You just have to sing

Only rarely in my life have I felt a compulsion, while walking through a big airport, to burst forth-quite literally and embarrassingly loudly-in a hymn of praise to God. So rare is the occurrence, in fact, that when it struck me last week as I moved toward my gate at Chicago's O'Hare Field, it was the first time in my life it had happened. Such inexperience, however, could not stop me. Praise the Savior, ye who know him; Who can tell how much we owe him? Gladly let us render to him All we are and have. But if I was startled, one other man in America would have been much more surprised-especially if he were to learn that a book he had published earlier this year had stirred me to such bizarre behavior. It's almost certainly the last thing Michael J. Behe had in mind when he wrote Darwin's Black Box. Or maybe not. For Mr. Behe's book is producing quite a stir across America, and perhaps he's getting used to dealing with unintended consequences. Mr. Behe is an associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. He is excited (and his excitement is contagious) because he believes his own field of study-the discipline of biochemistry-has been handed an opportunity to send the kind of shock waves through the world of science and perhaps all of human culture that can be sent only once or twice a century.

Mr. Behe is not modest about the implications. After describing shockers of the past like Darwin and Einstein, he says bluntly: "Now it's the turn of the fundamental science of life, modern biochemistry, to disturb." The disturbance Mr. Behe describes is monumental. Out of his labs, he says, and the labs of his biochemistry colleagues, comes the message that the long effort to get down to the basic building blocks of life ends with this discovery: Those basic building blocks are anything but simple. Mr. Behe calls them irreducibly complex. Indeed, they are so complex that only one honest conclusion is possible-intelligent design is somewhere in the background. There are several reasons why WORLD readers should take a serious look at Darwin's Black Box. Not least is the simple delight that comes from reading the book. Mr. Behe is a masterful teacher, incredibly deft at building apt analogies at every turn. "Imagine a room," he says, "in which a body lies crushed, flat as a pancake. A dozen detectives crawl around, examining the floor with magnifying glasses for any clue to the identity of the perpetrator. In the middle of the room, next to the body, stands a large gray elephant. The detectives carefully avoid bumping into the pachyderm's legs as they crawl, and never even glance at it....Textbooks say detectives must 'get their man,' so they never consider elephants." Mr. Behe's elephant, of course, is "intelligent design," and he thinks it's high time the world of science admitted the obvious. In wonderfully enlightening prose, Mr. Behe shows how the mobility of cells, the clotting of blood, the immune system, and basic cellular transportation systems within the body have all been systematically ignored by evolutionists-at least with reference to how such sophisticated systems ever got under way. As you might imagine, Darwin's Black Box is kicking up quite a fuss. Some of his scientific colleagues are accusing Mr. Behe of all kinds of treasonous things, like being disrespectful toward scientists. But this is not a creationist tract, and for Mr. Behe, intelligent design by no means requires the God of the Bible-or any God at all. Several pages are actually devoted to pointed correction of some embarrassing gaffes by creationists through the years. That will frustrate many Christians, who will sense that so gifted a spokesman has some sort of obligation to finish off his real opponents. I was not frustrated that way at all. I read with wide-eyed wonder, finished the book just before my flight was called at O'Hare, and just had to sing a psalm of praise. Mr. Behe suggests an earthquake is about to begin-whatever conclusions he draws are his business, but I'd like to be on good terms with the earthquake's designer.

WORLD lost a faithful friend last week. Bronwyn Leonard, a member of our board of directors for the last four years, died in St. Louis after battling cancer for many months. Only 49, she leaves her husband Stephen, two daughters, and two sons, her mother and siblings, and hundreds of friends. Mrs. Leonard, whose main work in publishing was as a writer for an innovative vacation Bible school curriculum, dearly loved and carefully studied the Scriptures because she saw them as illumining all of life. That's why she wanted to devote part of her time to an organization that believes the Bible has important things to say about every aspect of life. Mrs. Leonard was always excited about this thing we call a "Christian worldview"-an excitement she shared with her family and those around her. I am sad her work with us was cut off just as it was getting fruitfully under way-but will always be stirred by the courage in her one-line postcard to me just two weeks ago: "O think to step on shore ..." She did that, before many of us who thought we would be there first.