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Key Bible Verse: O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all (Psalm 104:24). Bonus Reading: Psalm 139:13-18

Biochemist Michael Behe has added the concept of irreducible complexity. He defines a system as irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts for which removing even one part completely destroys the system's function. For Behe, irreducible complexity is a sure indicator of design.

One example Behe cites is the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is an acid-powered rotary motor with a whiplike tail that spins at 20,000 revolutions per minute and whose rotating motion enables bacterium to navigate through its watery environment. Behe shows that the intricate machinery in this molecular motor—including a rotor, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft—requires the coordinated interaction of at least 30 complex proteins. The absence of any one of these proteins, he insists, would result in the complete loss of motor function.

Since adding one component at a time couldn't work, Behe argues, irreducibly complex systems like the bacterial flagellum couldn't develop through a Darwinian closed system of unbroken natural causes. They can only be accounted for by a designing intelligence.

—William Dembski in The Design Revolution

My Response: I'll thank God for making me so wonderfully complex.

Thought to Apply: If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking on Creation, I should have recommended something simpler.—ALFONSO X (Spanish king)

Adapted from The Design Revolution (InterVarsity, 2004) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Thank You, Lord, for mounting evidence that only intelligent design can account for the origins of our universe.

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