The latest episode of Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe is out now, and that’s big news. But potentially even bigger is the release together of the entire first season, five episodes in one video, making a complete case for intelligent design in just a half hour. I had seen and admired each episode as it was released, much as you can admire each tile in a mosaic individually. But when the tiles are put together, the experience of seeing them is something quite different.

Dr. Behe, the Lehigh University biochemist, conducts viewers from the irreducibly complex wonders of a cell, with its molecular machinery greatly exceeding the sophistication of any human-designed factory, up through the mounting beauty and functionality of the organisms that depend on cells for life, from bugs to bears. 

There isn’t just a negative argument here against evolutionary explanations founded on unguided processes, but a positive one, too. Biology aside, a “purposeful arrangement of parts” is how we recognize design in any area of our experience. The more intricate that arrangement, the more clearly it demands a verdict of design. Just one example detailed here is the precisely designed gears that propel an insect, the planthopper, across specular distances for its body size. But even simple arrangements by an intelligent being are recognizable as reflecting purpose.

As Behe notes, for thousands of years, the design of life was universally acknowledged by scientists and non-scientists, philosophers and physicians, young and old, religious and non-religious. Charles Darwin introduced a “detour” that is being corrected by Professor Behe and other scientists in the intelligent design community. Watch the full half hour, and share it, and then watch the latest episode, “Bacteria: Superheroes of the Microbial World.”