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National Catholic Register: "The Notion of Intelligent Design Is the Logical Complement of Scientific Research"

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Darwin Day 2015 is a good day to be Catholic — or I imagine it must be for our Catholic colleagues and readers. Earlier, Ann Gauger wrote about a piece in the official daily Vatican newspaper, L’ Osservatore Romano, by Catholic priest and PhD biochemist Carlo Maria Polvani. Father Polvani offers a thoughtful critique of Darwinian theory (though Dr. Gauger disagreed with one of his illustrations) and demonstrated his familiarity with key scientists and scholars (Michael Behe, William Dembski) in the intelligent design community. He’s seemingly read Stephen Meyer’s books as well.

That is a big deal. Now I’ve just read this, "The Half-Truths of Materialist Evolution," in the main U.S. Catholic newspaper, the National Catholic Register. In his commentary article, Dr. Donald DeMarco points out the "half-truth" that traditional evolutionary theory surely is. Life evolves in the sense of changing over eons of time, but as Dr. DeMarco has not failed to notice, Darwinian spokesmen leave out the key to understanding that evolution, namely intelligent design:

The notion of intelligent design is the logical complement of scientific research. It offers a truth that has the salutary merit of not being a half-truth.

Right! Dr. DeMarco is up on Michael Behe’s formulation of the idea of irreducible complexity. His illustration is the human brain, which he writes about eloquently:

One of the great stumbling blocks for Darwin and other chance evolutionists is explaining how a multitude of factors simultaneously coalesce to form a unified, functioning system. The human brain could not have evolved as a result of the addition of one factor at a time. Its unity and phantasmagorical complexity defies any explanation that relies on pure chance. It would be an underestimation of the first magnitude to say that today’s neurophysiologists know more about the structure and workings of the brain than did Darwin and his associates.

Scientists in the field of brain research now inform us that a single human brain contains more molecular-scale switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on the entire planet! According to Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the brain’s complexity is staggering, beyond anything his team of researchers had ever imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. In the cerebral cortex alone, each neuron has between 1,000 to 10,000 synapses that result, roughly, in a total of 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies!

A single synapse may contain 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A synapse, simply stated, is the place where a nerve impulse passes from one nerve cell to another.

Phantasmagorical as this level of unified complexity is, it places us merely at the doorway of the brain’s even deeper mind-boggling organization. Glial cells in the brain assist in neuron speed. These cells outnumber neurons 10 times over, with 860 billion cells. All of this activity is monitored by microglia cells that not only clean up damaged cells but also prune dendrites, forming part of the learning process. The cortex alone contains 100,000 miles of myelin-covered, insulated nerve fibers.

The process of mapping the brain would indeed be time-consuming. It would entail identifying every synaptic neuron. If it took a mere second to identify each neuron, it would require four billion years to complete the project. What makes all of this even more astonishing is the fact that the brain is 60% fat. In addition, a person’s brain, in all its unified complexity, evolved from a single, microscopic cell!

It’s a good day even if you’re not Catholic because most religious communities I’m familiar with, including my own Jewish one, have a problem. The leading figures in them didn’t go into the pastoral field, or into religious scholarship, because they were interested in science. There is a tendency to seek ways to avoid really engaging with the relevant science, and to come up with excuses for this failure. You may recall my dialogue with Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, who writes for the Huffington Post, a few weeks back.

We’re all busy, and I understand the temptation not to do your homework. The science of ID is challenging, so for the priest, pastor, or rabbi on the go, I see why it would be attractive to endorse some half-digested clich� from the Manual of Theistic Evolution and leave it at that.

So good for Father Polvani and Dr. DeMarco, who tell it like is, having devoted the time and thought to the question of evolutionary origins that an ultimate question like that deserves.

Image by Clostridium (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and the editor of Evolution News & Science Today, the daily voice of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, reporting on intelligent design, evolution, and the intersection of science and culture. Klinghoffer is also the author of six books, a former senior editor and literary editor at National Review magazine, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications. Born in Santa Monica, California, he graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an A.B. magna cum laude in comparative literature and religious studies. David lives near Seattle, Washington, with his wife and children.

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