Another interesting creation vs darwin article from NYTimes

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/national/22design.html?incamp=article_p

opular_1&pagewanted=all

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In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash

 

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: August 22, 2005

 

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a

scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an

unseen higher being?

 

The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have

argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say

that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can

explain.

 

Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning

motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to

clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world.

 

In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at

Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological

phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the

spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the

mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.

 

Similarly, Dr. Behe argues, if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved

in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for

instance, clots will not form properly.

 

Such all-or-none systems, Dr. Behe and other design proponents say, could

not have arisen through the incremental changes that evolution says allowed

life to progress to the big brains and the sophisticated abilities of humans

from primitive bacteria.

 

These complex systems are "always associated with design," Dr. Behe, the

author of the 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box," said in an interview. "We find

such systems in biology, and since we know of no other way that these things

can be produced, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, then we are rational to

conclude they were indeed designed."

 

It is an argument that appeals to many Americans of faith.

 

But mainstream scientists say that the claims of intelligent design run

counter to a century of research supporting the explanatory and predictive

power of Darwinian evolution, and that the design approach suffers from

fundamental problems that place it outside the realm of science. For one

thing, these scientists say, invoking a higher being as an explanation is

unscientific.

 

"One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed," said Douglas H.

Erwin, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution. "That's a

fundamental presumption of what we do."

 

That does not mean that scientists do not believe in God. Many do. But they

see science as an effort to find out how the material world works, with

nothing to say about why we are here or how we should live.

 

And in that quest, they say, there is no need to resort to otherworldly

explanations. So much evidence has been provided by evolutionary studies

that biologists are able to explain even the most complex natural phenomena

and to fill in whatever blanks remain with solid theories.

 

This is possible, in large part, because evolution leaves tracks like the

fossil remains of early animals or the chemical footprints in DNA that have

been revealed by genetic research.

 

For example, while Dr. Behe and other leading design proponents see the

blood clotting system as a product of design, mainstream scientists see it

as a result of a coherent sequence of evolutionary events.

 

Early vertebrates like jawless fish had a simple clotting system, scientists

believe, involving a few proteins that made blood stick together, said

Russell F. Doolittle, a professor of molecular biology at the University of

California, San Diego.

 

Scientists hypothesize that at some point, a mistake during the copying of

DNA resulted in the duplication of a gene, increasing the amount of protein

produced by cells.

 

Most often, such a change would be useless. But in this case the extra

protein helped blood clot, and animals with the extra protein were more

likely to survive and reproduce. Over time, as higher-order species evolved,

other proteins joined the clotting system. For instance, several proteins

involved in the clotting of blood appear to have started as digestive

enzymes.

 

By studying the evolutionary tree and the genetics and biochemistry of

living organisms, Dr. Doolittle said, scientists have largely been able to

determine the order in which different proteins became involved in helping

blood clot, eventually producing the sophisticated clotting mechanisms of

humans and other higher animals. The sequencing of animal genomes has

provided evidence to support this view.

 

For example, scientists had predicted that more primitive animals such as

fish would be missing certain blood-clotting proteins. In fact, the recent

sequencing of the fish genome has shown just this.

 

"The evidence is rock solid," Dr. Doolittle said.

 

Intelligent design proponents have advanced their views in books for popular

audiences and in a few scientific articles. Some have developed mathematical

formulas intended to tell whether something was designed or formed by

natural processes.

 

Mainstream scientists say that intelligent design represents a more

sophisticated - and thus more seductive - attack on evolution. Unlike

creationists, design proponents accept many of the conclusions of modern

science. They agree with cosmologists that the age of the universe is 13.6

billion years, not fewer than 10,000 years, as a literal reading of the

Bible would suggest. They accept that mutation and natural selection, the

central mechanisms of evolution, have acted on the natural world in small

ways, for example, leading to the decay of eyes in certain salamanders that

live underground.

 

Some intelligent design advocates even accept common descent, the notion

that all species came from a common ancestor, a central tenet of evolution.

 

Although a vast majority of scientists accept evolution, the Discovery

Institute, a research group in Seattle that has emerged as a clearinghouse

for the intelligent design movement, says that 404 scientists, including 70

biologists, have signed a petition saying they are skeptical of Darwinism.

 

Nonetheless, many scientists regard intelligent design as little more than

creationism dressed up in pseudoscientific clothing. Despite its use of

scientific language and the fact that some design advocates are scientists,

they say, the design approach has so far offered only philosophical

objections to evolution, not any positive evidence for the intervention of a

designer.

 

'Truncated View of Reality'

 

If Dr. Behe's mousetrap is one of the most familiar arguments for design,

another is the idea that intelligence is obvious in what it creates. Read a

novel by Hemingway, gaze at the pyramids, and a designer's hand is manifest,

design proponents say.

 

But mainstream scientists, design proponents say, are unwilling to look

beyond the material world when it comes to explaining things like the

construction of an eye or the spinning motors that propel bacteria. What is

wrong, they ask, with entertaining the idea that what looks like it was

designed was actually designed?

 

"If we've defined science such that it cannot get to the true answer, we've

got a pretty lame definition of science," said Douglas D. Axe, a molecular

biologist and the director of research at the Biologic Institute, a new

research center in Seattle that looks at the organization of biological

systems, including intelligent design issues. Dr. Axe said he had received

"significant" financing from the Discovery Institute, but he declined to

give any other details about the institute or its financing.

 

Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the

Discovery Institute, compares the design approach to the work of

archaeologists investigating an ancient civilization.

 

"Imagine you're an archaeologist and you're looking at an inscription, and

you say, 'Well, sorry, that looks like it's intelligent but we can't invoke

an intelligent cause because, as a matter of method, we have to limit

ourselves to materialistic processes,' " Dr. Meyer said. "That would be

nuts."

 

He added, "Call it miracle, call it some other pejorative term, but the fact

remains that the materialistic view is a truncated view of reality."

 

William Paley, an Anglican priest, made a similar argument in the early 19th

century. Someone who finds a rock can easily imagine how wind and rain

shaped it, he reasoned. But someone who finds a pocket watch lying on the

ground instantly knows that it was not formed by natural processes.

 

With living organisms so much more complicated than watches, he wrote, "The

marks of design are too strong to be got over."

 

Mainstream scientists say that the scientific method is indeed restricted to

the material world, because it is trying to find out how it works. Simply

saying, "it must have been designed," they say, is simply a way of not

tackling the hardest problems.

 

They say they have no disagreement with studying phenomena for which there

are, as yet, no explanations.

 

It is the presumption of a designer that mainstream scientists dispute,

because there are no artifacts or biological signs - no scientific evidence,

in other words - to suggest a designer's presence.

 

Darwin's theory, in contrast, has over the last century yielded so many

solid findings that no mainstream biologist today doubts its basic tenets,

though they may argue about particulars.

 

The theory has unlocked many of the mysteries of the natural world. For

example, by studying the skeletons of whales, evolutionary scientists have

been able to trace the history of their descent from small-hoofed land

mammals. They made predictions about what the earliest water-dwelling whales

might look like. And, in 1994, paleontologists reported discovering two such

species, with many of the anatomical features that scientists had predicted.

 

Darwin's Finches

 

Nowhere has evolution been more powerful than in its prediction that there

must be a means to pass on information from one generation to another.

Darwin did not know the biological mechanism of inheritance, but the theory

of evolution required one.

 

The discovery of DNA, the sequencing of the human genome, the pinpointing of

genetic diseases and the discovery that a continuum of life from a single

cell to a human brain can be detected in DNA are all a result of

evolutionary theory.

 

Darwin may have been the classic scientific observer. He observed that

individuals in a given species varied considerably, variations now known to

be caused by mutations in their genetic code. He also realized that

constraints of food and habitat sharply limited population growth; not every

individual could survive and reproduce.

 

This competition, he hypothesized, meant that those individuals with helpful

traits multiplied, passing on those traits to their numerous offspring.

Negative or useless traits did not help individuals reproduce, and those

traits faded away, a process that Darwin called natural selection.

 

The finches that Darwin observed in the Galápagos Islands provide the most

famous example of this process. The species of finch that originally found

its way to the Galápagos from South America had a beak shaped in a way that

was ideal for eating seeds. But once arrived on the islands, that finch

eventually diversified into 13 species. The various Galápagos finches have

differently shaped beaks, each fine-tuned to take advantage of a particular

food, like fruit, grubs, buds or seeds.

 

Such small adaptations can arise within a few generations. Darwin surmised

that over millions of years, these small changes would accumulate, giving

rise to the myriad of species seen today.

 

The number of organisms that, in those long periods, ended up being

preserved as fossils is infinitesimal. As a result, the evolutionary record

- the fossils of long-extinct organisms found preserved in rock - is

necessarily incomplete, and some species appear to burst out of nowhere.

 

Some supporters of intelligent design have argued that such gaps undermine

the evidence for evolution.

 

For instance, during the Cambrian explosion a half a billion years ago, life

diversified to shapes with limbs and shells from jellyfish-like blobs, over

a geologically brief span of 30 million years.

 

Dr. Meyer sees design at work in these large leaps, which signified the

appearance of most modern forms of life. He argues that genetic mutations do

not have the power to create new shapes of animals.

 

But molecular biologists have found genes that control the function of other

genes, switching them on and off. Small mutations in these controller genes

could produce new species. In addition, new fossils are being found and

scientists now know that many changes occurred in the era before the

Cambrian - a period that may have lasted 100 million years - providing more

time for change.

 

The Cambrian explosion, said David J. Bottjer, a professor of earth sciences

at the University of Southern California and president of the

Paleontological Society, is "a wonderful mystery in that we don't know

everything yet."

 

"I think it will be just a matter of time before smart people will be able

to figure a lot more of this out," Dr. Bottjer said. "Like any good

scientific problem."

 

Purposeful Patterns

 

Intelligent design proponents have been stung by claims that, in contrast to

mainstream scientists, they do not form their own theories or conduct

original research. They say they are doing the mathematical work and

biological experiments needed to put their ideas on firm scientific ground.

 

For example, William A. Dembski, a mathematician who drew attention when he

headed a short-lived intelligent design institute at Baylor University, has

worked on mathematical algorithms that purport to tell the difference

between objects that were designed and those that occurred naturally.

 

Dr. Dembski says designed objects, like Mount Rushmore, show complex,

purposeful patterns that evince the existence of intelligence. Mathematical

calculations like those he has developed, he argues, could detect those

patterns, for example, distinguishing Mount Rushmore from Mount St. Helens.

 

But other mathematicians have said that Dr. Dembski's calculations do not

work and cannot be applied in the real world.

 

Other studies that intelligent design theorists cite in support of their

views have been done by Dr. Axe of the Biologic Institute.

 

In one such study, Dr. Axe looked at a protein, called penicillinase, that

gives bacteria the ability to survive treatment with the antibiotic

penicillin. Dr. Meyer, of the Discovery Institute, has referred to Dr. Axe's

work in arguing that working proteins are so rare that evolution cannot by

chance discover them.

 

What was the probability, Dr. Axe asked in his study, of a protein with this

ability existing in the universe of all possible proteins?

 

Penicillinase is made up of a strand of chemicals called amino acids folded

into a shape that binds to penicillin and thus disables it. Whether the

protein folds up in the right way determines whether it works or not.

 

Dr. Axe calculated that of the plausible amino acid sequences, only one in

100,000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion - a number

written as 1 followed by 77 zeroes - would provide resistance to penicillin.

 

In other words, the probability was essentially zero.

 

Dr. Axe's research appeared last year in The Journal of Molecular Biology, a

peer-reviewed scientific publication.

 

Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and a

frequent sparring partner of design proponents, said that in his study, Dr.

Axe did not look at penicillinase "the way evolution looks at the protein."

 

Natural selection, he said, is not random. A small number of mutations,

sometimes just one, can change the function of a protein, allowing it to

diverge along new evolutionary paths and eventually form a new shape or

fold.

 

One Shot or a Continual Act

 

Intelligent design proponents are careful to say that they cannot identify

the designer at work in the world, although most readily concede that God is

the most likely possibility. And they offer varied opinions on when and how

often a designer intervened.

 

Dr. Behe, for example, said he could imagine that, like an elaborate

billiards shot, the design was set up when the Big Bang occurred 13.6

billion years ago. "It could have all been programmed into the universe as

far as I'm concerned," he said.

 

But it was also possible, Dr. Behe added, that a designer acted continually

throughout the history of life.

 

Mainstream scientists say this fuzziness about when and how design

supposedly occurred makes the claims impossible to disprove. It is

unreasonable, they say, for design advocates to demand that every detail of

evolution be filled in.

 

Dr. Behe, however, said he might find it compelling if scientists were to

observe evolutionary leaps in the laboratory. He pointed to an experiment by

Richard E. Lenski, a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State

University, who has been observing the evolution of E. coli bacteria for

more than 15 years. "If anything cool came out of that," Dr. Behe said,

"that would be one way to convince me."

 

Dr. Behe said that if he was correct, then the E. coli in Dr. Lenski's lab

would evolve in small ways but never change in such a way that the bacteria

would develop entirely new abilities.

 

In fact, such an ability seems to have developed. Dr. Lenski said his

experiment was not intended to explore this aspect of evolution, but

nonetheless, "We have recently discovered a pretty dramatic exception, one

where a new and surprising function has evolved," he said.

 

Dr. Lenski declined to give any details until the research is published.

But, he said, "If anyone is resting his or her faith in God on the outcome

that our experiment will not produce some major biological innovation, then

I humbly suggest they should rethink the distinction between science and

religion."

 

Dr. Behe said, "I'll wait and see."