Professor Keith Fox of Southampton University takes issue with the book Undeniable which Ranald Macaulay reviewed positively in en
In the opening paragraph of his review of Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable, Ranald Macaulay states that ‘evolution theory is no longer tenable and God’s creation is undeniable’ (en, October 2016).
I endorse the second statement; God is indeed the creator (and sustainer) of all that is, seen and unseen. However, there are no grounds for asserting that ‘evolutionary theory is no longer tenable’. Almost all practising scientists (including many who are Christians), and especially biological scientists, affirm the basic facts of evolution and disagree with Axe’s argument.
The book contains very little detailed science and is more of a polemic, which is written for the scientific lay person, not the professional scientist. The assertion that we all know intuitively know these things, in what he calls ‘common science’, sounds rather like the ‘who needs experts’ attitude that is so often pedalled in a society that revels in ‘post-truth’. Intuition is often wrong. If we relied on child-like intuition alone, we might assume that the sun revolves around a flat earth. The fact is that we don’t do science by ‘intuition’ or by ‘thought experiments’. God declared that the material world is good, and Christians therefore have a divine mandate to ask questions, explore and do experiments (while having the humility to acknowledge that ‘we don’t yet know’ is a respectable answer). Axe’s book is therefore weak on both science and theology.
Considering the science first:
Throughout the article, Macaulay (and Axe) confuse evolution (how organisms change over time) with abiogenesis (the origin of life). Moreover, he repeatedly refers to ‘Darwin’ and ‘Darwinism’ rather than evolution.
Darwin understood the power of the argument for natural selection, but had no mechanism to explain this. He had no knowledge of genes, proteins, enzymes, DNA, etc., etc. It is remarkable that all these later discoveries have served overwhelmingly to support the evolutionary paradigm, and confirm the interrelatedness of all living organisms. Where would we now be if scientists since Darwin had all said: ‘It’s all too complicated, so let’s stop asking questions about mechanisms, because it must have been designed.’ Most of our present knowledge (which has revealed more and more of the wonderful world that God has created), would have been missed in a mistaken desire to attribute to God the things that I can’t yet understand.
While evolution satisfactorily explains the diversity of the biological world, the origin of life itself is still much more of a mystery, though there are some suggestions out there. Axe effectively invokes a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ (or more precisely a designer-of-the-gaps) to account for what we cannot properly explain at present. Axe and Macaulay imply that, since they presently can’t give a complete explanation, no one will ever be able to do so. A true scientist is not ashamed to admit that ‘we don’t yet know, but we’re working on it’.
Axe’s statements, if correct, would be a complete science-stopper, and would tell us to stop asking the ‘how’ questions that are the very stuff of science. Even if we were to grant that some things are the specific intervention of a deliberate ‘designer’, a scientist will always ask: ‘How did he do it?’ – by some miraculous (irreproducible) feat, or by the very same ‘scientific’ principles that God uses for the day-to-day upholding of the fabric of the universe?
I won’t comment on Axe’s personal disagreements with Alan Ferscht and Max Perutz. I found the tone to be unwarranted, though who am I to comment, as I wasn’t there. These are highly intelligent people, who (like all scientists) are truth-seekers; his response to the fact that they disagree with him, accusing them of bias and closed-mindedness, is not helpful.
Not original form of proteins
Axe’s book makes the frequent misunderstanding that biology is goal-directed. However, it is opportunistic, taking what works and then using it and improving its efficiency. A lot of the arguments in Undeniable assume that the proteins (enzymes) that we have today were first generated in the form in which we now see them.
This is mistaken; enzymes work by speeding up chemical reactions, by as much as a billion-fold and have become very precisely tuned in order to do this with maximum efficiency. Their primitive (and no longer extant) predecessors would have been much less efficient, maybe initially speeding up reactions by (say) two-fold, which is pathetic by today’s standards, but the first step on the long evolutionary road of trial and error, improving the activity in a stepwise series of events, climbing the mountain one step at a time, rather than one giant leap.
Axe’s analogy from pasta alphabet shells is inappropriate; proteins don’t self-organise in an all-or-nothing fashion, but by stepwise accumulation. One doesn’t have to start with an unlikely polypeptide with billion-fold activity, but from (say) a specific dipeptide (of which there are only 400 using the natural amino acids), with a few-fold improvement. Axe will be aware that enzyme evolution is much more complex than the simple alphabet soup model that he has presented. Yes, life is very complicated, and now we only see through a glass darkly. We are all familiar with the development of complex human beings with trillions of cells in a highly organised form emerging from a single cell without the need for special divine intervention (though we are indeed beautifully and wonderfully made, knit together in our mothers’ wombs).
I could find no reference in Axe’s book of things like directed evolution (which is successfully practised in many molecular biology laboratories), SELEX (for producing active species from random libraries that contain trillions of different combinations), the RNA world (as a precursor to the one requiring DNA, RNA and proteins) or any of the current speculations on how life might have arisen.
Turning to the theology:
Axe rejects pure materialism – of course. So do I! Christians affirm God’s immanence and his upholding of the entire cosmos. Since we live within God’s creation, all descriptions of the world will be descriptions of his handiwork, so there can be no pure materialism that is separated from God’s presence and removed from his continual upholding. But don’t confuse words; when Axe uses the pejorative word ‘materialism’ he could equally well say ‘scientific’. One doesn’t have to invoke the existence of God in order to investigate the way that the world works, though a Christian will of course acknowledge God’s hand in all that we see, and give him the glory.
The ‘design’ hypothesis doesn’t address the question of exactly when (or how) the designer (God) gets involved, and at what stage(s) in the process. It can appear to reduce God’s role to that of a tinkerer, interacting with the material world only at specific times. If some things (such as proteins) are explicitly designed, then what about the rest (is God involved there as well?). Christian belief, which I’m sure Axe and Macaulay would affirm, is that all things are subject to God’s rule (John 1.3; Hebrews 1.3; Colossians 1.17).
Unwarranted conclusions
So, while I honour Axe and Macaulay’s overall desire to attribute things to God’s plan; their specific conclusions are unwarranted. Their theological position does not have credibility within the scientific community and serves to reinforce the misconception that science and Christian faith are in conflict.
Keith Fox is Professor of Biochemistry at Southampton University and Associate Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge.
