FLAGELLA

Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding:
but that which is in the midst of fools is made known.
Proverbs 14:33

There was a time in my life when I myself questioned the existence of God, but a number of things brought me to my senses. At the top of the list for me was flagella. Flagella are the little tails that some cells use to propel themselves. Sperm cells have flagella, but so do many single-celled organisms. The scientist Michael Behe, who is not a Christian (the last I heard), has written a profound book on the topic of the human cell called Darwin’s Black Box.

Part of this book is devoted to describing the flagella. These flagella move at an incredible speed and consist of many different parts. If one single part of this “machine” were to be missing, the whole thing would fail to work at all. He called this irreducible complexity. That is a “machine” that cannot be reduced to a simpler state through the reduction of any single component without the whole thing breaking down. Behe questioned how such a complex mechanism could come into being by accident.

Were all of the intricate little parts just lying around and just got stuck together for no reason, after which time they began to move about in conjunction with the thousands of other parts of the cell, all of which are miracles in themselves. It boggles the mind how anyone could suggest that just this one complicated mechanism could come into place without a designer, and it even boggles the minds of evolutionists. If you want to see some real stupidity, read some of the reviews of his book by the practitioners of junk science. They present no alternative to intelligent design, nor any argument against it, but nevertheless they manage to rant rail against it anyway. What is it that they fear so much?

Is it just truth that they fear, or is it just that the idea of having an authority above themselves that makes them foam at the mouth? Behe does not even preach the Gospel or make any kind of argument for a moral, judging God; he only proposes a designer. These junk scientists foam at the mouth anyway.

The irreducible complexity of flagella is strong evidence for a creator, but it is not the angle that I took in my youth, years before Behe had written his book. I asked different questions about flagella. All living organisms share two things in common on a biological level: they seek to nourish themselves, and they seek to reproduce. We people and animals have minds and senses that direct us and guide us in our quests for food and reproduction, and we use those senses to locate food and mates. Single celled organisms do not have any senses or even a brain. They cannot see, smell, hear or taste food or potential mates, and we can’t even be sure if they feel anything at all. Nevertheless, they move around via their flagella until they bump into food or a mate. Once they bump into food or a mate, they know exactly what they need to do without having a brain to direct them.

My question is this: If they have no senses or brains to direct them, why do their flagella move? What makes them move like that if their is no intelligence to tell them that their is a need? It makes no sense at all to propose that they would move without being directed to do so. I’ll have to give Hindu philosophers credit here. This life force, which they call prana, is what compels the flagella to move, and it is the breath of God which he breathed into all creatures. Hindus misinterpret the source of this life force, as well as its true nature, but they at least understand its existence. Scientists falsely so called will give it the meaningless name of instinct, which is just another way of saying an innate source of logic and reason that developed by chance out of chaos. Suggesting that flagella formed by chance with this “instinct” built into it is as absurd as positing a fishing boat forming itself by chance along with a propeller, engine, and all its necessary components, and then to say that the propeller started spinning on its own without anyone starting its engine or steering the ship as it cruises across the ocean in search of fish.

Even when I was a Bible-scoffing, agnostic young heathen I knew that flagella made evolutionists look stupid. It is unfortunate for them that this incredible evidence that their religion is error-ridden is not enough to make them think.

Bibliography
Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s black box: the biochemical challenge to evolution. The Free Press, c1996.

Your servant in Christ,
John Hinton, Ph.D.
Bible Restoration Ministry
A ministry seeking the translating and reprinting of
KJV equivalent Bibles in all the languages of the world.