Unlocking the Mystery of Life

Michael J. Behe:
It's really interesting to notice that the more we know about life and the more we know about biology, the more problems Darwinism has, and the more design becomes apparent.

Scott Minnich:
[comparing a bacterium to man-made machinery] The Bacterial Flagellum: two gears forward and reverse, water-cooled, proton-motive force. It has a stator, it has rotor, it has a U-joint, it has a drive shaft, it has a propeller, and they function as these parts of machines.

Scott Minnich:
We know a lot about the Bacterial Flagellum - we still have a lot to learn, but we known a lot about it. And there's no explanation for how this complex molecular machine was ever produced by a Darwinian mechanism.

Charles Darwin:
[quotation] If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

Stephen C. Myer:
Like other scientists working on the origin of life, Kenyon realized he had two choices, either he had to explain where these genetic assembly instructions came from, or he had to explain how proteins could have arisen directly from amino acids, without DNA, in the primordial oceans. And in the end he realized he could do neither.

Dean H. Kenyon:
It's an enormous problem, how you could get together in one tiny, sub-microscopic volume of the primitive ocean all of the hundreds of different molecular components you would need in order for a self-replicating cycle to be established. As so my doubts about whether amino acids could order themselves into meaningful biological sequences on their own, without pre-existing genetic material being present, just reached, I guess for me, the intellectual breaking point, sometime near the decade of the 70s.

Stephen C. Myer:
Without DNA, there is no self-replication. But without self-replication, there is no natural selection. So you can't use natural selection to explain the origin of DNA, without assuming the existence of the very thing you're trying to explain.

Paul Nelson:
When I look at molecular machines, or the incredibly complex process by which cells divide, I want to ask is it possible that these things had an intelligence behind them? That there was a plan or a purpose to this structure. Science ought to be a search for the truth about the world. Now we shouldn't prejudge what might be true. We shouldn't say, I don't like that explanation so I'm going to put it to one side. Rather, when we come to a puzzle in nature, we ought to bring to that puzzle every possible cause that might explain it. One of the problems I have with Evolutionary Theory is that it artificially rules out a kind of cause even before the evidence has a chance to speak, and the cause that's ruled out is intelligence.

Phillip Johnson:
The argument for Intelligent Design is based on observation of the facts. Now that's my definition of good science. It's observation of the facts.

Michael J. Behe:
The idea of Intelligent Design is a completely scientific one. Certainly it might have religious implications, but it does not depend on religious premises.

[last lines]

Stephen C. Myer:
During the 19th century, scientists believed that there were two fundamental entities, matter and energy. But as we enter the 21st century, there's a third fundamental entity that science has had to recognize, and that is information. And so as we encounter the biology of the information age, the suspicion is growing that what we're seeing in the DNA molecule is actually an artifact of mind, an artifact of intelligence. Something that can only be explained by intelligent design.