Let me add- Behe’s irreducible complexity will probably be the sword that slays Darwinian evolutionary theory. No one in the evolution camp can come up with anything credible in response. There simply are no fossils of intermediate stages of development and this applies to all the numerous biological systems that are critical to life. All have arrived full blown and functioning. None could function in some intermediate stage.
And then there is the overlap of functions and feedback loops and all the microscopic molecules racing around in their millions and billions, all finding the exact sites needed for things to work at a system level and doing so in tiny fractions of seconds. It still boggles my mind to hear scientists speak of the hundreds/thousands (?) of times per second that proteins bind and release in enzymes. All this is necessary for systems to function in harmony with other systems.
Simmon’s is devastating in repeatedly asking how random mutations could achieve this and do so through a slow process of intermediate stages. What use is a mouth without a tongue, a throat, a stomach, intestines, and every microscopic detail of each one, he asks?
Yet having said all this, why the push to include ID in science? Let science function as a materialist branch of knowledge without the inclusion of purpose (natural selection/evolution).
Interesting that Christians (including Evangelicals) are doing some of the best work on challenging this evolutionary thing.
Some quotes from Simmons- “The idea that ten or more trillion cells can even coordinate with each other is mind-boggling”. And unless we discover that which coordinates the amazingly complex human body we are indeed left with something like spirit.
Simmons repeatedly offers some process or system and asks how this can come about through a few random changes. “Look at how we transfer sugar, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and vitamins from our plates, to our mouths, down our gastrointestinal tracts, through the walls of the small bowel, into the bloodstream, and ultimately to every cell. Millions of macroscopic and microscopic processes are utilized. How does the body even know which sugar (and there are many types) to absorb, and which should be ignored (there are hundreds) and which goes where, when and in what quantity?”
“Each cell contains an estimated one billion compounds…and among these compounds are approximately five million different kinds of proteins…they all know where to go, how to get there, when to act, and how fast to react and when to stop”
“If evolution were the explanation millions of intermediate species as well as numerous genetic mistakes should have been found in the fossil record. As yet, there are virtually none….arguments in favor of evolution must explain how so many genes made so many huge simultaneous alterations, substitutions, and additions to set up functions such as reproduction, digestion, immunity, motor skills, breathing, circulation, the five senses, and thinking…that’s a lot to achieve by accident”. He adds later that if we take 3 billion years for life, then 33 new elements of DNA already functioning and intricately relating to the rest and spaced just right would have had to be added daily. Accident does this?
And oh, the complexity of the mind and how all the chemicals relate so intricately and the trillions of interactions all performed just perfectly. All the feedback loops and system overlap.
On hormones- “there could not easily have been multiple intermediate prehistoric systems leading up to this hugely complex system of feedback loops. One either has the whole system of one has nothing…Hundreds of different feedback loops are at work in the human body, crisscrossing, overlapping, and interacting with one another all day long. They involve millions of compounds, that know exactly how to find their target cells…Could there have existed useless protein molecules that were destined to become testosterone over the next billion years? Or insulin? Nearly all these hormones had to have appeared simultaneously, along with their target cells and the feedback loops”.
“Can evolution explain how thousands of genes and millions of new proteins might have changed together in such a coordinated manner? Can survival of the fittest or random mutations explain how a hemocytoblast could change into a proerythroblast, whose only apparent job is to change into an erythroblast, whose only job is to become a normoblast and then a reticulocyte and finally a red blood cell?
His final chapter sums up the points and makes one feel silly for having fallen for such a crock of an idea. As he notes, we have fallen for some silly ideas over history and “If one bases the future on the past, its very likely that much of what all of us presently believe will also be proven wrong”. He says Darwin would not even be published today by any respectable scientific journal. Given the enormous complexity of a single cell, the whole package phenomenon (functioning systems) and irreducible complexity, the fact that a series of useless steps is needed to accomplish a tiny task argues against evolution. The fact that all bodily functions require the convergence of many useless steps and useless systems excludes evolution as an option”. The multiple mutations leading up to humankind would have had to be organized, purposeful, targeted, simultaneous, frequent, safe and too numerous to count he says.

Darwin based his ideas on Lamarck’s pangenesis theory which states that a lizard with its tail cut off would have offspring with their tails cut off. This is discredited theory.

And no one has ever shown that one species can change into another. Dolphins have not changed over 5 million years. The whale has no clear-cut fossil predecessors. Flies found in amber 225 million years old are the same as today. The giraffe has no shorter-neck predecessors. Insects showed up without any predecessors. Most species appeared in a biological big bang (the Cambrian period) and no predecessor fossils have ever been found for 99 percent of species. There have been no new phyla since the Cambrian explosion. Each generation continued to look pretty much like previous generations. The fossil material is now so complete that we can not fall back on scarcity of material. The fossil record does not support gradualism.

Other say that the prime function of the genetic system is to resist change. Stasis and extinction are the patterns seen in fossils. Copying mistakes in cell division disappear by the tenth generation. It would take approximately 400,000 years for an advantageous gene to spread among the hominid population of the Pleistocene Era. If we are descendents of Lucy, three million years old, then there would have been time for only seven advantageous genes to have changed. He then does the math on mutations, most of which are useless, dangerous and quickly diluted out. To calculate the chance of human DNA having arrived by chance is infinite. He then goes back over the information in the human body, the trillions of cells organized, the five million different proteins, the billions of neurons interacting in a meaningful way- its all beyond calculation. “Its beyond understanding”.

And enzymes- “everything has to be done in tandem or parallel or it can’t work”. Each step is dependent on previous steps…” And how could we have changed from cold-blooded to warm-blooded. Every aspect of metabolism would have been affected. This change would have required a massive genetic makeover.

“The theory of evolution cannot satisfy what the facts demand. The idea that humans evolved from unicellular organisms belongs to an overflowing crate of flat worlds, gods living on mountain tops, and superstitions”. He ends that an alternative explanation has yet to be found but it has to accept a Designer.


No wonder Dembski refers to Darwinian evolution as “absurb”.
The last fraud we noted was Christianity and Paul’s creation of this religion. Now for Darwin’s theory of evolution. If your grasp of this theory has been tenuous and you value some ideological system to hang on to, then don’t read Geoffrey Simmon’s ‘What Darwin Didn’t Know’. As Dembski says in the Introduction, the evidence is overwhelming that Darwin has perpetrated the greatest intellectual swindle in the history of ideas.
Natural selection (random mutation) is the core of Darwin’s theory and it appears true that this simply provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need for design or God.
Simmon’s includes comments from Darwin that reveal his own doubts about his new system. He simply did not have access to what we know today about biological organisms and their complexity.
If nothing else, Simmon’s book is a fascinating look at the human body and mind.

The DNA similarity is there as the information package and there is the fossil record with different species coming into being at different times. There was the Big Bang at the Cambrian period. So as the embryo over time develops into a conscious human being, does something similar happen over history. DNA unfolds into more and more complex forms over history. Is this written into the original package or do more advanced organisms really come from previous species or from some other source? There is a lot we don’t know yet.