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| Is Intelligent Design biblical? With deep reservations |
| Dr. Denis Alexander |
| Published 17 January 2006 |
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Arguments from design have taken a great many forms over the centuries, but their strategy has generally been to draw attention to certain properties of the world/universe that arouse our awe and wonder, and then to ascribe those properties to the work of a designer, identified by Christians as the God of the Bible.
Such a strategy is in keeping with wonderful biblical passages such as Psalm 19 and with Paul’s arguments in Romans 1.18-21, and is generally referred to as ‘natural theology’. Occasionally there has been a tendency in the history of the church to over-emphasise design arguments, with lethal consequences for evangelism, so we should be on our guard. For example, the 18th century deists emphasised the rationalistic arguments of natural theology to such an extent that biblical revelation was devalued in the process, in the end nurturing atheism.
The Intelligent Design movement
Recently the ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) movement, which emerged in the USA during the 1990s, has suggested a form of ‘design argument’ which is distinct from its traditional version. One of the movement’s leading spokespersons, Bill Dembski, specifically distinguishes the central core of ID from historical design arguments [1]. For whereas such arguments perceive the whole universe to be designed by God, ID proponents argue that only certain components of the world around us are designed, whereas others are not. Dembski suggests that the universe may be likened to an oil painting. Some parts of the painting result from ‘natural causes’, whereas other parts are due to ‘design’. The designed components correspond to various biological systems, which, it is suggested, could not have arisen by ‘chance’ and are, therefore, characterised by ‘irreducible complexity’. Dembski suggests that ‘there has to be a reliable way to distinguish between events or objects that result from purely natural causes and events or objects whose emergence additionally requires the help of a designing intelligence…at issue is whether natural causes are supplemented or unsupplemented by design. The whole point of the design inference is to draw such a distinction between natural and intelligent causes’ [2]. Therefore ID proponents aim to set up mathematical and scientific strategies for detecting what is ‘designed’ and what is ‘ not designed’ (= ‘natural’). ID envisages a biological world like a patchwork quilt with just two colours: one colour represents intelligent designed entities, and the other colour represents non-intelligent non-designed entities.
Dembski specifically excludes biblical revelation as a way of identifying the ‘designed’ parts of the world. Instead, with an eye on the strict US separation between Church and State, ID proponents such as Dembski tend to emphasise the secular aspects of their agenda and are eager to bring their ‘non-religious’ arguments into US classrooms. But, in practise, evangelicals, including some within the UK, have been quick to seize on ID arguments as the latest tools in their apologetic armoury, perhaps seeing them as some kind of half-way house between young earth creationism on one hand and theistic evolution on the other. And it is clear that some, although not all, ID proponents wish to use their arguments apologetically, consistent with the publication of ID books by evangelical publishers such as Inter-Varsity Press. But leading ID spokespersons also include Catholics and a Senior Fellow of the ID Discovery Institute in Seattle is a member of the Unification Church.
This article is focused on a single important question: are the ideas of ID firmly grounded in biblical creation theology? Unfortunately, I believe the answer is ‘no’ for four distinct reasons, two of which I introduce here, the other two reasons being in the fuller version of this article at http://www.cis.org.uk.
A split creation?
One of the striking characteristics of the biblical doctrine of creation is that God is described as the author of the whole created order without exception, both in its origins and in its ongoing sustaining [3]. Page after page of the Psalms, Isaiah and Job remind us that God creates and sustains the smallest details of biology, including making grass grow for cattle (Psalm 104.14), supplying food for lions (Psalm 104.21) and ‘for the raven when its young cry out to God’ (Job 38.41). The New Testament likewise underlines the fact that all things exist by the creative and sustaining power of the Lord Jesus, the Word of God (John 1.1-3; Colossians 1.15-17; Hebrews 1.1-3). The Bible, therefore, has no concept of ‘nature’ for the simple reason that the term is redundant: instead it speaks of ‘creation’ to refer to the complete panoply of God’s activities that we as scientists struggle to describe so inadequately. The notion of ‘nature’ as a quasi-independent entity has often been implied by enlightenment thinking, but biblical theology renders the concept redundant.
It is the same biblical theology which undermines the ID attempt to create a ‘split universe’ comprising one realm which science currently explains adequately, and which Dembski refers to as generated by ‘purely natural forces’, and a second realm which comprises those components which are ‘designed’. The ID biochemist Michael Behe even envisages these two different realms as being represented in different parts of the same cell [4]! But the Bible knows of no such division between the ‘natural’ and the ‘designed’: instead all is a seamless cloth of God’s sustaining creative activity. God is the great living composer whose musical symphony of creation reflects his creative power in every part of its being. The sharp division between ‘natural forces’ and the actions of the ‘designer’ in the ID literature points to ‘nature’ as quasi-autonomous, the actions of the intelligent designer being restricted to a relatively limited repertoire of events in the patchwork quilt. Dembski refers approvingly to Aristotle’s idea that design completes ‘what nature cannot bring to a finish’, but the Bible simply knows of no such dualism between ‘design’ and ‘nature’, speaking only of a single created order. As Augustine succinctly put the point back in the fifth century, ‘Nature is what God does’. All that scientists can do in their work is to describe what God does. For the Christian, ‘there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live’ (1 Corinthians 8.6, my italics).
God-of-the-gaps?
Whenever the subject of ID is discussed, it is not long before someone will remark: ‘But isn’t that the old god-of-the-gaps argument?’ Despite protests to the contrary by my ID friends (yes, I do have quite a few!), I am forced to agree. For ID apologetics constantly point to phenomena which science cannot currently explain, and then maintain that ‘therefore design must be the explanation’, and from that seek to infer a designer. As Dembski says: ‘…design becomes plausible only if material mechanisms can be effectively ruled out’. But even in the nine years since Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box was published, many of his examples of supposed ‘irreducible complexity’ (such as the origins of the biochemical processes involved in blood clotting) are now much better understood [5] — and nine years is a very short time indeed in the history of science. Christians have always been tempted by the ‘argument from personal incredulity’ — ‘Wow, I can’t imagine how that could have happened, so God must have done it’ — but this is really very weak theology. And what happens is that in the fullness of time the gap in scientific knowledge closes and the tasks for this ‘designer’ to do, based on the gaps in our current scientific knowledge, shrink like the fading smile on the disappearing Cheshire Cat in Alice-in-Wonderland. Sure, there are plenty of details on the origins of biological systems that require further work — if that was not the case research scientists like me would be out of a job! But in science one learns to ‘never say never’. The history of science is full of examples where in one decade — or century — people say ‘Well, that could never be understood or done’, but then, of course, a few years later, or a century later, our understanding takes a quantum leap, and the ‘gap’ in our knowledge closes.
An earlier generation of natural theologians pointed to God’s wonderful design in creation in those things that science does currently understand: the more we understand the more amazed we are! But ID proponents argue the opposite: ‘design’ refers to that domain of events that, in their view, science does not currently explain very well. I would suggest that it is the former not latter position which is closer to the biblical understanding of God’s actions in the created order.
Conclusions
Every now and again a new emphasis or wave of fresh teaching washes over the Atlantic and rolls through the evangelical churches of Europe. Very often the wave is helpful and appropriate. My own life has been radically changed by such waves. But with each new wave discernment is required to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. There have been too many times when evangelical leaders were too hasty to accept something, only later to regret their error.
My own view is that the arguments of the ID movement are a Trojan horse bringing what is essentially secular un-biblical thinking into the heart of certain evangelical fellowships within Europe. In its place we need to emphasise the great biblical truths of the creative handiwork of God in every aspect of the created order without exception, an order in which ‘nature’ was long ago kicked into touch as an unnecessary appendage of pagan ancient philosophy and of enlightenment thinking.
And, of course, as Christians we should continue to challenge naturalistic thinking at every opportunity. But I would suggest that a more biblical strategy than that provided by ID is that used by Prof. Alister McGrath in his excellent recent demolition job of the naturalistic thinking of Richard Dawkins [6]. When we have such outstanding biblical scholars as McGrath on our doorstep, why go for imports?
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Prof. R.J. Berry, Dr. Ard Louis, Dr. Julian Rivers and Prof. R. White FRS for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. This does not, of course, imply that these kind readers agree with everything in the final version.
Dr. Denis Alexander is a member of Eden Chapel, and Fellow of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge.
References
1. W.A. Dembski (2004), The Design Revolution, Inter-Varsity Press, see especially Ch. 7. I have mainly used this recent book to present the ID perspective as the author continues to play a key role in the ID movement.
2. W.A. Dembski, op. cit., p. 75.
3. D.R. Alexander (2004), God of Creation, God of Science, Whitefield Briefing, Vol. 9, No. 5.
4. M. Behe (1996), Darwin’s Black Box, New York: The Free Press, pp. 205-6. .
5. e.g. see K.R. Miller, op.cit., pp. 152-161.
6. A. McGrath (2004), Dawkins’ God — Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, Blackwell. Read or listen to McGrath’s recent lecture on Dawkins posted at www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/ cis/
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© Evangelicals Now
This column is used with permission. |
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