"There was one scene, however, that I did get quite easily. The
first space flight had landed on the moon, and an astronaut was going
out to explore. In his meanderings he came across a smoothly shaped
obelisk that towered against the moonscape. I, the astronaut, and
the rest of the audience immediately understood, with no words
necessary, that the object was designed--that some intelligent agent
had been to the moon and formed the obelisk. Later the movie showed
us that there were aliens on the planet Jupiter, but we couldn't tell
that from the obelisk. For all we knew by looking at the object
itself, it might have been designed by space aliens, angels, humans
from past (whether Russians or inhabitants of the lost civilization
of Atlantis) who could fly through space, or even by one of the other
astronauts on the flight (who, as a practical joke, might have stowed
it away and put it on the moon ahead of the astronaut who later
discovered it). If the plot had actually developed along any of
these lines, the audience would not be able to say the plot was
contradicted by the appearance of the obelisk. If the movie had
contrived to assert that the obelisk was not designed, however, the
audience would have hooted till the projectionist turned the film
off."~Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, (New York: The Free Press,
1996), p. 197
The item from geoscience which impinges on this argument, is the question
concerning whether a geometric shape is automatically the product of design.
Many minerals take on geometric shapes which are quite amazing. There are
hexagonal crystals, cubic crystals, rhombohedral etc. Obviously, the
audience with whom Mike watched the movie don't know much mineralogy. Giant
examples of amazing shapes are the columnar basalts at Devil's Tower in
Wyoming, or the Giant's Causeway in Ireland (Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Geology 1981, p. 15). Each of these structures is composed of giant columns
of basalt. At least at Devil's Tower, they were mostly hexagonal. Since
Devil's Tower was a volcanic neck, no one designed it.
Secondly, the county just east of Dallas is Rockwall. It is named this
because there is are geologic features that looks like a man-made wall
running across the county. Some farmers think they were walls made by
giants. In fact they are clastic dykes, a perfectly natural and undesigned
object.
Another issue concerns the abilities of modern geological sciences. Behe
draws an analogy between studying the meteor which killed off the dinosaurs
with studying the origin of life. He writes
"Science may be able to study the motion of modern comets, and test
Newton's laws of motion that describe how the comets move. But
science will never be able to study the comet that putativey struck
the earth many millions of years ago. Science can, however, observe
the comet's lingering effects on the modern earth. Similarly,
science can see the effect that a designer has had on life."~Michael
J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 243
We can study some aspects of the meteor. First we know it was iridium-rich.
It left iridium scattered everywhere. Secondly, we even know which
direction it came from (south). The ejecta is scattered preferentially over
North America. And we have ejecta from it, some of which are melted and
recondensed meteor particles. Olsson et al, write:
"The upper centimeter of the spherule layer contains shocked quartz and may
represent in part the 'impactor-rich'layer."~Richard K. Olsson et al,
"Ejecta Layer at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, Bass River, New Jersey
(ocean Drilling Program Leg 174AX," Geology, 25:8:759-762, p. 760. This is
part of the meteor.
The analogy of the meteor with the origin of life doesn't really work.
Geology can indeed study the meteor (albeit in small pieces) not just its
effects.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm