GARY A. PANETTA
11/19/2000
Peoria Journal Star
Page B02

Biologists might consider Darwin's theory of evolution to be well-established.
But Phillip Johnson considers it nothing less than a fraud.
The Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer has spent the past few years challenging
what he considers to be the fallacies in Darwinian theory. "Most
scientists are fair-minded," Johnson said. "But they deal with only a
limited sphere - their own experiments and so on. So they're at the mercy
of the people who explain the ideology of the whole enterprise. "The great
problem now is that those people have decided they want to make war
against God. They want to marry science to a materialistic philosophy. And
they want to make sure that people who challenge that can't get an
opportunity to be heard and that the evidence that undermines their view
will never be allowed to appear in public. That's what we're fighting."
Johnson - along with William Dembski, a Baylor University professor who
holds degrees in philosophy, mathematics and theology, as well as others
in a new movement known as Intelligent Design Theory - are not concerned
with defending a literal reading of Genesis.

Instead, they say that biology is held hostage to a nonscientific,
philosophical idea. Evolutionary biologists only feign neutrality on
religious questions when it suits public consumption, those thinkers say.
Wedded to a dogmatic belief that existence consists only of matter in
motion, many biologists rule out the possibility that God or the
supernatural might exist. This bias in turn causes them to engage in
wishful thinking and to ignore evidence for competing theories, such as
Intelligent Design, which present alternatives to Darwinism.

According to Johnson, one example of fallacious thinking is the notion
that natural selection can produce new organs or new species. Natural
selection has been observed to produce variations within a kinds of
organisms - bacteria resistant to penicillin, for instance, or changes in
body size. But this is not the same thing as producing a new species.

Another problem lies in the fossil record, Johnson said. Species appear
there suddenly, not gradually. The few instances of transitional fossils
that do exist aren't convincing to critics of evolution either. One
example, according to Johnson, is the remains of mammal-like reptiles
known as therapsids. Biologists point to slow transformations in the skull
and jaw bones as evidence of these creatures losing reptilian
characteristics. But Johnson points out that there are many differences
between reptiles and mammals besides jaw bone structure, including
distinctive reproductive systems. Similarities in skeletal features don't
necessarily mean evolution has happened.

Also, the failure to reconstruct a direct line of descent between therapsids
and mammals further damages Darwinist claims, according to Johnson. "The
notion that mammals-in-general evolved from reptiles- in-general through a
broad clump of diverse therapsid lines is not Darwinism," Johnson writes
in "Darwin on Trial." "Darwinian transformation requires a single line of
ancestral descent."

Other biological data - for instance, evidence that organisms share a
common biochemical basis or that the physical features of organisms make
it possible to classify organisms within groups - don't demonstrate that
organisms evolved from common ancestors. Actual evidence that these common
ancestors once existed must be established, according to Johnson. At the
heart of Johnson's criticisms is the conviction that random mutations and
natural selection really can't account for the marvelous complexities of
nature - from the intricate workings of a cell to a human eye. The only
explanation, Johnson argues, is intelligent design.

This is more than an intuition, according to Dembski, author of "Intelligent
Design: The Bridge Between Science and Philosophy." A new field called
Intelligent Design Theory, he said, actually can establish with scientific
rigor that some patterns or structures found in nature - for instance,
those found on the biochemical level - have been designed.

To do so, Dembski said, three things must be established: contingency,
complexity and specification. A pattern is contingent when it's not the
automatic product of natural laws or processes. A pattern is complex to
the degree that chance can't explain it, i.e. that it's improbable. A
pattern is specified to the degree that it displays the right kind of
characteristics for design.

Something that meets all of these standards, according to Dembski, is a
whiplike, microscopic motor known as the bacterial flagellum, an intricate
structure that enables a bacterium to navigate its environment. Obviously,
he said, such a structure is contingent - it isn't the automatic product
of natural laws or processes. It's also specified. That is, only a certain
arrangement of parts will enable it to function, Dembski said. Take way
one of the flagellum's 50 proteins, for instance, and the motor won't
work.

Finally, the flagellum is complex - that is, there is an extremely low
probability that such a structure could be the product of chance. A quick
glance at the flagellum's structure shows why. If it needs all of its
parts in order to work, how could it have come about gradually by chance
as Darwinism would require?

Dembski takes issue with biologists who argue that natural selection has
been shown to produce just these kinds of complicated structures by
building on simple structures and functions to create new, elaborate
structures and functions. This is merely speculation, he said, and
unlikely speculation at that.

"OK, so you've got in your home a microwave, a telephone and various
components, but you don't have a radio," Dembski said. "And you just pull
these various pieces together and form a radio. Well, maybe you can if you
have the right components. But you're still going to need design to do
that."

Intelligent Design Theory has yet to be fully applied to biology. But when
it is, Dembski is confident, it will show that natural selection can't
account for nature's complexities any more than alchemy could show how to
transform lead into gold.

In the process, new research questions will be posed, Dembski said. For
instance, how can the effects of design and natural causes be teased
apart? In what way is the design optimal? What is a designed object's
function? These are just a few of the questions researchers can pursue,
according to Dembski - provided they can break out of the mental gridlock
imposed by nearly a century-and-a- half of Darwinism.