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The Disintegration of Man
Joshua Loyd
The state of modern man is something of an enigma. The advance of science has
brought him a more complete knowledge of the makeup of the natural world than he has
possessed at any point in recorded history. With this knowledge has come an equally
unparalleled power over nature. He can build skyscrapers, travel the world in a matter of
hours, grow unprecedented volumes of food, and treat a plethora of human diseases. Yet,
despite the scope of his abilities, modern man seems on the verge of losing himself. The
last century has been the home of two world wars and a cold war that threatened the
world with extinction. In that same time the western world has seen the erosion of
marriage, the collapse of the family, and the legalized slaughter of its unborn and elderly.
Very soon now modern man may even lose the ability to reproduce himself, as the
plummeting birth rates of many European nations bear witness. That such a collapse
should accompany the growth of modern science is, first and foremost, the inevitable
result of presenting a fallen and sinful mankind with ever increasing power. Yet, it is
more than that. For the advancing science of modernity carries with it a belief as
corruptible as any power: the assertion that man, at his core, is utterly meaningless. The
wedding of man’s purposelessness with modern science has its roots in the birth of that
science in the days of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Yet the ultimate joining
occurred in the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin who proposed that man is the
result of random, blind chance. Up to the present time Darwin’s theory, and its
accompanying judgment of man, has held the place of accepted scientific dogma and has,
consequently, shaped most or all scientific enquiry. In his recent book Dr. Michael Behe,
Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, issues a new challenge to the established
evolutionary theory of Darwin. Behe challenges the Darwinian theory on the basis of
new advances in biochemistry, notably the discovery of what he terms ‘irreducible
complexity’. Not only does Behe’s concept of ‘irreducible complexity’ challenge the
shortcomings of current Darwinian thinking, but the idea also sheds much needed light on
the source of modern man’s apparent confusion concerning himself.
Our current scientific worldview found its birth in the Copernican revolution,
initiated by the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century. The scientific
worldview prior to Copernicus was a melding of the work of the Greek biologist Aristotle
with the Christian faith of Medieval Europe. That science was based on deductive,
rational proofs as well as adherence to authority. In addition, Aristotelian science
concerned itself with the metaphysical concept of final cause. The final cause of any
natural object is its ultimate purpose. Thus, the final cause of an acorn is to become an
oak tree. According to the Medieval scientist the source of all final causes is God, who
endows everything He creates with a specific purpose. The Medieval scientist knew the
purpose and meaning of man: to bring praise and glory to his creator God.
Copernicus challenged the Aristotelian worldview in the realm of cosmology. He
proposed that the earth is not the center of the universe, as Aristotle had believed, but that
it circles the sun, the true center of the universe. Most of the scientific community
ignored Copernicus’s assertion, but his idea caught flame in two later scientists, Johannes
Kepler and Galileo Galilei. Johannes Kepler was a court astronomer who believed that
Copernicus’s heliocentric theory of the universe was true. Through meticulous
observation and mathematical calculation he modified the Copernican theory and
identified the orbits of Earth and the planets to be ellipses, rather than circles. Kepler
further formulated three mathematical laws to accurately describe all planetary motion.
With his new theories he was able to predict the future movement of the heavenly bodies
with an accuracy never before achieved through the Aristotelian model. The second
major proponent of the Copernican system was the Italian mathematician Galileo.
Galileo did little actual work in the field of astronomy. Rather, he acted as a popularizer
of the Copernican heliocentric model and opponent of the authority based Aristotelian
science. His major contribution to the new science was his work in the field of physics,
where he dedicated himself to observation and experiment. He used mathematical
models to describe the motion of falling bodies and projectiles. Importantly, he dropped
any attempt to find the cause or purpose of these motions and settled on simple
description of the natural world. The work of Kepler, Galileo, and many other
questioning men of their time came together in the work of Isaac Newton.
Isaac Newton combined Kepler’s laws of planetary motion with Galileo’s
mathematical description of earthly motion into a universal mathematical law, the law of
gravity. To accompany his law of gravity he identified three laws of motion: bodies left
to themselves remain in their current state of motion: bodies change their motion in direct
response to any force applied to them: bodies that interact apply equal and opposite
forces to one another. Newton championed the belief that science should admit nothing
that is not demonstrable through observation and experimentation. As well, he adopted
Galileo’s method of description without metaphysical explanation. The work of Newton
and his later popularizers overturned the Aristotelian worldview of the Middle Ages and
replaced it with a new Newtonian worldview. The Newtonian worldview was
characterized by the description of nature in terms of universal mathematical laws. It was
materialistic because it dealt solely with matter under the action of various forces. It was
reductionistic because it reduced all physical phenomena to the sum of its material parts
and the forces applied to them. Finally, the new science was deterministic: knowledge of
all the material components and forces within a system determine the future action within
that system. The initial success of the Newtonian method in opening the nature of the
physical world to men overshadowed its deficits as compared to the Aristotelian model.
The Newtonian science involved pure description and failed to supply even the simplest
exploration into questions of meaning, purpose, or final cause. This deficit was not a
problem for Newton or his contributors, for they inhabited a worldview and belief system
that acknowledged God as the ultimate creator and bestower of purpose. Thus,
metaphysical questioning was still an important pursuit. The new approach merely
demanded that the scientist determine the physical nature of the world through
observation and not through rationalistic deduction from metaphysical truths.
Unfortunately, the skepticism of the new science with regard to the nature of the physical
world would soon begin to encroach on the metaphysical realm. This excursion into the
metaphysical realm would take the form of religious scientific skepticism, which states
that the world is ‘nothing more’ than the materialistic understanding of science.
The first encroachment of the Newtonian worldview into the realm of
metaphysics involved the work of Newton enthusiasts of the 18th century who made a
philosophy out of his mechanical system.1 They developed a view of the world as a
machine operating on specific, unchanging laws. This view states that the whole of the
1
Hummel, Charles E., The Galileo Connection, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1986, p. 223.
natural world is ‘nothing more’ than the sum of matter and the forces on that matter as
determined by universal laws. The primary metaphysical conclusion of such a
philosophy is deism, the belief that God created the universe as a clockmaker might
create a clock. Though involved in the initial creation He is not personally involved in
the continued running of that universe. This was the first attack on the traditional
understanding of man, though an indirect one. If the universe is a machine, operating on
consistent and impersonal laws, then man too can be seen as a machine, himself the
product of impersonal mechanical laws. This divorce was not complete, however, for the
machine requires the presence of a designer, and design is inherently purposeful.
Additionally, the mechanistic system of the Newtonians could not account for the soul
and rational mind of man. The mind must be a direct creation of God, further proof of
the purposefulness of man.
The next attack proceeded, not from a scientist, but from the 18th century
philosopher David Hume. In his work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he
takes the skeptical approach of the Newtonians to the natural world and applies that same
approach to the understanding of the human mind. Hume asserts that the mind of man is
‘nothing more’ than the sum of all his experiences. He states, “…all the creative power
of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing,
augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience.”2
Moreover, these faculties of the human mind are themselves the working out of simple
forces within the mind. These forces, Hume asserts, are Resemblance, Contiguity, and
Cause and Effect. Thus Hume sees the human mind as ‘nothing more’ than the whole of
2
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinburg. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc, 1997, p. 11.
experience as modified by natural forces. Hume’s philosophy paved the way for an
understanding of human consciousness that completely reduces it to the physical
workings of material processes within the human brain. He called into question the
previous understanding of the human mind as separate in nature from man’s physical
body and thereby challenged the concurrent understanding that man, as possessor of a
mind, is uniquely crafted toward a specific purpose.
Despite the questions raised by philosophers concerning the material nature of
man’s mind, a solid foundation still remained for the continued understanding of man and
the natural world as the purposeful creation of a craftsman God. The 18th century
theologian William Paley famously stated that the finding of a watch on the ground
necessarily implies the existence of a watchmaker. The conclusion that there is a creator
is the natural implication of evident purposefulness in the world. Nowhere is
purposefulness more evident than in the field of biology. Plants have roots for the
‘purpose’ of gaining nutrients. Birds have wings for the ‘purpose’ of flying. Men have
legs for the ‘purpose’ of walking. They have hands for the ‘purpose’ of reaching,
grabbing, and manipulating. They have sexual organs for the ‘purpose’ of procreation. It
is no wonder that Aristotle, himself a biologist, formed an understanding of the world
based upon this idea of inherent purpose. This same property of biology, the necessary
inclusion of purpose, led to a resistance in that field to Newtonian reductionism.
Reductionists could, perhaps, explain biological systems in terms of matter and forces;
however, the biologist was concerned with the specific organization of that matter for the
accomplishment of a specific task. The action of unchanging forces on matter could not
explain the purposeful organization of that matter.
Charles Darwin, a 19th century naturalist, struck down this final stronghold of
Aristotelian thought and paved the way for the complete takeover of the metaphysical
world by the deterministic reductionism of the Newtonian science. In his theory of
evolution he proposed that the appearance of purpose in the biological world is actually
an illusion, one created by the regular, mechanical workings of nature. He based his
work primarily on his observations of finch populations in the Galapagos Islands. He
noted that the beaks of each type of finch were specifically shaped to the environment in
which that finch lived. He proposed that all the finches descended from a common
ancestor but that each population had adapted to the environment in which it lived. The
method he proposed for this adaptation was mutation and natural selection. In Darwin’s
schema each time a living organism reproduces very slight random mutations occur. If a
mutation provides a slight advantage to the organism then natural selection favors the
survival of that organism over those that lack the mutation. The favored organism then
passes on its mutation to its offspring. The gradual accumulation of mutations over a
long period of time might account for the drastically different beak shapes among the
Galapagos finches. Furthermore, Darwin theorized, this same process of gradual change
might eventually create a completely different species of organism. In his famous work
The Origin Of Species Darwin hypothesizes that all the different species on earth have
evolved from a single ancestor, guided by nothing other than the natural processes of
mutation and natural selection. Furthermore, he proposes that this initial ancestor was
itself the product of random and natural processes in the ‘primordial soup’ of the ancient
earth. Darwin’s theory of evolution, for the first time, provided a way to explain the
apparent purposefulness of biological systems in completely materialistic terms. Purpose
in nature is ‘nothing but’ the illusion of purpose created by impersonal natural laws and
blind chance.
Scientific advances during the 19th century were providing man a level of
knowledge and control that was unprecedented in history. As a consequence, any theory
advancing the territory of scientific inquiry, expanding the explanatory power of
reductionistic materialism, was hailed as an advance for mankind. In such a climate the
scientific community quickly accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution. In addition, those
who desired to break the long stranglehold of religion on man’s actions popularized the
Darwinist views as scientific truth. For, when God had created man for a specific
purpose, that purpose was the domain of God. If, however, the purposeful creation of
man is an illusion, then man might determine his own purpose to be whatever he chooses.
This will to self-determination became the goal of the scientific pursuits of the 20th
century. Entering this period, enthusiasm was high that the advances of modern science
would lead to a golden age of humanity.
Modern man now stands at the opening of the 21st century and wonders what all
went wrong. Michael Behe offers an answer to this question in his book Darwin’s Black
Box in the form of a concept entitled ‘irreducible complexity’. Behe’s book is a
challenge to the universal acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution as an explanation
of the origin of life. He locates his challenge in the relatively new field of biochemistry.
He first points out that, at the time Darwin proposed his theory, scientists had just
discovered the cell to be the building block of all living organisms. At that time
scientists, including Darwin, believed the cell to be composed of a homogeneous
substance. They considered life to be simple at the most basic level. This fit well with
Darwin’s idea that the complexity of life is the result of very simple and universal
mechanisms. Behe proceeds to explain that the discoveries of modern biochemical
enquiry have revealed the most basic building blocks of life, and they are incredibly
complex. Scientists now know that the cell, which they previously believed to be
composed of a homogeneous substance, is actually constructed of a fully interdependent
network of machines: it is more complex than a modern-day city. Behe argues that, if
Darwinian evolution is going to sufficiently account for the origin of life it must account
for the structure of life at its most basic level. In order to judge the explanatory power of
the evolutionary model Behe introduces the concept of ‘irreducible complexity’.
Irreducible complexity, he explains, describes, “…a single system composed of several
well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal
of any one of its parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”3 According to
Behe, the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection cannot have
created an irreducibly complex system. Darwinian evolution relies on the gradual
accumulation of small mutations, each of which provides a progressively greater
advantage to the organism. An irreducibly complex system, by definition, cannot be
gradually constructed by small, beneficial changes because every part is necessary to the
function of the whole system. To have been missing even one part in the past would have
left the organism with a completely useless piece of machinery, one with no selective
value.
In order to demonstrate the concept of an irreducibly complex system Behe
forwards the example of a household mousetrap. The mousetrap he describes is
Behe, Michael J., Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: The Free
Press, 1996, p. 39
3
composed of five basic parts. (1) a wooden base (2) a metal hammer (3) a spring (4) a
sensitive catch that releases with a little pressure (5) a metal bar that holds the hammer
back when the trap is armed. He then asks whether any of these five components could
be removed and leave the trap functional. His answer is no: the trap is irreducibly
complex.
After giving the example of the man-made mousetrap Behe moves onto
biochemical mechanisms of the cell to demonstrate that many of these meet the criteria
for irreducible complexity. One of the irreducibly complex cellular mechanisms he
identifies is the cilium. The cilium is a hair-like structure on the surface of many cells,
which moves in a whip-like fashion. This action can provide movement for a free
moving cell or can act to move liquid past the surface of a stationary cell. The cilium is
composed of an organized array of side-by-side microtubules, long protein strands, held
together by a flexible protein called nexin. Each of the outer tubules is arrayed with a set
of ‘arms’ containing the protein dyein, a member of a class of motor proteins. When a
fully functioning cilium is given ATP, a form of chemical energy, the structure beats with
its characteristic movement. If, however, a scientist uses biochemical means to to
remove the dyein arms the addition of ATP creates no motion whatsoever: he has
removed the motor mechanism. Something different occurs with the removal of the
nexin proteins, rather than the dyein arms. When ATP is added the entire structure
elongates as the microtubules slide past one another. Apparently the motor function of
the dyein arms creates a sliding motion between the microtubules. With the nexin
proteins in place to tie the microtubles together the sliding motion of the dyein arms is
transformed into a bending motion by the entire apparatus. The basic components of the
ciliary mechanism are the microtubules, the dyein motor, and the nexin connectors. Behe
says about the cilium,
“Just as a mousetrap does not work unless all of its constituent parts are present,
ciliary motion simply does not exist in the absence of microtubules, connectors, and
motors. Therefore we can conclude that the cilium is irreducibly complex – an enormous
monkey wrench thrown into its presumed gradual, Darwinian evolution.”4
The fight Behe joins in his book is the fight for a return of meaning. The
reductionistic view of modern science says living organisms are ‘nothing but’ the sum of
their component parts: they are themselves meaningless. Behe asserts that living
organisms are, in their most basic structure, more than the sum of their parts because
those parts have been organized in a particular way for a specific purpose. What Behe
has identified in his concept of irreducible complexity is a common feature of all
purposeful systems. The removal of any part of a purposefully ordered system is
dissolution of the purpose for which it was ordered: the system cannot function. If Behe
is right then irreducible complexity may help explain the confusion of modern man.
Behe reveals that the most basic components of the human body, biochemical
machines, are crafted with specific purpose in mind. By the appropriate function of all
component parts these machines are able to fulfill that molecular purpose. It follows that
if man, in his most fundamental makeup, is crafted with purpose then the entirety of what
he is must also be fundamentally purposeful. This not only includes his basic physical
makeup, eyes, hands, feet, etc. but his intellectual, social, and moral makeup as well. All
of the complexities of human behavior are specifically designed for an intended purpose.
Behe, Michael J., Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: The Free
Press, 1996, p. 65
4
Appropriately, if human beings, as moral creatures, are designed to operate within a
specific moral framework for an intended purpose then that moral framework might itself
be irreducibly complex.
An analysis of certain social trends over the past century will serve to demonstrate
the consequences of this irreducibility of moral order. Halfway through the last century
scientists and doctors introduced the birth control pill. For the first time in human history
a reliable contraceptive became available. Most people applauded this development; for
man’s irrational sexual impulses would no longer control the production of children. The
consequences of the introduction of widespread contraception, however, were farreaching and unexpected. Divorce skyrocketed, as did the rates of children born out of
wedlock. Promiscuity and sexual immorality gradually became commonplace. The
murder of the unborn became common with the legalization of abortion. Moreover, the
birthrates of western nations began a plummet that has yet to cease. The association of
these varied social trends becomes clear in light of man’s moral framework as a
purposeful, and hence irreducibly complex, system. The moral framework into which
man has been created is one in which married couples are intended to come together in
sexual union for the purpose of producing children. This involves the functioning of
many different ‘components’ including the married couple’s covenantal relationship,
their repeated physical acts of sexual union, and their acceptance and care of any children
that result. The separation of the physical act of lovemaking from the production of
children by the use of contraception is the removal of a necessary component from a
purpose filled system. As such the entire system fails to function. Marriage, as a social
establishment, crumbles. Lovemaking becomes perverted. Man no longer cares for his
offspring. Eventually man ceases to reproduce.
When Darwin introduced his theory of evolution he proposed that the apparent
purposefulness of nature is in fact an illusion created by mindless natural processes. The
recent work of biochemist Michael Behe challenges the ability of Darwin’s mechanism to
account for the structure of living beings at their most basic, biochemical level. In his
idea of irreducible complexity Behe identifies the trademark of necessarily purposeful
systems. His subsequent discovery of irreducible complexity in the biochemical
apparatuses of the cell proposes a serious challenge to the commonly held theory of
Darwinian evolution. In addition, Behe’s idea suggests an answer to the question of why
modern man seems on the verge of losing himself. Since the introduction of Darwin’s
evolutionary theory man has increasingly rejected the assertion that he was created for a
specific purpose. Where the pursuit of the medieval scientist was to understand the Godcreated purpose of man the modern scientist has demanded that man be allowed to create
his own purpose. Man, through his scientific advancement, has fought to achieve selfdetermination. If, however, God has created man purposefully in his physical,
intellectual, and moral being then man, in his metaphysical makeup, is irreducibly
complex. Modern man’s insistence toward self-determination has not resulted in a
golden age for mankind but rather in the removal of necessary ‘components’ of his
irreducibly complex being. The ultimate end of such a pursuit is that man, as God
purposes him to be, will cease to function.
Bibliography
Behe, Michael J., Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New
York: The Free Press, 1996.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinburg.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 1997.
Hummel, Charles E., The Galileo Connection, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press,
1986.