Unlocking cell secrets bolsters evolutionists

Biologists are beginning to solve the riddles on which intelligent-design advocates have relied

By Jeremy Manier
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 13, 2006

To advocates of intelligent design, the human sperm's tiny tail bears potent evidence that Charles Darwin was wrong--it is, they say, a molecular machine so complex that only God could have produced it.

But biologists now are starting to piece together how such intricate bits of biochemistry evolved. Although the basic research was not meant as a response to intelligent design, it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.

In contrast, intelligent design advocates admit they still lack any way of using hard evidence to test their theories, which many biologists find revealing.