Douglas Axe replies to Professor Fox’s criticisms
I’m grateful to Ranald Macaulay and to Keith Fox for taking the time to comment on my book.
It is called Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, and I appreciate this opportunity to respond to Fox’s criticisms.
In all honesty, my first impression upon reading what Fox wrote was that he didn’t read the book very carefully. Some of his comments made me wonder whether he read it at all. For example, he says he found no reference in the book to directed evolution, an approach used by scientists hoping to make selection work wonders in the laboratory. I avoided the term itself because, writing for a general readership, I wanted to steer clear of technical jargon. So if Fox merely means that directed evolution isn’t listed in the book’s index, then he’s right. But if he means the subject isn’t discussed, then he didn’t read Chapter 4, where I not only describe the approach, but also recount how it never worked as hoped.
An imagined version of me
Quoting an imagined version of me (I guess), Fox asks: ‘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?’ Strip away the misrepresentation and we’re left with agreement that science stops when we stop asking questions about how things work. The moment we hold one answer to a scientific question as sacrosanct, protecting it from all scientific scrutiny, we’ve placed ourselves in opposition to science.
Fox implies that I am guilty of this, but the lack of any resemblance between his representation of me and my actual thinking is reassuring.
First-rate scientist but...
And what about Fox? As far as I can tell, he has never studied the mechanisms by which he supposes life has evolved. He’s a first-rate scientist who has for many years studied how various molecules bind to DNA. Evolution is not his field, which is fine. Less fine is the fact that he holds two very different standards of science. Working in his own field, he is careful to ensure that every claim is supported by solid evidence and sound reasoning. Regrettably, that care evaporates when he turns his attention to evolution. Here he apparently feels free to make fantastic claims without any concern for evidence at all.
For example, in the space of a few sentences, his critique of my book casually outlines his imaginative interpretation of the origin of enzymes – the long chains of linked amino acids that perform highly specific chemical conversions inside cells. According to Fox, crude enzymes that natural selection could build upon were had simply by linking two amino acids together. Modern enzymes, which need hundreds of linked amino acids to fold up into complex three-dimensional structures, started from such humble beginnings, he thinks.
Really? Thousands of sophisticated enzymes all descending from amino acids linked in pairs – like machines coming from bolts and nuts? That’s certainly revolutionary if true. Indeed, it seems to contradict work my colleague Ann Gauger and I have done, where we took amino acid chains of normal size that had weak function and showed that selection only improves them if they already have the essential features in place.
That is, we found that selection can fine-tune existing enzymes, but it can’t invent them from scratch.
Astonishing claim
Of course, if Fox has the work to back his astonishing claim up, then I’m very willing to learn from him. He doesn’t seem to, though. Looking through the long list of his careful work on DNA, I see no work on these tiny enzymes he imagines. In truth, his claim is so fanciful – so detached from what is known about enzymes – that no expert in the field would take it seriously.
Maybe another point of agreement will help to explain what’s going on here. Fox is concerned that my book might ‘reinforce the misconception that science and Christian faith are in conflict.’ If by this he means to affirm that the truths of science will be seen to be in complete harmony with the truths of Christianity when both are fully known, then I agree. I’m sure he would affirm this, but he also seems to mean something else. He seems to think scientific consensus and scientific truth are the same thing. That is, he seems to think scientific ideas show themselves to be true by virtue of their dominance within the scientific community.
More realistic view
Anyone tempted to accept that idea should be dissuaded by the long list of counterexamples. My book promotes a more realistic view, presenting science not as ‘a hypothetical pursuit in a utopian world’ but as ‘an intrinsically human pursuit in this world, however imperfect.’ As Fox well knows, human flaws leave their mark on every human undertaking, including science. One of his editorial articles in the journal ‘Nucleic Acids Research’ speaks of ‘mounting concern that much of what is perceived as ‘cutting-edge’ research in the biological sciences cannot readily be reproduced.’ He attributes the problem to a ‘skewed system of values’ that comes from the ‘enormous pressure to publish broadly visible and rapidly lauded research.’
The connection between this pressure for peer approval and groupthink should be obvious. And, once you see this, you realise that consensus within a scientific community can be driven by nothing more than peer pressure. Of course, compelling science can also be the driving force, but it would be extremely naïve to overlook that less noble possibility. In the end, it’s the evidence (or lack of it) that distinguishes noble consensus from ignoble consensus. And when it comes to the consensus view that evolution explains life, I have spent a long time examining the existing evidence and acquiring new evidence. Fox hasn’t.
Groupthink
Thankfully, the decisive evidence here does-n’t have to be technical, which means that you don’t need technical training to understand with confidence why ordinary physical causes can’t have produced living things. This is the major theme of Undeniable. Technical science on origins, done carefully, is in complete agreement with the simple science of familiar observation and reasoning –common science, as I call it. Both affirm our innate intuition that life is designed.
Maybe groupthink explains why evolution gets a free pass from Fox. His desire to avoid conflict between Christianity and the science establishment can’t really be noble if his peace deal involves throwing truth under the bus, as it seems to. Throwing certain truths under the bus is very fashionable, as we all know. By portraying these truths as foolish, our secular culture exerts pressure on everyone to disown them. We aren’t blind so much as timid. We all see the emperor’s nakedness, but the more we worry about being labelled as fools by influential figures in our culture, the more likely we are to follow in their foolish footsteps.
Genuinely curious
Curiosity is what drives all good science, whether technical or common. It’s what makes us press for true explanations without conforming to cultural expectations. But on issues where the pressure to conform is particularly strong, courage becomes the second indispensable ingredient of good science. Whatever you think about God, if you’re genuinely curious about whether the evolutionary explanation of life can work and courageous enough to follow the evidence wherever it leads, I think you’ll enjoy reading Undeniable.
I won’t comment here on Fox’s doctrinal stance because that’s a conversation for Christians, whereas my book was written for a broader audience, including agnostics and atheists. No doctrinal scrutiny is needed to reject the evolutionary explanation of life. Scientific scrutiny is all that is needed, and common science is fully up to the task. Without this scrutiny, the exercise of accommodating the evolutionary view within the Christian worldview is considerably worse than pointless.
I encourage anyone wanting a full discussion of the doctrinal problems with Fox’s view, along with the scientific and philosophical problems, to order the forthcoming volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (Crossway).
