Intelligent Design: scientists afraid of finding the truth?

It is true that a minority of Christians who use ID to their advantage in the debate reveal a major flaw in their argument when they suppress science in order to claim that the universe came into existence only in the last several thousands of years, and probably occurred over just a few days. But the overwhelming majority of Christians hold, and have always held, that in scientific terms, we don’t certainly know when the universe began, nor do we know how or for what purpose, though good science would indicate that it occurred a very long time ago.

As to whether the designer was the one we call God or not, it would be prudent to leave that to theologians and philosophers, but the possibility of the existence of God cannot simply be denied. It must remain true that God exists or not. To dismiss outright even the possibility of God’s existence, because the issue had already been prejudged in the negative, could only rest on prejudice. Blaise Pascal, at least, thought the best bet for man was to opt for belief. He figured that if you are right, you lose little in the short term and gain everything at last: while if wrong, you gain little in the short term but lose everything at last.

The best known proofs for the existence of God are those of St Thomas Aquinas, chiefly his arguments from cosmological, contingency, teleological, aesthetic and anthropological perspectives. For some people, taken together they are compelling, for others they fall too far short of certainty to be given credence. But there are no proofs for the non-existence of God.

Now, to come to the important question asked in the title of this paper. It is common to hear that the purpose of man’s intellect is to gain knowledge, and scientists always claim to be knowledge-seekers. But, and this is why the question is so important, far more important than gaining knowledge is the discovery of truth. The story of man’s historical progress is one of repeatedly making finds, called new knowledge, to be replaced sooner or later by even newer knowledge. One piece of knowledge can contradict another, but truth cannot contradict itself.

The second problem for those who would reject the possibility of a designer is one of their own making. They define scientific inquiry narrowly so that it will eliminate the possibility of their discovering the possible truth about the origin of life. They complain that ID is creationist religion in disguise but their eagerness to reject ID as science reveals their ideologically-driven definition of science. They think good science should only implicate chance and not intelligence, descent from apes and certainly not thoughts of God. But good science is not defined according to its implications. Science looks at the facts and lets them speak for themselves. When they aren't allowed to speak the result is pseudo-science, and that is why people are crying foul regarding Darwinian dogma. Even the famous atheist Anthony Flew has recently publicly renounced his atheism because of ID argumentation.

This motive for consciously avoiding a critical component of the issue is not the product of their opponents’ imagination - some Darwinists are quite frank about their anti-religious motives. A new research program at Harvard aims to study how life began. One of its researchers put it this way: “My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.” British biologist Richard Dawkins believed that Darwin “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Something is seriously wrong when science becomes a project to keep atheists feeling intellectually satisfied.

The Darwinian revolution was as much about the success of one philosophical worldview overturning another as it was about science. The scientific basis of Darwinism has always been shaky but early on many people, unhappy with the concept of God, realised just how useful Darwin’s views could be to their cause and have carried it beyond the limits of its competence. Darwinism posits philosophical naturalism in the place of supernatural creation, relying on assertion without evidence.

The question about what to teach about the origin of life comes down to this - are we going to start teaching students at every level from junior school to tertiary in a way that is open to the possibility of an encounter with truth or are we going to continue to follow what has become the now common path in the public sphere that closes minds to the possibility of finding the truth? A definition of the evolution of life in terms of preconceived descriptors, such as unguided chance, unplanned and random variation, is not a biological definition. It is more like a mission statement for atheism masquerading as biology. Darwinists oppose the teaching of ID in the classroom but if it’s acceptable to teach atheism in the classroom, why not God also? We’re witnessing the spectacle of some scientists who are afraid of some science. Wanting to have one’s opponents unfairly silenced is simply bullying, a tactic adopted to avoid exposing one's beliefs to open examination.

Those who are serious about finding truth can’t afford to dismiss any reasonable proposal to find it and they should not embrace any unreasonable proposal. Let’s hope we can soon begin to debate calmly and honestly the implications of certain recent biological, scientific discoveries.