Monkey Business
"Intelligent Design" has been much in the news lately. The Dover, Pennsylvania, school board (elected by the people to represent their wishes) decided that students should be told about this alternative to the theory of evolution. Opponents of intelligent design filed a lawsuit seeking to have a single unelected federal judge dictate otherwise. The case is now being tried in federal court in Harrisburg.
The headlines always frame the issue in terms of "science versus religion" (i.e. medieval superstitious nonsense versus enlightened, modern, verifiable fact; or... the creeps who persecuted Galileo now want to destroy the folks that brought you your iPod). But this is false—the real controversy is not between science and religion but between materialism and theism.
The evolutionists and the media claim intelligent design is just a new name for "creationism," but this also is false. "Creationism" is based on a literal reading of the Bible story of creation; intelligent design makes no appeal to the Bible, but to observable phenomena discovered by science and subject to scientific investigation.
The main point of the intelligent design theory is that the complexity of biological forms is such that they must all have been formed together, not through successive stages, because the absence of even one component would make the whole structure useless and thus of no evolutionary advantage. Think of the intricate structure of a human being's inner ear, for instance. If any part of it were missing we could not hear. Why, then, would "natural selection" cause the incomplete and imperfect structure to be passed on to future generations until it evolved into a working mechanism for hearing? The amazing complexity and perfection of nature is even more evident at the cellular, chemical and atomic level.
Opponents of intelligent design say it shouldn't be taught in science classes (or even mentioned) because it isn't science. But, I believe, intelligent design is at least as much based on science as evolution is. And since evolution is taught in science classes, this would seem to be the logical place to at least notify students that an alternate theory exists.
Scientists have a right to define their own discipline and say what is scientific and what is not, but here we have a case in which there are scientists on both sides of the question. Some scientists believe in intelligent design—a smaller number than believe in evolution, but enough so that we can't just dismiss intelligent design as having no scientific support.
It seems to me that proponents of evolution overstate the scientific basis of their theory, and understate the scientific validity of intelligent design. In any case, the question is not which theory is more scientific, but which is more true.
It is not evolution per se that believers in God object to, but the presumed mechanism of it: natural selection. This explanation is not the only way to interpret the facts science presents, and I think it rests upon a prior assumption that nature is everything, and that life and all its forms arose by chance. Encapsulating this idea within a scientific theory doesn't make that particular component of the theory any more "scientific" than the theistic premise. And that particular component is the sticking point.
Can a New Church person believe in evolution? Why not? The idea of evolving life forms in itself doesn't require denial of God, and even the "selection" part of natural selection doesn't bother me, as long as it is understood that Divine intelligence set up the whole system and is operating through it. In other words, it is God in nature who is doing the selecting, not nature on its own.
Most evolutionists don't come right out and say "there is no God," but the clear message of the theory in its orthodox form (especially the natural selection part) is that there is no need for a God to account for the creation of living forms. The message may be subtle and unspoken, but it is quite clear; and parents who believe in God naturally object to having their children imbibe atheism.
Proponents of the theory of evolution say the meaning of the word "theory" here is different from the way it is used in ordinary speech; a scientific theory is a well-thought-out and testable explanation for observed phenomena. Fine, but does that definition of "theory" truly fit the theory of evolution? Is it really in the same category as the theory of relativity or quantum theory? Evolutionists imply that their theory is just as firmly established as physics theories, but would a physicist ever defend relativity, for instance, by saying it is just as firmly established as evolution? No, they never do. Evolution seems to be more in the category of theories such as "multiple universes" in physics—hardly as solid as many other more truly scientific theories.
Interestingly, at the same time evolutionists are panicking over the intrusion of religion into science, physicists are raising questions which can only be called theological in nature. A number of popular books on physics by physicists include the word "God" in the title (The Mind of God, The God Particle, etc.).
As I understand it, the theory of evolution requires enormous amounts of time for chance to do its work of producing the complex systems that make life possible. But isn't this just using the words "time" and "chance" in much the same way as a theist uses God—to account for things which defy natural explanation? Time and chance are the "God of the gaps" of the Darwinists.
Theoretically, a roomful of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce all the works of Shakespeare, word for word. Just give them enough time. I decided to test this, and it actually works! I locked 100 monkeys in my garage with 100 typewriters, and within a few hours they had already come up with the lyrics to several Bob Dylan songs, and by the next day they had, in fact, produced all the works of Shakespeare, word for word, except that in their version King Lear was mainly upset about the trans fat in potato chips.
Their crowning achievement, though, was this fabulous article which you've just read!