Rebuttal To Tom Bethell's 'Banned In Biology'

Tom Bethell’s Commentary ‘Banned In Biology’ contained too many factual errors to be addressed in one Letter to the Editor, so let’s just consider two paragraphs containing three factual errors and one logical error.

Mr. Bethell wrote: "Software designers understand how precisely such information must be specified. There is no room for error. Yet each cell of the body contains a DNA chain of 3 billion nucleotides, encoded in such a way it specifies construction of all the proteins."

DNA is not software. Just because Bill Gates says it’s like software doesn’t mean it is software. DNA is similar to software, but rather than being a set of specific instructions, it’s more like a recipe, a subtle but important distinction. Being like a recipe, there is a great deal of room for error. People have proven this through thousands of years of selective breeding to improve crops and produce various breeds of animals.

In the next paragraph, Mr. Bethell writes: "No one knows the source of this code or how it arose. It cannot have been by accident, but accident is the only method available to the evolutionists, who believe as a matter of dogma that early life arose from the random collision of atoms and molecules and nothing else."

This does not make logical sense. If no one knows the source of this code, then no one can say whether or not it arose by accident. Scientists do not, in fact, believe that DNA has arisen by accident, nor do they believe that early life arose from the random collisions of atoms and molecules and nothing else. There is no such thing as this "and nothing else," because atoms and molecules have physical properties which give them affinities for certain ways of interacting and combining. If you fill a space with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and then make a spark, you will get a space full of H2O, in part because of the random motions of the atoms and molecules, but also because hydrogen and oxygen are more strongly attracted to each other than they are to themselves.

And that is the key. It isn’t just random motion, it is never just random motion and nothing else. Everything that goes on in every cell of your body happens in part because of the random motions of molecules, but it isn’t random motion alone. It is random motion plus the affinities of the molecules to make certain interactions and combinations with each other. If this were not so, then every single molecule of water would have to be designed and constructed, and every function of every cell of your body would need some supernatural influence to make it work.

Clearly this would be absurd. If there is any intelligent design, better to seek it at a level far lower than that of molecules. Every second of every day, innumerable snowflakes form high in the atmosphere. A snowflake accumulates from the random motions of water molecules in the air, and organizes itself not because of some supernatural intervention, but because of the geometry and physical properties of the water molecule itself. If there is design, then it should be sought in the quantum levels of the electrons in the orbitals of atoms, but of course, it makes no sense stop there. What causes those orbitals, and what causes the cause of the orbitals?

If Mr. Bethell wants to be taken seriously as a science writer, then he needs to do a lot more studying of the basics of science. As far as I know, proponents of Intelligent Design have no quarrel with the basics of chemistry and physics that have served mankind well for over two centuries.