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Pastoral thoughts
on the issue of Intelligent Design
Presented as the mid-week study at
Disclaimer: I come at this as a pastor and not as a trained scientist. A retired English major who considers himself more of a biblical scholar and an ethicist than a philosopher or theologian, I nevertheless wish to try to be a guide to you as we sort out the issues related to this much discussed theory.
What is Intelligent Design?
Intelligent Design (ID) is an alternative to the Darwinian view of how life originated and developed. It argues that Darwin’s theories are inadequate to explain life and its complexities. In place of the random process of natural selection, it posits an “intelligent agent” that purposefully designed life.
One example of ID scholarship is Of Pandas and People, The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd Edition. (Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Eds. Dallas: Haughton, 1993.) Requiring a reference to ID and to this book in biology classes of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania public schools prompted a high profile lawsuit.
From “A Note to Teachers” at the end of this textbook:
“The authors argue that life not only appears to have been intelligently designed but that it actually was” (Pandas, 157).
“The purpose of this text is to expose your students to the captivating and the controversial in the origins debate—to take them beyond the pat scenarios offered in most basal texts and encourage them to grapple with ideas in a scientific manner” (Pandas, 154).
“In the spirit of good, honest science, Pandas makes no bones about being a text with a point of view. “ The authors contend this is not a problem, because it is a “supplemental text” and assumed to be taught along with standard texts (Pandas, 154).
ID’s critique of Darwinism
and
standard theories of evolution
A point of agreement on “evolution”: If “evolution” simply means that things change and there is an improvement of life over time, both sides agree.
#1: The theory of evolution does not adequately explain how to account for progressing from lower life forms to human beings. If it is assumed that the evolutionary process produces a link between human life and earlier forms of life, then this cannot be accepted because Darwinian explanations are insufficient.
Response: Darwinian theory is not perfect, but it’s far and away the best known explanation.
My view: Although not at all a trained scientist, it seems to me that ID advocates greatly undervalue the explanatory power of Darwinian thought. Among the better points made by ID advocates, however, is that there may be a tendency at times to over exaggerate the explanatory power of Darwinian theories and to dismiss challenges to it with knee-jerk reactions.
#2: ID makes more sense than purposeless development. Against the claim that the “cause or mechanism of biological change is purposeless, non-intelligent, and completely naturalistic” (Pandas, 156), ID supporters contend that biological change is better explained by positing an intelligent agent.
#3: Scholarship is captive to a Darwinian orthodoxy and is simply biased against ID and conspires to suppress its expression. This charge predictably heats up the debate and results in name calling on both sides.
I’ll address items #2 and #3 below.
Critiques of ID
#1: It’s nothing but Creationism in a revised form.
Response by Proponents of ID:
- There are supporters of ID who are not even believers in God but rather disbelievers in Darwin.
- Unlike Creationism, ID stops short of identifying God with the “intelligent agent.”
Opponents of ID respond:
- The vast majority of scholars involved with ID are professed Christians who believe God is the “intelligent agent.”
- There is considerable overlap in Creationism and ID. ID appears to back the train up 100 yards short of the station due to church-state separation issues in public schools. Of Pandas and People, in its earlier versions, referred to Creationism. These references were replaced with ID in later versions. (Source: “Darwin in the Dock,” Margaret Talbot. New Yorker, December 5, 2005, 66-79.)
My view: The theories underlying ID, especially its efforts to critique Darwinian thought, are much more sophisticated than simply saying, “The Bible says it one way and so here’s what we don’t like about Darwinian theories.” It’s unfair to generalize that ID scholars are one in the same with xenophobic Christians protesting at school board meetings. But as will become clearer below, there are indeed strong links between Creationism and ID.
#2: You can’t refuse to play by the rules of science by introducing non-scientific principles into scientific study.
“Some scientists and philosophers assert that the concept of ID is inherently non-scientific. According to this view, science must explain things by using natural laws—not by invoking the special action of an intelligent agent” (Pandas, 157).
Response: If you can refer to the Big Bang, why not an “intelligent agent”? You can refer to the Big Bang as a “past causal event,” so why not an intelligent agent (Pandas, 158)?
ID proponents further argue that their method is valid because they are doing “historical sciences,” and not “inductive sciences” (Pandas, 159). One can’t invoke an intelligent agent if there’s something that doesn’t add up as you examine the readings from a spectroscope, but when discussing the history (or perhaps one should say the prehistory) of the world, more leeway should be given to admit unobservable phenomena.
My view: Assuming the presence of events that happened within the known universe, even if these events may never be seen and may not be reproducible in a laboratory, is not the same thing as assuming the presence of a force outside the known universe. I of course believe there was such a force, and that that force is God. Furthermore, I believe that God is an “intelligent agent” with a purpose for Creation. But that is ultimately a theological, not a scientific, statement.
#3: ID invokes an unobservable intelligent designer.
Response: One must conjecture with atomic science and molecular science, why can’t Intelligent Design” (Pandas, 159)?
Isn’t the same true of neo-Darwinism, that “explains many observable features of the living world [by postulating] . . . unobservable objects and events” such as the mutations that produced reptiles, birds, mammals, humans? ” (Pandas, 160).
My view: ID runs into essentially the same problems here as with #2.
#4: How intelligent is the designer? It’s a fact of science that many more species die out than survive. Why would an intelligent designer with a purpose in mind intentionally create a universe where the vast majority of species die out over time? Why such an inefficient system when the designer has a specific purpose in mind? (See New Yorker, 69).
Response: My limited reading about ID has not found a response to this criticism. My theology has no problem with seeing God working through such a process, but it seems to me that the theology that lies behind ID has a real problem here.
How does a person of faith respond to ID?
1. We should reject scientific fundamentalism.
Science is not inherently antagonistic toward religion. But when science claims that its power makes religion irrelevant, or when a scientist claims the field can explain all of life and its mysteries, he or she claims more for science than science claims for itself. If science is someday able to work backward from the Big Bang to isolate the first two atoms that smashed into each other to set it all off, there remains the mystery of where those two atoms came from. Furthermore, even as Christians embrace science’s ability to explain the world God has made, it is not necessary for Christians to surrender the possibility of God’s working beyond the rules of science, i.e., the possibility of the miraculous.
2. We should reject Christian fundamentalism.
Some Christians begin with the proposition that the Genesis accounts of creation have to be taken as literally true, and therefore build whatever defense is necessary to beat back anything seen as a threat to these versions of creation in Genesis. If one reaches the conclusion that evolutionary theory better describes the reality of creation than the explanations of Genesis, one can accept this without rejecting the fundamental Christian truth that God created the world and is in control of it.
Furthermore, we can recognize the Bible’s teaching that the God of Creation continues to work. God was not simply the God of creation for a week and then moved onto something else. God’s ways are “new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23) and God continues to create new things.
3. We should give ID theories no more or less weight than they merit.
These are not mere quacks and should not simply be dismissed out of hand along with popular expressions of Creationism. They are, however, a small minority in the scholarly community, and they are much better at poking holes in existing theories than mounting a convincing case for their own.
From Pandas: “The purpose of this text is to expose your students to the captivating and the controversial in the origins debate—to take them beyond the pat scenarios offered in most basal texts and encourage them to grapple with ideas in a scientific manner” (Pandas, 154). Note the focus on the “controversial,” on what is suspect.
Again from Pandas: “Throughout, the text evaluates how well different views can accommodate anomalous data [emphasis added] within their respective interpretive frameworks” (Pandas, 154). Again, the focus is on the exceptions and not on the rules.
From Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing. William A Dembski, Ed. ISI Books: Wilmington, Delaware, 2004. Introductory essay by William A. Dembski: “The aim of this book is to expose and unseat the myths that have gathered around Darwinism. . . Think of this book, therefore, as ramping up the objections to Darwinism and its chapters as straws that, along with other straws, eventually will break Darwinism’s back” (xxxii).
An analogous example is found in New Testament scholarship. In this field of study, the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that Mark’s Gospel was written first and that Matthew and Luke had some form of Mark before them as they composed their Gospels. This theory adequately explains almost all of the overlapping content in these three synoptic Gospels. There are, however, some verses that are not explained well at all by this theory, and, taken by themselves, it would appear obvious by looking at them that in fact Matthew was written first. William R. Farmer and his followers have made careers by arguing that Matthew preceded Mark, and while they’ve never succeeded in making their view the accepted view, they make some valid points and bring a needed critical eye to the current scholarly consensus. But, at the end of the day, the theory left standing is the one that almost all scholars agree has the greatest explanatory power, even if it has chinks in its armor.
4. We should trust the scholarly process.
Epigraph of Uncommon Dissent: “The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer” (vi). Clearly ID scholars see themselves as an oppressed group struggling against the biases and inequities in their field.
While I don’t doubt there is some measure of bias in intellectual culture and in the scientific scholarly culture against anyone who raises issues of faith as a part of scholarly discussion, I do believe that even theories which presuppose elements of faith can ultimately get a fair hearing among scholars. Further, it seems to me the same paranoia that took hold among Southern Baptists, which ultimately destroyed fine seminaries at work in the pursuit of truth, is rife among the advocates of ID.
One more issue:
What about requiring that ID be taught in public schools?
Case: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 2005.
School board members wanted to require the reading of the following statement in all biology classes discussing evolution:
"The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.
Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
ID is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available in the library along with other resources for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.
With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments."
Before the case was concluded, all of the school board members who supported the requirement were voted out of office, prompting this gem of Christian charity from Pat Robertson: "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.”
John E. Jones III, Republican District Judge appointed by George Bush, presided over the case. The trial featured months of testimony by expert witnesses, including scientists, philosophers, and theologians. This included three days of testimony by Michael J. Behe, contributor to Uncommon Dissent (See “Darwin in the Dock”).
Excerpts from the judge’s ruling:
"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID (intelligent design) is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause."
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has not been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
My view: I believe Intelligent Design got a fair hearing from a fairly conservative judge. In fairness to ID scholars, it should be noted that what was on trial was a political effort to require that students be exposed to ID, and not the validity of ID itself. But during the trial, ID scholars were given ample opportunity to convince the court that teaching ID does not violate the Establishment Clause, and they failed. Of course, my view is unlikely to be shared by those who distrust the scholarly and judicial process.
Final Comments
I’m still where I was when I agreed (as a teenager!) with my father, who said of my questions about Genesis and science, “The main thing is that God created the world. He could have done it in a week, or over millions of years, but the vital issue is having the faith that God did it.”
Near the top of the list of important theological concepts I learned at seminary is the reality of God’s active, ongoing, and loving creation. I learned it from Molly Marshall, a theology professor victimized by the same phobia of serious scholarship exhibited by the popular champions of Creationism and ID, a phobia not shared but certainly nurtured by ID scholars.
I’m proud to be the pastor of a church where it is assumed that faith is strong enough to stand on its own two feet and does not need the government as a body guard. We should not take lightly the damage done to our
Chris
tian witness when fundamentalist
Chris
tians make God out to be something so weak that his truth cannot stand on its own.
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