, and are like little spiders, in great numbers. The characteristic form of their limbs are not yet visible in detail, but their general outline is clear. They are so small and helpless that the greater number perish. They have been so extremely minute as to be completely without organization, but nevertheless when touched they move.
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