Reverse Engineering the Darwinian Priesthood
Science, just like a cheap bottle of wine can be an acquired taste. Today however, there may not be enough time to acquire it, unless of course you’re a neo-Darwinist, then there’s always enough time to acquire whatever it is you desire: sub-atomic particles, atomic particles, atoms, chemicals, amino acids, polypeptides, proteins, RNA, DNA, living organisms, complete organs and organ systems, symmetrical body plans, digital watches, cell phones, Lamborghinis whatever you want. In fact, I’d be willing to argue that you can “explain” virtually every material process and agent with evolution.
But what about something immaterial, like information? We can speculate until the cows come home about the hardware, but the software? That’s a different animal altogether, and that is where we’re headed today. But before presenting the challenge complex specified information (CSI)1 presents to naturalistic evolution, some background is in order.
On page 315 of The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin writes:
“Many of the views which have been advanced are highly speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous… False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long.”2
This statement made in reference to his own work shows a great deal of humility and foresight on the part of
Now to be sure, evolution was a theory ahead of its time. But the technological advances of the last 150 years have finally caught up with Darwin, and they are confirming exactly what he foretold, that some of his views would no doubt prove erroneous.3 In a moment we will look at just one of the discoveries those advances have revealed. But first let’s examine the biases naturalistic evolutionists bring to the table.4
In his book, The Blind Watch Maker, Richard Dawkins writes the following, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”5 And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the helical structure of the DNA molecule writes, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”6
These statements are significant because both Dawkins and Crick accede that biological systems evidence design. But they want us to believe that design is actually a cruel joke perpetrated on us by Mother Nature, even when the attributes she exhibits are incapable of producing complex specified information (CSI),7 or irreducibly complex systems.8 She is a deity whose only demand is a ritual sacrifice of fresh minds. If we would worship her we need only relinquish that which enables us to see her for what she really is: an object of design.
Conversely, intelligent design theorists believe that the reason organic systems evidence design is because they are designed. And to posit the contrary despite the evidence is to abandon reason. Mathematician William Dembski says it best. He writes: “Intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature, nor does it prescribe in advance the sequence of events by which this intelligent cause had to act. Intelligent design holds to three tenets:
1. Specified complexity is well defined and empirically detectable.
2. Undirected natural causes are incapable of explaining specified complexity.
3. Intelligent causation best explains specified complexity.
Design Theorists hold these tenets not as religious presuppositions but as conclusions of sound scientific argument.”9 One such argument deals with the nature of CSI.10
As you peruse the literature on the subject of evolution, you find that the nature of information simply isn’t there. This is worth noting because the general consensus among evolutionary biologists is that in order to create life you only need three things: a building-block molecule; a medium in which chemical reactions can take place; and energy.11 But elaborate experimentation trying to simulate science’s concept of biogenesis (some say abiogenesis), utilizing these elements has yet to prove this hypothesis. Without the infusion of exogenous information to build and direct the complex molecular machines comprising the so called simple cell, about all you’ll synthesize in the lab is a pile of goo.12
I do believe that scientists will eventually synthesize life in the lab, from scratch as it were. But not without directing the process, thus proving it takes CSI in the form of advanced biotechnical know-how to get the job done. It is therefore with regards to CSI that large scale evolution must yield the floor to the design inference.13 It is here that the debate must be enjoined, and it is here that I will make a case for intelligent design. To aid me in this endeavor I will recruit some unlikely and unwilling allies in the considerable talents of the late Carl Sagan and the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) organization.
In Sagan’s book, Contact (which was later adapted for the big screen) the SETI organization uses radio telescopes to listen to the stars. Their goal is to identify an intelligently designed radio signal from outer space, which they do about half way through the movie.14 What no one bothers to ask is how they knew this particular signal was designed.15 If you do any reading in this area, you’ll discover that SETI scientists do indeed have criteria for inferring intelligence and it is based on three factors: contingency, complexity, and specification.16 This is significant for two reasons: First, SETI is using a scientific methodology to detect CSI from which they infer an intelligence they never directly perceive.17 Second, there is a non-arbitrary source of CSI on the planet earth that not only meets, but exceeds SETI’s requirements for inferring intelligence.18 That source is the genetic code, and it exhibits the following characteristics: It is digital; It is error correcting; It is redundant; And it is over lapping.19 Each of these features are extremely complex by themselves, and evidence sophisticated engineering of the information structure. But what about the nature of the information itself?
Quoting from theoretical physicist Erwin Schrodinger; James D. Watson, the co discoverer of the chemical structure of DNA writes, ‘The language of life might be like Morse code, a series of dots and dashes. [Schrodinger] wasn’t far off. The language of DNA is a linear series of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs.’20 I like Schrodinger’s analogy for DNA as Morse code because at its heart is the nature of information. We’ll use his model to illustrate that what we observe with respect to the genetic code is an example of design.
When Schrödinger used Morse code as a blueprint for the genetic code’s information structure, he was really giving us a deeper lesson on the nature of information. You see in order for a code or language to have any meaning, you have to have the surprise effect of a language convention superimposed on the symbols. Rhetorically speaking, suppose you and I decide that we can work out the entire alphabet (itself another code) using a linear series of dots and dashes (Morse code). After we agree on the meaning of our code, I can then send you the message: “… — …” and you’ll know the message is “SOS” and its meaning is “distress.” In both cases, (Morse code and the alphabet) I’m using a language convention to say, “let this = that.” Moreover, our code is arbitrary, meaning there is no natural law to account for it. Without a set of rules embodied in a language convention those dots and dashes mean nothing. The same is true for our alphabet. The only way the sequence has any meaning is if information is “infused” into the symbols by way of convention, where an intelligence says, “let a linear series of three dots, three dashes, and three dots = SOS” and beyond that, “let SOS = distress.”21 Now let’s apply this to the genetic code.
To synthesize proteins, complex structures within a cell read the genetic code (DNA), interpret the sequences, and translate the information into the appropriate amino acids. That sequence will determine what amino acid is to be used in protein synthesis. For example, the base triplet sequence GCC, designates the amino acid, alanine, or to borrow from Schrödinger, GCC = alanine. Furthermore, a unique convention exists for every amino acid the body uses in protein synthesis. There is also punctuation in the form of start and stop bits in the DNA strand.
The implications of this are staggering, because each base triplet sequence isn’t the corresponding amino acid, but each coded sequence signifies the amino acid to be used, just as “SOS” signifies the message bit “distress.”23 Such conventions are axiomatic and cannot be explained without the infusion of complex specified information, in which intelligences agree on the value of the symbols in question.24
In conclusion, evolutionary biology must come to terms with the nature of information; its importance with respect to living systems; and its implications regarding intelligent causation. Otherwise
Moreover, when truth is in bad taste because it conflicts with our biases, we know we have reached the point of the absurd. In this case, naturalism holds despite the evidence. How ironic it is that in those humble beginnings nearly a century and a half ago,
1William Dembski, Intelligent Design: the bridge between science and theology,
(InterVarsity Press) pg. 159-179.
2Charles
3Ibid.
4Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, (InterVarsity Press), pg. 56-57.
5Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, (Norton), pg 1.
6Francis Crick, What Mad Pusuit, (Basic Books), pg. 138.
7See William Dembski, Intelligent Design: the bridge between science and theology
8Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, (Touchstone of Simon and Schuster Inc.) pg. 39-40; 42-45.
9See Michael Dembski, Intelligent Design: the bridge between science and theology, pg. 159-179.
10Ibid.
11Ben Bova, Faint Echoes, Distant Stars, (Harper Collins Publishers Inc.) pg. 27.
12Mark Eastman, lectures from: Cosmos and the Creator.
13 See Michael Dembski, Intelligent Design: the bridge between science and theology.
14Carl Sagan, Contact, (Simon and Schuster) pg. 73-78.
15See Ben Bova, Faint Echoes, Distant Stars, pg. 236-238
16See William Dembski, Intelligent Design: the bridge between science and theology, pg. 128.
17Ibid., see The Presupposition of Positivism, pg. 90-91.
Dembski makes the point that entire industries have been built around the inference of design and in fact extends the argument in his book that design is never directly perceived, but always inferred. This is a significant point since evolutionists always want to have it both ways as it were—denying empiricism in matters of intelligent design, and conveniently ignoring a lack of empiricism when it comes to macroevolutionary paradigms. In the case of the latter, empiricism goes effectively out the window.
[18]See Mark Eastman, lectures from: Cosmos and the Creator. (Regarding SETI) In my essay this insight serves as the primary example of the scientific establishment’s schismatic methodology. And I am indebted to Dr. Eastman for making the observation. In his lecture, Dr. Eastman points out that SETI researchers are looking “for evidence of intelligence in outer space. [On their website, they answer the following question:] ‘How will you know when you have found evidence of intelligence?’ They say that they will know that they have found evidence of an intelligent signal when they find a digital, non-random, repeating sequence [sic] in the radio waves. The signal is analyzed; determined to see if it’s non-random (make sure it’s not just noise); and if it’s determined to be a digital, non-random, repeating sequence, then they claim that they have found evidence of intelligence…That’s what the genetic code is: non-random signals. And yet on the same web page…[SETI claims] that their goal is to teach and show the people of the world that since the DNA molecule and life on earth arose by chance, that it is likely that it arose also by chance in outer space. So the same scientists that are looking for signals from space don’t see that the DNA molecule is the type of signal they’re looking for.”
19Ibid.
20James D. Watson, with Andrew Barry, DNA: the secret of life, (Alfred A. knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.) pg.
21A. E. Wilder-Smith, lectures from: Evolutionary Theory.
22Neil A. Campell,
(Benjamin/Cummings, an imprint of Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.) pg. 188-201.
23See A. E. Wilder-Smith, lectures from: Evolutionary Theory.
24Ibid.
25See Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, (InterVarsity Press) pg. 159
The first time I saw this title, “Scientific Priesthood” was in Dr. Johnson’s book. However, I ran across the label again purely by accident in a book authored by Will Durant entitled, The Story of Philosophy, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1953) Preface to the 2nd edition, pg. 6.
26Phillip E. Johnson, This quote “Matter” as creator, was taken from a taped radio interview (broadcast and publishing info unknown) in which Dr. Johnson made the profound observation that “What the [Supreme] Court did with the connivance of
science education authorities (sic) was actually in the name of preventing an establishment of religion, they established a religion. They said we will teach everybody in the public schools as fact that nature or matter is their creator and you
can’t criticize that, because that would be to bring up the possibility that a supreme being created mankind, and we wouldn’t want to allow that would we? So we must teach the opposite, and that is to establish a religion of materialism or evolutionary naturalism and to disallow criticism.” Dr. Johnson’s view is not far-fetched. If you take many of the texts on evolution and insert “God” in place of “evolution” the text reads like an inspired religious work. One can almost see
27See Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, pg. 315
*Other reference works used in preparing this essay are as follows:
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.
Steve Jones,
Martin Jones, The Molecule Hunt: archaeology and the search for ancient DNA.
John McCrone, The Ape That Spoke.
I’d like to expand further on the idea that ‘intelligences agree on the value of
the symbols in question’ because this is a key component of the Intelligent
Design (ID) theory. The idea that multiple layers of processes depend on the
extrapolation of information bound in DNA is invaluable in ascertaining whether
it is probable that naturalistic processes were solely responsible for the
existence of life.
As suggested, the information in DNA satisfies SETI’s own definition of
intelligent design by way of contingency, complexity, and specification. On top
of that, in order for the information in DNA to be useful it requires coding,
interpretation, transmission, assembling, application, storage and retrieval,
self-correction, a built-in verification system and hardware designed to
complement all of this. The characteristics of this system are multilayered and
irreducibly complex.
For example, how does the hardware that assembles the building blocks of life
innately know how to do this? Doesn’t this require intelligence? Some may
argue that the hardware is hard-wired and no intelligence is required –
essentially, they are programmed to ‘know’ where to place things. But
doesn’t a program require a programmer? Or, to redirect us back to the debate
on the information in DNA, doesn’t information require an informant?
Within the system that creates life, if one component at any layer is removed or
damaged the entire system becomes unstable and non-functional. Not only does
evolution fail to even approximate how a system as complex as the building
blocks of life could evolve through naturalistic means, it offers no viable
alternatives to the intelligent design theory. The hypothesis that genetic code
has evolved simply by naturalistic means breaks the physical laws which govern
our universe. DNA contains over 20 Encyclopedia Britannicas worth of
information in a molecule threaded so fine that it is only possible to see it
under high power electron microscopes
Naturalists attack intelligent design because it threatens their belief that
matter is self-existing. Whether we choose to believe that time and energy or
an intelligent force created the universe, both views require a leap of faith.
Everything else is built upon that foundation.
Jun 29th, 2008 at 11:36 am
[...] Note: A lengthier version of this piece entitled, “Reverse engineering the Darwinian Priesthood” was published with endnotes in [...]