When I critiqued Steven yesterday, I emailed him to let him know, because I didn't want him to think I was trying to sneak something by him. He took me to task, which is totally fair.

Again, let me emphasize, the main point is not 'Why didn't God design a better eye?' but 'Could the eye evolve?'. Behe says no, and marshals a lot of evidence to support his claims. He also talks about how this same approach applies to other microbiological concerns like the coagulation of blood and the structure of flagella.

I will not reproduce the contents of his excellent book. His argument hinges on 'irreducible complexity'. To my untrained understanding, that means that you have to have an immediate evolutionary advantage for natural selection to work. You can't evolve the blood coagulation cascade step by step. It would have to evolve in steps which are both irreducibly complex and evolutionarily advantageous. And he says it can't happen and that no one has proved otherwise and the burden of proof is on them.

I am not scientist enough to deconstruct Steven's argument. So I refer him and you to another scientist, Michael Behe, whom Steven has not read. His multiplication of critics is no less direct than my appeal to authority. There's a missing directness in both steps. I can't get direct on this, because I'm not a scientist. If Steven's going to, he's going to have to read the book. He's right in saying science doesn't speak with a unified voice. The critics he lists subscribe to microbiological orthodoxy. Behe does not. They disagree. But the fact remains that none of these fellows has defeated Behe's arguments. Their criticisms are all addressed in his book, but fall on deaf ears. In this case, they're the ones who do not have an argument.

Behe has responded to some of the critics Steven quotes and has some articles online that may help you get a sense of what he's about. One of them specifically addresses the concept of irreducible complexity. You might also want to Google him. There's other stuff out there, too.

I did not intend to imply that Steven should discard his position because of Behe. I'm simply trying to point scientist to scientist.

And, while I appreciate Steven's concern of not taking from my Christianity, we can't have it both ways. It is not the case that science and religion should not be mixed. Both refer to what is true, in my mind. I will not settle for the Modern or PostModern idea that science deals with truth and religion deals with values and feelings or some such notion. Christianity makes historical and scientific claims. Not necessarily the fundamentalist claims of a 6-24 hour day creation. But definitely creation by the Creator and Resurrection, to name two big ones. Traditional, orthodox Christianity cannot give such claims up and will often, therefore, come into conflict with people who insist that neither is possible or actual.

And, finally, creationists speak with a unified voice no more than scientists.