Part Five: NO FUNCTION = NO NATURAL SELECTION = NO EVOLUTION

According to the evolution paradigm, natural selection makes random improvements in function at every stage of an organism’s development. Natural selection itself has no power to create new parts from scratch; it only acts on existing designs already built into a system. If a part has no function, it will have no survival value and natural selection cannot begin to operate. The result: no evolution.

In his 1993 book, Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe made popular the phrase, irreducible complexity. Behe drew attention to the fact that organisms, even at a molecular level, are complex, organized systems comprised of innumerable, interacting parts. If any one of these parts is not fully developed and functioning from the beginning, the organism can’t survive. Hence, for an organism to evolve, each of these individual, interrelated parts must have evolved simultaneously while retaining function at each stage of development.

Behe illustrated this with a mousetrap. He pointed out that a mousetrap is composed of five parts (base, spring, hammer, holding bar, and trigger). Remove any one of these parts, and the mousetrap doesn’t work. Moreover, if any one of these parts were not fully functioning at all times throughout the “evolution” of a mousetrap, the trap would be useless. In other words, remove the spring, and the trap won’t work. Replace it with a partly developed spring, and the trap still won’t work.

The mousetrap is irreducibly complex. It could not have “evolved” step-by-step because it could not function until all the parts were fully formed and working together. Behe likened the mousetrap to sophisticated biological systems, some with hundreds of interacting parts, each of which would have had to evolve simultaneously and be fully functioning during each step of each part’s development. There is no evolutionary pathway to explain how this can happen.

The concept of irreducible complexity can be applied on a much larger scale than at a molecular level. Take the scenario of a reptile’s forearms evolving into bird wings. On an evolutionist’s timeline, this would take millions of years and leave behind the testimony of an inestimable number of transitional species—something not seen in the fossil record. Unless the reptile developed an appendage that met its survival needs at all stages of is development, the appendage would have no usable function and therefore not develop. A half wing/half leg would not benefit a reptile or a bird; thus. a half wing/half leg would have no function and therefore no survival value. it would not evolve.

How do creationists account for fully developed organisms with innumerable interacting parts, none of which, in an evolutionary scenario, would have any function and therefore survival value at any intermediate stage development? The same way we account for a fully developed mousetrap. It’s a product of an intelligent Designer—in this case God. ©

Next Week we’ll look at the incredible amount of information programed into DNA and see  why this vast amount of information  cannot be reduced to merely the physical properties of DNA. It requires an intelligent programmer—God.