Darwin's Black Box - Creation

Creation

In a review of Behe's paper 'Design vs. Randomness in Evolution: Where Do the Data Point?', Denis Lamoureux criticised Darwin's Black Box as having become central to fundamentalist and evangelical anti-evolution critiques against biological evolution. Behe supports the historically incorrect misrepresentation that Darwin's views on the origin of life were atheistic, when On the Origin of Species repeatedly refers to a Creator in a positive and supportive context as impressing laws on matter. Though Behe has avoided committing himself to the view that God intervenes directly in nature to create purportedly irreducibly complex structures, Darwin's Black Box briefly speculates that divine intervention might have caused the direct creation of a cell from which all of life evolved, supporting creationist views of miraculous acts of creation, but ironically echoing Darwin's stated "view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one". Behe's claim that the creation of an original first cell represents a "gap" in the laws of nature needing divine intervention appears to be the problematic God of the gaps position which is subject to the gaps being filled by scientific discoveries. Behe's thesis that irreducible structures are created in "one fell swoop" is opposed by other biochemists, including many who are devout Christians, and has, it is claimed by some, no support from the fossil record - something Behe would dispute.