Reflectorites
Here is a comprehensive and up-to-date article on the creation-
evolution `culture war' by IDer Nancy Pearcey, and a good
summary of the ID movement's role in it.
But because the article is so long, I have only left in the
headings and the sections about ID, with my comments in
square brackets.
Steve
==============================================================
Christianity Today
May 22, 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6, Page 42
We're Not in Kansas Anymore
Why secular scientists and media can't admit that Darwinism might
be wrong.
By Nancy Pearcey | posted 5/19/00
[...]
HUBBUB IN THE HEARTLAND
[..]
REVOLUTION BY DESIGN
...Follow up, however, came largely from proponents of
intelligent design (ID) a newer movement that is making surprisingly
deep inroads into mainstream culture.
The unofficial spokesman for ID is Phillip E. Johnson, a Berkeley
law professor who converted to Christianity in his late 30s, then
turned his sharp lawyer's eyes on the theory of evolution. Spotting
what he saw as logical errors in the case for Darwinism, Johnson
penned several influential books, including Darwin on Trial and
Reason in the Balance. (His latest book, The Wedge of Truth, is
due out in July.) Johnson's penetrating critiques were the first to
win a respectful hearing in academia, and he now advises a group
of scientists who are developing the case for design, many of them
at the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and
Culture (CRSC) in Seattle. After the Kansas decision, CRSC
scholars appeared widely in mainstream media: Johnson in The
Wall Street Journal; director Steve Meyer on NPR; program director
Jay Richards in The Washington Post; and fellows Michael Behe in
The New York Times and Jonathan Wells on PBS.
Indeed, the growing success of the intelligent-design movement is
almost certainly what provoked the over-the-top reactions to
Kansas in the first place. Top university presses are publishing
books on ID, notably William Dembski's The Design Inference by
Cambridge University Press (1998) and Paul Nelson's forthcoming
On Common Descent through the University of Chicago Press.
Baylor University's Michael Polanyi Center, founded by Dembski,
held a conference last month on naturalism in science that attracted
nationally known scientists such as Alan Guth, John Searle, and
Nobel Prize-winner Steven Weinberg. These scientists' willingness
even to address such questions, alongside design proponents such
as Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, gives enormous
credibility to the ID movement.
[It must be getting harder for the Darwinist propagandisers to
portray the only opposition to evolution as coming from red-necked
Bible thumpers! John Searle and Steven Weinberg would hardly likely
to waste their time arguing with the latter. Their very attendance showed
they think the question is an important one, even if they disagree
with the answer.]
Why is ID so successful? The answer is partly that ID functions as
an umbrella uniting various strategies for relating faith and science.
In the past, Christians tended to splinter into small, often
antagonistic groups, such as theistic evolutionists, progressive
creationists, old-earth creationists, young-earth creationists, and
flood geologists. "On this issue the Christian world was playing
defense," Johnson explains. "We were saying, `What can we
defend? How much do we have to give up?' "
The drawback in playing defense is that you have to protect each
outpost to ensure that the enemy doesn't get past a single one.
Hence Christians argued vociferously about the details of fossils,
mutations, radiometric dating, and the early chapters of Genesis.
By contrast, Johnson says, ID is about playing offense: "We're
leaving the fortress and heading behind the lines to blow up the
other side's headquarters, its ammunition store." As the dust
settles, even the questions Christians are trying to answer may take
on entirely new forms.
What is the other side's "ammunition store"? It's the definition of
science itself, Johnson says. Science is typically defined as
objective investigation (discovering and testing facts)--the means
for making faster airplanes and better medicines.
But there's another definition held implicitly in the scientific
establishment, and it is tantamount to the philosophy of materialism
or naturalism. This is the idea that science may legitimately employ
only natural causes in explaining everything we observe.
The way this definition of science operates is to outlaw any
questioning of naturalistic evolution. Darwinists don't ask whether
life evolved from a sea of chemicals; they only ask how it evolved.
They don't ask whether complex life forms evolved from simpler
forms; they only ask how it happened. The presupposition is that
natural forces alone must (and therefore can) account for the
development of all life on earth; the only task left is to work out the
details.
Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin gave the game away in a
revealing article in The New York Review of Books (January 9,
1997). While expressing skepticism about the "unsubstantiated just-
so stories" often labeled science, Lewontin nevertheless accepts
the standard story of evolution. Why? Because, he writes, "we have
a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism." This
commitment is not itself based on science, Lewontin admits.
Indeed, just the opposite: Scientists accept materialism first, and
then are "forced" to define science in such a way that it cranks out
strictly materialistic theories. (In his words, "we are forced by our a
priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of
investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations.") Finally, Lewontin insists that this "materialism is
absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door." As Nelson
comments, "Design is ruled out not because it has been shown to
be false but because science itself has been defined as applied
materialistic philosophy."
One goal of the ID movement is to drive a wedge between the two
operative definitions of science. The Kansas board made its own
contribution to the "wedge strategy" when it changed the standards'
definition of science from an activity that seeks "natural
explanations" to one that seeks "logical explanations." The idea is
that science should be open to any rational, testable theory, and
not be limited to naturalistic theories. Design theorists hope to
press the case against Darwinism until scientists are forced to
decide which is the real definition of science: Will they follow the
evidence wherever it leads, or will they insist on naturalistic theories
regardless of the evidence?
[The really great achievement of the Darwinists was not their
theory of evolution but their redefinition of science as
inherently materialistic and naturalistic which makes some form of evolution
simply true by definition. It is ID's wedge strategy to separate
science and materialistic-naturalistic philosophy so only the
*evidence* can be considered.]
HOLES IN THE THEORY
[..]
DETECTING DESIGN
Yet exposing problems with Darwinism is not enough; one must
also propose an alternative, which has proved much harder. A
turning point came in the work of Charles Thaxton, who studied
under Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri in Switzerland and then did
postdoctoral work at Harvard in the 1970s. Studying scientists of
earlier centuries, Thaxton noted that they spoke of "natural causes"
and "intelligent causes," and he reasoned that there should be a
way to distinguish between the two--a way to identify empirically the
effects of intelligence.
[IMHO Charles Thaxton deserves to be called the father
of the modern Intelligent Design movement. This separation of
"natural causes" and "intelligent causes" is what archaeologists
and SETI researchers do routinely.]
In The Mystery of Life's Origin, Thaxton identified the mark of
intelligent design as "specified complexity"--a complex structure
that fits a preconceived pattern. William Dembski's Intelligent
Design explains the concept in greater detail.
"My father was a teacher, and he used to tell a story to illustrate
design," Dembski says. "The best student and the worst student sit
beside each other during a major exam, and when the teacher
grades their papers, he finds that both gave exactly the same
answers. Now, who thinks this happened by chance?" (The punch
line: on the last question, the best student wrote, "I don't
understand this question" and the worst student wrote, "I don't
understand it either"--thus confirming the design hypothesis.)
Not only teachers, but also many other professionals have devised
means for detecting design, Dembski points out. Scientists look for
telltale signs that an experiment was rigged, that the data were
"cooked." Detectives are trained to distinguish between murder and
death by natural causes. Insurance companies regularly distinguish
between arson and accidental fires. The claim of ID theory is that
design can be detected in nature as well.
In one sense, this is something everyone admits. Evidence for
design shows up in laboratories all the time. "What we do in
molecular biology is in effect reverse engineering," explains ID
proponent Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho. "We examine
complex structures in the cell and try to figure out the blueprints."
Even Darwin did not deny the evidence for design; instead, he
hoped to show that living things only appear designed, while really
being the result of chance and natural selection. In the words of
Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Darwin's goal was to
"exclude God as the explanation accounting for the obvious design
of organisms." Thus arch-Darwinian Richard Dawkins, in The Blind
Watchmaker, defines biology itself as "the study of complicated
things that give the appearance of having been designed for a
purpose." In short, design is "obvious"; the question is only whether
it is real or apparent.
What makes the question so compelling today is that design is no
longer found only in living things but also in the physical universe
itself. In cosmology, the so-called anthropic principle tells us the
universe itself is finely tuned to support life. "Imagine a universe-
creating machine," says Meyer, "with thousands of dials
representing the gravitational constant, the charge on the electron,
the mass of the proton, and so on. Each dial has many possible
settings, and what you discover is that even the slightest change
would make a universe where life was impossible." Yet, strangely,
each dial is set to the exact value needed to keep the universe
running. Astronomer Fred Hoyle, though an atheist, states the
implications bluntly: "A common-sense interpretation of the facts
suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics."
[The evidence for design is now so strong that explaining it
away has become a major part of materialist-naturalist apologetics.
But when science is devoted to explaining *away* reality, rather
than explaining it, then science has lost its way.]
ID'S BIG TENT
Who is that "superintellect"? Is intelligence merely a code word for
God? So critics charge. But Thaxton's innovative insight was that
"intelligent cause" is a generic category for talking about any
intelligence, whether human or divine or some undefined mind in
nature, thus providing a way to talk about design without making
any theological presuppositions. "One can empirically detect the
products of an intelligent agent without specifying who that agent
is," Thaxton explains.
Thus the ID movement has become a "big tent," attracting people
from a variety of religious backgrounds. CRSC fellow David
Berlinski, who has published Commentary articles critical of
Darwinism, is Jewish. In Kansas, board supporters included local
Muslims and a group of Hare Krishnas, who showed up at a
meeting wearing saffron robes.
Even agnostics who believe the universe is in some sense
teleological have teamed up with the ID movement--figures like
Michael Denton, author of the influential Evolution: A Theory in
Crisis. His most recent book, Nature's Destiny, argues that purpose
pervades the universe at all levels.
"The power of ID is precisely its minimalism," says Todd Moody, an
agnostic and professor at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "It
travels light, with no theological baggage."
[This is the person who I have long assured Reflectorites that
there is even an agnostic who is an IDer!]
Among Christians, ID shows promise of uniting often hostile
factions, from young-earth creationists to theistic evolutionists and
everyone in between. Paul Ackerman of Wichita State University,
who helped craft the Kansas standards, is a young-earth creationist
who says ID has "helped create a broad umbrella."
Though Christians continue to debate among themselves on issues
like the age of the earth, when facing the secular world "we're
putting aside our differences," Ackerman says. "We realize that
what unites us is greater than what divides us."
Even some theistic evolutionists, who have been among the ID
movement's most vocal critics, are lining up behind its critique of
naturalism. Denis Lamoureux of St. Joseph's College in Canada
has taken aim at Johnson and other design theorists many times.
Yet he told Christianity Today, "I'm a flaming design theorist." Like
the Romantic biologists of the 18th century, Lamoureux draws an
analogy between the evolution of species and the development of
an embryo, regarding both as teleological processes--the unfolding
of an inbuilt potential.
Similarly, Howard Van Till, professor emeritus at Calvin College,
has often debated ID proponents publicly. Yet his own view is that
the universe is "intentionally gifted" by God with the capacity for
bringing about new forms from simpler units, so that design is
frontloaded into the initial conditions. All Lamoureux and Van Till
need to do is give empirical content to the notion of frontloaded
design, and they would fall into the design camp. As it is, on
empirical questions their position remains identical to naturalistic
evolution, while conceptually it bears no relation to the materialistic
version of evolution held by the scientific establishment. ID is
incompatible only with forms of theistic evolution that adopt
methodological naturalism, the principle that in science one may
invoke only undirected, unguided natural causes.
[This is the key point. One can be an agnostic (or maybe even
an atheist) and be a member of the ID movement. One can be
a theistic evolutionist and be an IDer. But what is
not-negotiable is that one must agree that ID is in some
sense, at least in principle, *empirically detectable*. This is
because ID claims to be *science*.]
THE GOD QUESTION
[...]
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY
[..]
The slogan of the ID movement is "teach the controversy." A June
1999 Gallup Poll found that Americans favor teaching creation
along with evolution by a margin of 68-29 percent. Similarly, in
February, John Zogby's American Values Poll revealed that 64
percent of adults believe creationism should be part of the public-
school curriculum.
[It is clearly an untenable situation that this wish of the
majority that the creation-evolution controversy be part of
the school curiculum, continues to be ignored. If the Darwinists
have truth on their side, what are they afraid of?]
[..]
Nancy Pearcey is coauthor of How Now Shall We Live? (with
Charles Colson) and The Soul of Science (with Charles Thaxton).
Illustration by Paul Turnbaugh
What Is Intelligent Design?
The dominant view in science today is naturalistic evolution, which
claims that the universe is the result of an unguided, undirected
process, explainable strictly in terms of chance and natural law.
Design theory proposes a third cause--intelligent design--and
claims that evidence for design in the universe can be detected
empirically.
Here's a summary of the major positions that fall under this
category:
THEISTIC EVOLUTION: Many versions of theistic evolution reject
design, and are identical scientifically to naturalistic evolution. But
some versions propose that design was "frontloaded" into the initial
conditions of the universe and its laws, so that creation would
unfold over time in the way God intended.
[Strictly speaking, those TEs who deny any supernatural
intervention after the Big Bang are Deistic Evolutionists.]
OLD-AGE or PROGRESSIVE CREATION: God guided the process
of development, injecting information at key stages in the
development of the universe and life to design new forms of
organization.
[I am very happy with this definition of PC. The reason I
changed the name of my position from Progressive Creation
was because some PCs seemed to be claiming that God progressively
created whole new organisms ex nihilo. If this is the defintion
of PC, then I am a PC!]
YOUNG-AGE CREATION: God created the universe and the major
life forms within a short period of time (some say six literal days),
about 10,000 (rather than billions of) years ago.
[I would have thought that *all* YECs believed it was
"six literal days"? I would have thought that as soon as one gets
away from interpreting the `days' of Genesis 1 as literal 24-hour,
one has no reason to deny that the Earth is billions of years old?]
For more information about intelligent-design theories, visit the
Access Research Network Web site at www.arn.org.
[...]
Nancy Pearcey, the author of this article, has co-written a number
of articles with Chuck Colson for Christianity Today, including "The
Devil in the DNA." She is also the co-author, with Colson, of the
bestselling How Now Shall We Live? She reviewed Darwin's Black
Box for Books & Culture in 1996.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Christianity Today, Inc./Christianity Today
magazine.
==============================================================
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"Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it
shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our
feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official
function as a biological theory. In calling it a myth, I am not of course
saying that it is a false story. I mean that it has great symbolic power,
which is independent of its truth. Is the word religion appropriate to it?
This will depend on the sense we give to that very elastic word." (Midgley
M., "The Religion of Evolution," in Durant J., ed., "Darwinism and
Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief," Basil Blackwell:
Oxford UK, 1985, p.154)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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