From W. J. Dempster
Lockerley, Southampton
Andrew Pomiankowski reviewed Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution and considered that the author, Michael Behe, has
attempted “to put God back into nature” (Review, 14 September, p 44). He
continues: “But don’t be fooled by his claim that molecular systems are
irreducibly complex, or that a supernatural designer is needed.” In the second
paragraph of the review is this statement: “Darwin knew all about the problem of
`organs of extreme perfection and complication’. He devoted a brilliant chapter
to them in On the Origin of Species.”
Let us look at this brilliant chapter. Consider the paragraph starting with,
“It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope.” Later we
find this: “Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual
powers like that of man?” Then at the end of that paragraph: “…and may we not
believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one
of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man.”
Now turn to the last paragraph of every edition of the book: “There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.”
Advertisement
A designer or a Creator—what is the difference?
