Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
Latest

As Behe’s Revolution Reminds Us, the Evolution Debate Pits Icon Versus Icon

Categories
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Share
Facebook
Twitter/X
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Presidential elections dramatically pit figures iconic of their respective political and philosophical outlooks. The hardly less dramatic contest between intelligent design and Darwinian theory, posing the ultimate question of biological origins, likewise often seems to come to down to a match between icons — in this case, classes of scientific evidence.

The full trailer for the new hour-long documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines highlights one category of ID icons. See it above.

Molecular machines — the bacterial flagellar motor, joined by “energy-producing turbines, information-copying machines, and even robotic walking motors,” all “exquisite examples of nanotechnology” — have generated “heated controversy among biologists over the past two decades.” And rightly so. Those twenty years mark the time since biologist Michael Behe published his revolutionary book Darwin’s Black Box, followed by other insurgent work.

Meanwhile Darwin advocates have their own icons, of course, but most seem to miss the point. Darwin’s finches, peppered moths, Miller-Urey — none of these explain how biological information is composed in order to bring about life’s fantastic novelties. As their latest iconic offering, evolutionists have proposed…cancer. Right, stunningly sophisticated living nanotechnology versus one of the world’s most destructive diseases.

Behe’s revolution, the argument for ID from irreducible complexity, continues to sting Darwinists — as Evolution News noted here just two days ago (“More on That Gecko Anti-Design Claim“). There seems every reason to think Behe will continue to inflame the Darwin debate until this contest is eventually settled. Get your copy of Revolutionary on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon now.

I’m on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He is the author of seven books including Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome and The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy. A former senior editor at National Review, he has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University in 1987. Born in Santa Monica, CA, he lives on Mercer Island, WA.

© Discovery Institute