I posted this as a reply on the Fakebook group. But it's good enough for a stand alone post.
A decade or so ago, back when I was in my 'believe in evolution' phase of vacillation, I read "The Language of God" by Francis Collins. I was awed. It confirmed my then belief in evolution and reinforced my scoffing at Christians who thought God "poofed" Adam into existence.
But Collins made derogatory reference to "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe, so I read that book next just to be informed. I was stunned! Behe laid the folly of microbe-to-man evolution bare with unassailable arguments. (He didn't call it "microbe-to-man evolution", I do. The very fact that scientists keep the word "evolution" so ambiguously defined suggests that evolution isn't science.)
Here are two scientists, both Christians, both respected, both looking at essentially the same evidence. But Collins said the evidence proves evolution while Behe said the evidence proved evolution is wrong. How could that possibly be? What does it mean? What's the truth? What guided them in opposite directions?
I puzzled over that for a long time but I finally figured it out. What was the difference in their respective approaches? Collins looked at the DNA data laid out flat on paper. Behe looked at what the data coded for and what structures and effects were produced by it.
You see, when you look at the As, Cs, Ts and Gs on paper, nothing prevents a one-by-one change over eons to get from an ancestral genome to the genomes of either monkeys or men. But the fact is, that can't happen. Each one-nucleotide mutation causes a change, either neutral or destructive. In a later book, Behe illustrated that some destructive mutations are actually beneficial and are positively selected, but they still destroy information.
Collins is wrong. You can't get from there to here. Behe is right.
