If Charles Darwin lived today, I wonder what he would think?

The year was 1802 and William Paley famously gave us the watchmaker analogy. In his analogy Paley wrote that if a pocket watch is found on the ground, we can infer that someone dropped it there and that it was made by a watchmaker, not by natural forces. In his 1802 book, Natural Theology, Paley shares his now famous analogy as follows:

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. … There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. … Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”¹

Fast forward to the year 1859 and Charles Darwin pens his famous book, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. In his book he knew quite a bit about finch beaks but his knowledge of the human cell was just about zero. To Darwin the human cell was nothing more than a clump of protoplasm.

Fast forward again to the year 1996 and biochemist, Michael Behe, shares his insights on the human cell in his seminal work, Darwin’s Black Box. In this book Behe shares that life is based on “molecular machines.” Behe gives us a wonderful snapshot of what these molecular machines do:

“Molecular machines haul cargo from one place in the cell to another along ‘highways’ made of other molecules, while still others act as cables, ropes, and pulleys to hold the cell in shape. Machines turn cellular switches on and off, sometimes killing the cell or causing it to grow. Solar-powered machines capture the energy of photons and store it in chemicals. Electrical machines allow current to flow through nerves. Manufacturing machines build other molecular machines, as well as themselves. Cells swim using machines, copy themselves with machinery, ingest food with machinery. In short, highly sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process. Thus, the details of life are finely calibrated, and the machinery of life enormously complex.”²

If we compare these two types of machines, Paley’s watch, and Behe’s molecular machines, several things will surface. First, the watch monitors time in intervals of seconds while molecular machine perform functions in nanoseconds. Second, Paley’s watch is made of a relatively small amount of metal and plastic parts, while Behe’s molecular machines are made of an amazing number of proteins molecules. Third, a watch is made of inanimate matter while molecular machines are made of living matter. Fourth, watches can’t self-repair themselves while molecular machines can. Fifth, when you assemble a lot of watches you just get a lot of timepieces. But when you assemble a lot of molecular machines, on the order of many trillions, they combine in an unfathomably complex way to create a watchmaker – i.e., a human being. Sixth, while a watch is complex, molecular machine are irreducibly complex. And seventh, a watch requires a skilled watchmaker, while an infinitely more complex molecular machine requires the Father of time and Creator of the universe to come into existence!

If Charles Darwin could only have studied Behe’s molecular machines, instead of finch beaks, I just wonder what conclusions he would have come up with. All a watch can do is keep time. But when you were first conceived, that original single egg cell, had so much vast knowledge that in nine-months’ time it would create a thirty trillion cell masterpiece created in the image of God, called you!

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1 The Watchmaker’s Analogy (mrwatchmaster.com)

2 Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. (New York:

The Free Press, 1996), pp. 4-5.