REDUCING THE IRREDUCIBLE: WHY INTELLIGENT DESIGN FAILS AT THE MOLECULAR LEVEL

One of the most effective arguments made by intelligent design (ID) proponents deals with the remarkable complexity of molecular/biochemical systems. It is argued that evidence for an intelligent designer has been discovered in these biochemical systems. This arises from the premise that molecular machines and biochemical pathways are simply too complex to have evolved because their component parts are nonfunctional outside of the integrated whole. Such systems have been termed “irreducibly complex” owing to the notion that their component parts could serve no useful purpose and so could not be subject to natural selection; hence they must have been produced intact by an intelligent force. I will review recent evidence regarding molecular structures that have been claimed to be irreducibly complex and show that in all cases functional component or intermediate structures are known. Not only are these systems reducible, several likely evolutionary scenarios are known. I will discuss not just why the notion of intelligent design fails in light of the evidence, but why it is logically untenable as well.