An article by Kenneth Chang in today's NY Times, "In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash," is one of the best general summaries I've yet seen about the controversy over intelligent design versus evolution.
My beef with intelligent design is that too many IDers seem to be trying to affirmatively disprove evolution. It's as though their personal trust in God stands or falls depending on whether or not a particular scientific theory is valid. That would be a pretty weak faith, if you ask me. (I have a similar beef with radical evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins.)
It seems to me that a far-healthier attitude would be, "it is what it is." Assuming God exists (and personally I'm persuaded), then he has done what he has done, and he did it the way he did it. In this area,
- ours is not to declare that God must have done his work in such-and-such a way. That attitude strikes me as prideful, and verging on blasphemy;
- instead (to paraphrase the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor), our job is humbly to seek the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be, about what God in fact has done, and about how in fact he has done it.
As the subtitle of this blog observes: Putting God first requires facing the facts. That goes for the dispute over intelligent design versus evolution, just as it does (IMHO) in every other area of life.
I take heart that there seems to be at least some common ground between some IDers and mainstream scientists. The Times article quotes leading ID proponent Dr. Michael Behe as saying something with which I find myself in great sympathy:
Intelligent design proponents are careful to say that they cannot identify the designer at work in the world, although most readily concede that God is the most likely possibility. And they offer varied opinions on when and how often a designer intervened.
Dr. Behe, for example, said he could imagine that, like an elaborate billiards shot, the design was set up when the Big Bang occurred 13.6 billion years ago. "It could have all been programmed into the universe as far as I'm concerned," he said.
But it was also possible, Dr. Behe added, that a designer acted continually throughout the history of life.
(Emphasis added.)
Exactly. We simply don't know, at least not yet. So let's admit our ignorance and keep investigating, with confidence that — in part through our own efforts, and in part through the mysteries of inspiration — more knowledge about God's creation will continue to be revealed to us. And let's dispense with the grandiose pronouncements (and not just by the IDers) about the way things supposedly must be or cannot be.
Couldn't agree more. In fact, I just made a statement very similiar to the one you make here: "our job is humbly to seek the truth about what God in fact has done, and about how in fact he has done it, whatever that truth turns out to be."
Exactly.
Posted by: bls | August 22, 2005 at 11:00 AM
(Here was my take on it, BTW: "Isn't the important thing to recognize where "ideology" might be in error - to let go of our own preconceived notions, IOW - and to search open-mindedly for Truth? To follow where it leads?")
Posted by: bls | August 22, 2005 at 11:05 AM
Problem: How do you "investigate" a diety? You cannot. Once you base a hypothesis on a non-naturalistic explanation, there is no way to disprove that hypothesis. Everything can be dismissed with "Because that's how God wanted it." I have no problem with ID as philosophy; it simply CANNOT be science by definition because it makes no testable predictions and cannot be disproven.
Posted by: Shygetz | August 24, 2005 at 11:45 AM
I don't think that's what D.C. is saying, although he might want to correct me.
He's saying that it's silly to try to disprove evolution; that we ought to simply accept what science discovers in its investigations.
Posted by: bls | August 25, 2005 at 11:41 AM