Critics of Intelligent Design insist that it is a religious, not a scientific, concept. This is often because they have not examined the science behind the idea of intelligent design. Proponents of ID point out that sometimes design offers a better explanation for the origin of a system than random chance does. In “Darwin’s Black Box,” Dr. Michael Behe gives several examples of biochemical pathways that are “irreducibly complex” – if one part of the pathway is missing, the system will not function at all, and therefore could not have come about by incremental changes.

Since I have a couple of chemistry degrees, I would like to offer an argument for ID from chemistry. Some molecules are mirror images of each other, like right and left hands. These mirror image molecules behave differently biologically. For example, wintergreen smells wonderful, but its mirror image smells horrible. When chemicals react to form such molecules, the product usually contains half of each mirror image.

There are 22 amino acids that join together to form proteins in organisms. Only one configuration of each of the 21 amino acids that can have a mirror image is found in natural proteins, except the cell walls of a few bacteria and some antibiotics. One would expect that if amino acids and proteins formed by random chance roughly equal amounts of each mirror image would be found in biological systems.

It should be clear that there is more to the concept of intelligent design than “God made it.”

Laurel De Lige, Turner