This past fall I began reading some encouraging articles on intelligent design~~a scientific/philosophical/theological theory that affirms a supernatural dimension to questions concerning the creation/formation of life on Earth and the bio-friendly, proanthropic nature of Nature and our place in the Cosmos.
I also became quite aware of hostility towards this position from two camps: 1) the scientific naturalism community ( which constitutes a minority among average Americans, but disproportionately more within academia, especially in questions of evolution), and 2) the liberal Protestant Church. This hostility is vocalized as an objection against what is perceived as a dishonest subterfuge advanced by fundamentalist Christians who seek to introduce a repackaged creationism within public schools.
Now I expected the attack of the Evolutionists, for intelligent design interpretations of scientific evidence challenges a strict Neo-Darwinist/Evolutionist interpretation of Life's beginnings and changes. But I was a bit dismayed at the liberal Church's defense of Evolution and their charges against intelligent design (I.D.), claiming that it is nothing more than Creationism (including a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2) repackaged with scientific jargon.
I have been reading a great deal of intelligent design theory lately, and the leading I.D. theorists have never yet referred even fleetingly (or longingly) to a Young Earth belief in the least. I have not yet read a single I.D. theorist (such as Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells, Michael Denton, William Dembski) who believes that the Earth is anything but billions of years old. Neither do these scientists, mathematicians and philosophers believe that the fossil record was fabricated by a God who slipped them into the rock strata as a joke or capricious act just to challenge future believers. And I haven't yet read an I.D. theorist who believes that dinosaurs were included on Noah's Ark (which I recently heard on an NPR radio program that some Creationists believe) in the form of dinosaur eggs...
No, rather, these theorists have done the following: they've looked into the workings of cells, marveled at the complexity of those cells, and noted the information-rich nature of DNA, and postulated the probability of design in biology, over against the mathematical improbabilities of accidental chance coincidences leading to the formation of DNA and protein structures within cells. DNA coding consists of four chemical molecules arranged in various orders: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. These four main parts of DNA are represented by letters:A,G,C,T. In many ways they are like an alphabet that spells out the way living cells and organisms through their constituent proteins are made. To even build one protein, the cell typically needs 1,200 to 2,000 letters or bases--and that is a lot of information to accidentally "happen" over and over again, millions of times, to build all the cells within a living body--even the tiniest creatures.
What has baffled me most is a liberal Protestant rejection of intelligent design. I'm not questioning the idea whether it should be taught in public schools. Actually I think I.D. should be explored thoroughly in churches. A supernaturalist interpretation of scientific evidence is quite appropriate within churches. All of our creeds maintain God's Creatorship: "I believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth." (Apostle's Creed); "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible--seen (empirically, scientifically perceivable through our senses) and invisible--unseen (spiritually sensed by faith.)" (Nicene Creed)
One of the objections to I.D. is that such an approach draws God away from the realm of the transcendent and cheapens the Mystery of Faith. Yet all that I have read does nothing of the sort. I.D. theorists have been entranced by the balance and fine-tuned physics that have enabled such a friendly environment for the sustaining of life on earth. This has been called the anthropic principle. I refer to it in terms of "proanthropism." Earth exhibits a beauty, and balance, and amazing assembly of perfect conditions for the nurturing of carbon-based life forms in such abundance that literally millions of species of plants and animals, protists and bacteria swarm and teem in interdependence.
I.D. theorists are charged with quantifying God, as if He is being measured, marked and metered, tossed into a test tube and examined. Instead, however, these scientists, philosophers and mathematicians are looking at the scientific evidence within the disciplines of biology, biochemistry, astronomy, cosmology and physics and simply saying that Nature cannot fully account for Itself by itself. They are saying that the quantifications of the Naturalists themselves don't "add up." That there are too many coincidences--astonishing lucky coincidences-- for all that we now know and enjoy to have come about randomly without design or purpose. [Some people use the words "unguided" or "unplanned", but Stephen M. Barr, theoretical particle physicist says that these words shouldn't be tossed into the definition of evolution, for they are misleading and erroneous. He maintains that Randomness doesn't mean unplanned or uncaused, but rather uncorrelated. Maybe we all need to be much more attune to the words that are being slung around. I would suspect that there are more than a few atheists out there who very much believe in and teach an unguided and unplanned aspect to Evolution....] God is hardly being quantified or captured. Rather it's the Naturalists that are being chased. The Naturalists say that Science must be divorced from Supernaturalist explanations, and that Science must only consider answers that are exclusively empirically based--testable through hypothesis and experimentation. Supernaturalists, on the other hand, are saying that Science shouldn't try to explain the whole show.
Some people charge that I.D. is trying to capture God and put Him in a containable cage~~ that I.D. is trying to take a picture of God, limit Him, or 'prove' His existence and therefore negate faith, or render it superfluous, second to "knowledge". I don't think so.
The work of intelligent design arises from a suspicion that something is just too well organized in Nature to just be accidental. It's like a mystery story: the broken window with glass fragments sprayed inwards, the brick skidding across the floor, the squeal of the tires immediately following: somehow one doesn't suspect that a chance wind knocked it from the chimney. Or imagine going on a hike in the woods. Say I find a particular pawprint in the mud alongside a creekbed. I see five clawed toes above a broad pad five inches wide. Knowing my animal prints, I can identify that a bear, rather than a cougar, raccoon or seagull had been there recently. If I make a plaster cast of the print I will have some evidence I can take home with me of the bear's existence, but I will not have captured the bear--I won't actually have seen it either. Studying DNA and calculating the astronomical improbability of the random joining of amino acids to make viable protein structures even in rudimentary cells, is perhaps like making a plaster cast of bear tracks, or suspecting that the broken window is more probably due to foul play....considering the apartment didn't even have a chimney.....
