Still No Answer After 3 Decades: Darwin’s Theory Dismantled
In 1996, Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. The book shocked both the scientific community and the public. Behe argued that many biological systems are irreducibly complex: composed of multiple interdependent parts, none of which can function alone. If such a system were built step by step, every intermediate stage would be nonfunctional and therefore invisible to natural selection.
Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box, opened the door for me. It made clear that life is filled with molecular technology beyond the reach of Darwin’s step-by-step story. That premise was the spark that inspired my own book, Natural Technology: The Theory of Everything , where I argue that there are intrinsic connections between our own technology and nature, and that technological features are not just seen in biology, but in the entire cosmos itself, which operates on the principles of engineering.
Darwin himself had admitted in The Origin of Species: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Behe took Darwin at his word, and asked the question: Do such systems exist? His answer was yes — at the molecular level. Behe’s examples included the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system. All are systems where the removal of any one part leads to collapse of function. With these systems, Behe did something few biologists dared: he asked whether a step-by-step Darwinian pathway could actually be demonstrated. His challenge was simple: show a testable, detailed, evolutionary route that builds an irreducibly complex system through random mutation and natural selection.
Three decades have passed. What has the scientific community produced in response?
No detailed pathways. Not one molecular system has been mapped from start to finish via Darwinian steps.
Co-option speculation. The most common response is that complex systems borrow parts from other systems. Critics often say irreducibly complex systems could have co-opted parts from other systems. But those ‘other systems’ are themselves irreducibly complex, with no Darwinian origin mapped. It’s like a stranger to technology claiming a motorcycle evolved, and when pressed, replying that it co-opted from a bicycle. Beyond the superficial similarity, that explains nothing. It doesn’t show how the bike developed the irreducible parts of the motorcycle — or how the bike itself came to be in the first place. It leaves the premise unanswered.
Homology arguments. Similar proteins across systems are often cited as evidence for evolution. But this is really just molecular anatomy, a description of resemblances, not a demonstration of mechanism. Just as Behe noted in Darwin’s Black Box that anatomy cannot explain molecular origins, pointing to molecular similarities does not explain how integrated systems arise. In fact, co-option arguments are simply homology arguments themselves: they assume similarity is an explanation, when in reality it only restates the problem.
Deflection and rhetoric. Behe has been dismissed as a ‘creationist,’ ‘religious,’ or ‘anti-science.’ But in philosophy these are called ad hominem attacks. They target the person instead of addressing the argument. Labeling a person is not an explanation.
The most striking fact is that progress is moving in the wrong direction. The more we have learned about the cell since then, the worse the problem has become. Because of what has been revealed over three decades, Behe himself has admitted that if he could revise his book, he would take a stronger position, because his original concessions to Darwinian evolution were too generous. Three decades of molecular biology have only deepened the evolutionary dilemma, to the point where some are now calling for the theory itself to be revamped. Far from being a “simple blob of protoplasm,” the cell has been revealed as a hub of molecular machines, digital codes, signal-processing networks, and error-correction systems — all of which fit the pattern of engineered technology, not cobbled accidents.
As Behe himself noted in Darwin Devolves (2019), the genomic era has reinforced the point. The overwhelming trend in evolutionary adaptation is degradation of existing functions, not the creation of new machinery.
Moreover, if Darwin’s theory truly explained life, there should by now be multiple Nobel Prizes for breakthroughs in mapping the origin of irreducibly complex systems. Instead:
Nobels are awarded for design-inspired science — biomimicry, biotechnology, molecular machines, CRISPR.
“Evolutionary” biology Nobels, like Svante Pääbo’s, are really for genetics and sequencing technology, not for showing how new systems or species arise.
In other words, operational science runs on design principles. Evolutionary storytelling runs on assumption.
For thirty years, Behe’s question has remained on the table: Can you show a step-by-step Darwinian pathway that builds an irreducibly complex system?
The answer remains silence, broken only by speculation and dismissal. That silence an admission. The very absence of an answer is itself the strongest evidence that Darwin’s theory has met the condition of its own failure. So, who’s really anti-science?
The technology of life is real. The silence about its origin speaks louder than the rhetoric.
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