Intelligent design - damaging good science and good theology

When we look for God in nature we end up with an idol of our own making, and as we know, idols do not speak. When we look for God in scripture we are confronted by a genuine “other” who may be over and against us as well as for us. Barth makes the point that only a God who reveals Himself on his own terms can be God and he uses the doctrine of the Trinity to explicate this. Father Son and Holy Spirit become revealer, revelation and revealedness. “God is to be understood then as ‘triune’ in the sense that he is the subject, the act, and the goal of revelation.” We may of course leave ourselves open to revelation or be closed to it but it is the movement of God towards us that is central not our move towards him. Without his prior move he would remain hidden. All natural theology is therefore an absurdity.

When we attempt to instill some religion into our children by teaching them intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution in biology class, we inoculate them against any real encounter with the God whose story is told in the Bible. Natural theology is a distraction. It tells us that God may be found in the texts of scripture “and” in nature.

It is this little copulatory “and” that causes all of the damage. For who would not prefer the marvels of biological process or the beauty of the universe as revealed by our telescopes to the troubled history of Israel and the gruesome image of Jesus bleeding his life away on the cross? As soon as this little “and” comes into operation the pressure is off and we can indulge in all of the awestruck emotions we desire. This is not to say that the universe is not awesome, every time I look down the microscope at the cochlea I am struck with its beauty and complexity. But we should resist connecting the awe we feel with a religious feeling for God. We should resist because this is not where we are to encounter the God who speaks his creative word to us. Or, rather the beauty and awe of the creation can only be the place of our joy rather than our misery, after God has found us and our “being in the world” has been ordered aright.

The easy theism that comes from natural theology is a threat to the hard slog of finding God in our received scriptural traditions. This is the easy theism that makes many who believe in God but few who tremble at the thought of judgment and cling to the cross as the centre of what it means to be in the world. It fills the census with believers while the church withers. This is an easy theism because it asks nothing of us, this God, this intelligent designer, proffers no judgment and offers no salvation. He is a God of the gaps, a being we posit to fill a lack in our understanding. When we look to the current malaise of the church we need look not further than this. For when natural theology has taken hold, the edge and scandal of the gospel is dissipated and church becomes just an affirmation of the world. Who would get up early on a Sunday morning to hear that?

I think we should leave science to the scientists. If we want our children to learn about God let them be taught from the Bible not from a pseudo theology that has conformed itself to the world of science. Let us tell them the stories of old, about Noah and the ark, about Moses and the burning bush, about slavery in Egypt and escape through the waters. Let us tell them about the healing of the blind and the opening of the ears of the deaf and the presence of the Lord in word and sacrament. Let us bring them into church and baptise them and teach them about the celebrations and the festivals that shape the church year and life itself.

I for one would be sorry to see the theory of intelligent design taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution for it is neither science nor theology but a move to rectify a perceived lack in our children’s education. It distracts both from good science and good theology and does them both damage. How can we teach the scientific method, the paring down of theory to the absolutely necessary if we include a theory that is unnecessary and for which there is no evidence? How can we teach about God if God is mixed up in the world opening the way for pantheism and queering the pitch for science?