Is “Intelligent Design” Un-Christian?

Writing in First Things, Stephen M. Barr, a physicist and a Christian (not so rare a combination), contends that the “Intelligent Design” alternative to Darwinian evolution is not only bad science but worse theology. His principal point is that ID is radically unlike the Argument from Design that has long been a staple of theism in general and Christian apologetics in particular.

The ID claim is that certain biological phenomena lie outside the ordinary course of nature. Aside from the fact that such a claim is, in practice, impossible to substantiate, it has the effect of pitting natural theology against science by asserting an incompetence of science. To be sure, there are questions that natural science is not competent to address, and too many scientists have lost all sense of the limitations of their disciplines, not to mention their own limitations. But the ID arguments effectively declare natural science incompetent even in what most would regard as its own proper sphere. Nothing could be better calculated to provoke the antagonism of the scientific community. This throwing down of the gauntlet to science explains not a little of the fervor of the scientific backlash against ID.

The older (and wiser) form of the design argument for the existence of God—one found implicitly in Scripture and in many early Christian writings—did not point to the naturally inexplicable or to effects outside the course of nature, but to nature itself and its ordinary operations—operations whose “power and working” were seen as reflecting the power and wisdom of God. . . .

The emphasis in early Christian writings was not on complexity, irreducible or otherwise, but on the beauty, order, lawfulness, and harmony found in the world that God had made. As science advances, it brings this beautiful order ever more clearly into view. . . .

But whereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed.

The nub of the ID theory is that violations of natural law are crucial to evolution. From a Christian perspective, that is a troubling hypothesis.

In Darwin’s Black Box, the ground-breaking ID work, Michael Behe identified a number of key microbiological phenomena that, he argued, could not have evolved naturally. The reason was that they were “irreducibly complex”: Elements A, B and C were all necessary to D, but none could develop until the others were already in place.

If irreducible complexity is a reality, a portion of evolution is inexplicable in Darwinian (or any other natural) terms. (Dr. Behe doesn’t deny that most evolution proceeds naturally, nor does he doubt that life is a billion or so years old or that human beings descend ultimately from protozoa.) To get past the non-Darwinian roadblocks, one has little choice but to posit what we may as well call “miracles” (though Dr. Behe doesn’t use that term). And miracles imply an intelligent being to perform them.

Some biologists, and a great many amateur blowhards of the Little Green Footballs stripe, grow very angry on encountering such ideas. Professor Barr has a smidgeon of sympathy for their dudgeon:

The ID movement has also rubbed a very raw wound in the relation between science and religion. For decades scientists have had to fend off the attempts by Young Earth creationists to promote their ideas as a valid alternative science. The scientific world’s exasperation with creationists is understandable. Imagine yourself a serious historian in a country where half the population believed in Afrocentric history, say, or a serious political scientist in a country where half the people believed that the world is run by the Bilderberg Group or the Rockefellers. It would get to you after a while, especially if there were constant attempts to insert these alternative theories into textbooks. So, when the ID movement came along and suggested that its ideas be taught in science classrooms, it touched a nerve. This is one reason that the New Atheists attracted such a huge audience.

For those who start by assuming the truth of atheism, irreducible complexity is of course nonsense. If some step in the evolution of sapient beings were naturally impossible, we simply wouldn’t be here. For Christians, the question is not so easy. Natural law cannot produce every imaginable creation. There are no 20 foot tall insects or thousand pound birds or fire-breathing dragons – not because they just happen not to have evolved but because the laws of nature render them impossible. On the other hand, God could make a dragon, just as He turned water into wine and revivified Lazarus.

Conceivably, then, there are points at which the continuance of evolution was impossible by natural means, and God miraculously kept it going. What I find less conceivable is that these miracles were needed again and again. Darwin’s Black Box discusses five biochemical systems that Dr. Behe regards as instances of irreducible complexity, and he presumably didn’t have the time or resources to explore the full sweep of microbiology. If there are five miracles among the phenomena he is familiar with, one would reasonably assume that further research would uncover many more.

Such a proliferation of miracles scarcely comports with the Christian view that God created a universe that operates lawfully, in whose workings He seldom intervenes. How much “beauty, order, lawfulness, and harmony” are to be found in an edifice that needs to be shored up at such frequent intervals? As theology, Intelligent Design veers toward “occasionalism”, the belief, widespread in Islamic philosophy, that the laws of nature are an illusion and that God’s continuous remaking of the universe is beyond the grasp of what humans call “reason”.

The ID approach also, oddly enough, accepts a fundamental tenet of the New Atheists: that the regularity of natural law disproves the existence of God. Because Richard Dawkins fills his books with accounts of non-miraculous biological transformations, the Discovery Institute strives to refute him by finding ones that can’t be explained.

Whether or not that effort succeeds as science, it has no bearing on Christianity. The only miracle that is essential to the Christian faith is the Resurrection. That God has performed other miracles is, Christians believe, a fact of history, not a necessary condition for bringing about the present order of the world. The line of descent from the first organism to the manifold life around us is astonishingly beautiful, orderly, lawful and harmonious, the more so if there are no gaps that must be bridged by ad hoc divine interventions.

Comments

[Ron Krumpos]

There are four excellent books related to this topic, written by 20th and 21st Century scientists who are also deeply religious. Intelligent design need not mean creationism; evolution need not mean lack of intelligence.

"The Language of God," by Francis S. Collins (Free Press/Simon & Schuster 2006). Dr Collins was head-Human Genome Project. He believes that faith in God and science can co-exist and be harmonious.

"Let There be Light," by Howard Smith (New World Library 2006). Dr. Smith is a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center. He explains how modern study of the cosmos complements the Kabbalah.

"Intelligence in Nature," by Jeremy Narby (Jeremy P. Thatcher/Penguin 2005). Dr. Narby has a doctorate in anthropology. He makes a reasoned connection between shamanistic beliefs and modern science.

“Quantum Questions / Mystical Writings of the World’s Greatest Physicists” (Shambala Publications 2001), edited by Ken Wilber. This book includes lengthy essays by Heisenberg, Schroedinger, de Broglie, Jeans, Planck, Pauli, and Eddington.

These books, among others on psychology, psychiatry, biology, neurology, physics, and astronomy, were helpful in preparing my e-book at http://www.suprarational.org and balanced the input of the five major religions and their mystics.

[pbh51]

"The object of Mr. Hodges’s bizarre analogy"

While we are on the subject, I must say I find it remarkable that you would characterize my analogy of the human body with automobiles as "bizarre". This analogy is, one might easily observe, the basis for the international industrial trade economy. Convincing consumers that their identities are re-enforced by the metal that they drive to work is one of the major drivers of world commerce. Your denial of this fact is much more bizarre, in my view, than my assertion of its obviousness.

But this Denial is part and parcel of the type of argumentation in which you specialize. Denial of even the simplest, most fundamental facts is the basis of your position. 1 plus 1 cannot ever be allowed to equal 2 if the opposition merely observes that the latter follows the former.

"One of my fixed principles in life is never to pretend knowledge of the workings of automobiles."

I look forward to catching you out on this particular prevarication.

pbh

[pbh51]

"The object of Mr. Hodges’s [sic] bizarre analogy is, I suppose, to express his dislike of Toyota"

Not at all. Toyota is a company which has played by the rules of commerce and has become the dominant presence in the American automobile market. A perfect example of the Invisible Hand. Except that its product has been revealed to be flawed, necessitating an "intervention" to make it more perfect.

"if Mr. Hodges believes that free will is a bad thing . . . "

Did I say that? Did I actually say that?

No.

Did I say that if a Creator/God deliberately produced an imperfect being so that he/she/it could then Judge it imperfect for not behaving in a perfectly reverential way that then that creator/God was/would be/is a sham/shit/jerk/moron? Did I ACCUSE GOD? OF MALFEASANCE?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I did.

I did.

I do.

I am good with free will and all that. Let us get that out of the way.

What I am not good with is assigning blame for being human.

pbh

[Tom Veal]

The object of Mr. Hodges’s bizarre analogy is, I suppose, to express his dislike of Toyota – a bunch of furriners who compete with the Obama-owned car companies. So far as I’m concerned, Toyota must fend for itself. One of my fixed principles in life is never to pretend knowledge of the workings of automobiles.

As for the theological point, if Mr. Hodges believes that free will is a bad thing – well, that’s an interesting point of view, though not one that can be rationally asserted.

[pbh51]

"The only miracle that is essential to the Christian faith is the Resurrection. . . . The line of descent from the first organism to the manifold life around us is astonishingly beautiful, orderly, lawful and harmonious, the more so if there are no gaps that must be bridged by ad hoc divine interventions."

No question, a God that produced a creation that might require five or more direct interventions in order to reach its intended result, ie: sentient life capable of revering its creator (reserving judgment that such was the intent), might be considered less than perfect for not factoring the interventions into the original design, sort of like Toyota flubbing the accelerator pedal thing along with four or more other obvious defects.

By the same token, a God that designed a system that required one very specific intervention, to rescue sinners (ie: the less than reverent) from their divinely granted right of self abuse, might similarly be considered less than a perfect engineer. The excuse that the engineer was only attempting to give its creation a "choice" would be somewhat akin to Toyota claiming that the flawed pedals were only consistent with their attempt to provide the public with freedom of movement.

Consumers (ie: the Faithful) might well ask, what took so long? Why was the vehicle put on the market in the first place if it was so obviously flawed that an Essential Repair, without which the vehicle could not properly function, was DESIGNED into it? What could be the purpose of a design flaw that allowed uncounted numbers to suffer before public awareness demanded a correction?

In the REAL WORLD this kind of malfeasance is scienter for a class action.

Interesting, is it not, that the laws of man have evolved to such a degree that they hold themselves to a higher standard than a so called God?

What possible excuse is there for a God that Fucks Up by Design?

pbh