Intelligent
Design?
When I taught confirmation classes, I used to begin with Genesis 1 and ask the kids how long it took for God to create the universe? Automatically, one of the kids would answer, “Six days.” I would then go on to ask them what they would think if I told them I thought it didn’t take six days but billions of years? The kids would give me this weird look, as if they weren’t really sure what I was saying, then, inevitably, one of the kids would screw up their courage and ask the question that was on most of their minds: “But I thought you believed in God?”
*****
One
of the great debates of our time is the debate between science and religion
about who or what or how the creation came into existence. This is one of the truly sorry, silly
debates of the ages. It is at one and
the same time confusing, embarrassing, frustrating and heartening to
Christians. Quite frankly, I would love
it if we could just look the other way and drive right on past this multi-car
pile-up but there is something compelling about the debate that causes us to
rubberneck. So today, as we look at
that part of the Apostle’s Creed that says, “I believe in God…Creator of heaven and earth,” we’re
going to jump right into the middle of the debate.
Actually,
before we jump into the middle of the debate, we need to take one, giant step
back from the whole mess in order to gain some perspective on how Christianity
has related to science in the past. On
the one hand, Christianity has been the friend of science. Early scientists such as Galileo, Copernicus
and Francis Bacon were all Christians who believed their work was a way to
honor God; by learning more about the ways the creation worked, they supposed
they were deepening their understanding of the Creator. On the other hand, Christianity has been the
foe of science. Christian dogma
routinely has attached itself to a particular form of science, and when the
science changed, it would challenge the dogma.
We see this in the early years of the Enlightenment when the Church’s
dogma depended upon the scientific worldview of the ancient Greek scientist
Ptolemy. When Ptolemaic science gave
way to the science of Copernicus and Galileo, the Church was left with a great,
gaping whole in their belief system.
Similarly, when Darwin’s discoveries about the natural world forced a
change in the scientific community, the Church was left, once again, with a
great, gaping whole in its belief.
One
lesson to be learned from this history is that the Church should be wary of
attaching itself too closely to any one scientific theory, for it is in the
nature of science to change as new discoveries force adaptations to current
theories. Another lesson to be learned
from this history is that everybody would do well to mind their own
business. That is, let science be
science and let religion be religion.
Science seeks to describe the physical world. Religion seeks to articulate spiritual truth. Let them each do
their own thing; wouldn’t that be nice?
Yes, it would. Unfortunately,
there are some who refuse to allow such separation. On the one side are those who argue that science proves there can
be no god. On the other side are those
who argue that science proves the creation must have been made by God, the
so-called “Intelligent Design” option.
So, what are we to make of all this?
Does the creation suggest an Intelligent Design?
*****
The
case for Intelligent Design has become a firestorm in school districts around
the country. Kansas has said yes to
Intelligent Design, arguing it is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the
scientific evidence. Dover, Pennsylvania, though, has said no to the same,
arguing it is no more than trumped up creationism. What about us? What are
we to think about it?
Before
we can have an informed opinion, we need to review what the proponents of
Intelligent Design are arguing. For our
purpose, I’ll have to be brief in my summary, but those of you who want to
explore Intelligent Design for yourselves, I would recommend Lee Strobel’s
book, The Case for the Creator
(Zondervan, 2004), or Hugh Ross’ book, The
Fingerprint of God (Promise Publishing, 1991). Essentially, proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the
universe is so complex that it must have been directed by an intelligence
outside of the material world; they don’t name this intelligence as God, but
clearly God is the One they have in mind as the source of the
intelligence. Now, what are their
arguments?
As
we look at the universe, scientists tell us that it was created with a Big
Bang. Philosophers tell us that
whatever has a beginning also has a cause.
What was the cause of the creation?
Who (or what) was the boom behind the bang? “And God said, ‘Let there be light! And there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Hugh Ross, whose doctorate in
astronomy is from the University of Toronto and who did post-graduate work at
Cal Tech, argues that the evidence from space cannot be explained by random
chance. He talks about something called
the “anthropic principle” which says, essentially, that the universe seems to
be uniquely designed for the possibility of life. Ross says that there are dozens of properties of the physical
universe, from the color range of stars to the strength of a planet’s magnetic
field to the distance from a planet to the center of its galaxy, and if any
single one of these properties was changed even a little bit, there could be no
life in the universe. Ross posits some
staggering numbers. Gravity is fine
tuned to one part in a 100 million, billion billion billion billion billion!
Ross posits the possibility of life existing anywhere in the universe through
random chance as 1 in 10 to the 50th power; that’s the number 10 with 50 zeroes
behind it. Fewer than a trillionth of a
trillionth of a percent of all stars will have a planet with such physical
characteristics. Indeed, Ross argues
that the universe is at least ten billion orders of magnitude too small or too
young for the universe to be assembled by natural processes alone. Who can argue but that such staggeringly
probabilities suggest the universe cannot have come about by random
processes. Don’t these facts suggest an
Intelligent Designer to the universe?
Michael
Behe, PhD., teaches Biology at Lehigh University. Behe argues a couple of things.
Most of us have seen Darwin’s “Tree of Life” diagram where we evolve
from a one cell organism and then branch off into different species. Behe argues that’s not completely accurate.
Behe accepts the notion of evolution at the micro level; species clearly evolve
and change over time. But at the macro
level the theory doesn’t work as well. Most important to Behe is that Darwin’s
naturalistic theories cannot account for the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion is known as
“Biology’s Big Bang.” Essentially it’s
like this: think about the time life has been on this planet as encompassing a
football field. For the first 84 yards,
all that exists are one celled and other simple organisms. Then, at the opponent’s sixteen yard line,
in one step, all 40 phyla that are known to exist were created: that’s the
Cambrian Explosion, and Darwin’s theories of sequential, natural selection
cannot account for these new forms of life.
Moreover, argues Behe, certain organisms alive today, such as cilia and
bacteria flagellum, demonstrate a structure that is “irreducibly complex,”
which means that each of its parts must be fully present as a system in order
for it to function; again, sequential evolution fails as a theory to explain
these irreducibly complex organisms. Once again it is legitimate to ask: Don’t
these facts suggest an Intelligent Designer to the universe?
Finally,
let me share with you the thoughts of Stephen Meyer who received his PhD. from
Cambridge University in England, which, I am told, is a pretty good
school. Meyer studies DNA. DNA is made up of four kinds of nucleic
acids, each of which is assigned a letter corresponding to its name. These “letters” when placed together in the
proper order, create the “letter codes” that serve as the blueprints for our
biological architecture. Now this is
what Meyer argues: the letters of DNA have to be organized in a particular
pattern, and according to particularly complex patterns, in order to function. We’re talking billions of letter combinations
in the human body; this is highly improbable to have occurred through random
processes and impossible to have occurred through natural selection. To think DNA is a product of either of these
options is to suggest the analogy of someone walking into a public library,
reading every book in the building, and thinking, “That sure was lucky to have
all those letters in the correct order.”
No. Rather, when we see complex
patterns of information – books, computer software, military codes – these
complex patterns are always a product of intelligence. Once again it is legitimate to ask: Don’t
these facts suggest an Intelligent Designer to the universe?
*****
Now,
what are we to make of all this? We
might rightly ask, given all the arguments for Intelligent Design, why doesn’t every school district require that it be
taught? Well, there’s actually a fairly
simple answer for the question.
The reason
Intelligent Design shouldn’t be required in schools is because it isn’t
science.
Now you might be
thinking, “But, Brad, you just told us about all these scientists who argue
that God created the universe. These
are scientists, Brad! Not theologians. Not pastors. PhDs! Astronomers! Biologists! Chemists! Physicists! How can
you say that Intelligent Design is not science?”
Two reasons. First, science seeks to describe the functioning of the physical world by natural processes. Is there a natural, physical law of the universe that explains why things happen? This is what science is about: when I drop an apple, why does it fall? Why is it Winter in the northern hemisphere and Summer in the southern hemisphere right now? These are questions about how the natural, physical world functions; they are questions of science. Second, science requires that’s its theories be testable by the experimental method. Will the apple always fall if dropped? If Newton’s “theory” about gravity is correct, are there any circumstances when the apple falls up instead of down? We can test these questions. But, by definition, when we introduce God into the equation, we can’t test the theory. By definition, God is not a part of the natural, physical world. By definition, God is beyond the creation, for he is the Creator. This is what the Creed teaches: God is Creator, the universe is created. God is above and beyond nature. God is not testable via the experimental method.
Now I hope those of you who have been following along closely are asking yourselves another set of questions. I hope you are thinking, “Well, Brad, are you saying that science is against God? Don’t you think science shows belief in God makes sense?”
Great
questions, my friends. And here are the
answers. No, I don’t think science is
against God. My entire point about the
nature of science is that it isn’t for
or against God; it’s about the
natural, physical world, about curing cancer and sending a spaceship to Mars
and building a smaller, more powerful computer. Now do I think science shows belief in God makes sense? Absolutely!
And does this contradict anything I’ve said up to this point? Not at all.
Now you might be thinking, “But you said over here…God is not
testable…and to keep science and religion separate…Intelligent Design shouldn’t
be in the schools…but now you’re saying….
How do you reconcile all these things?”
Easy. I’m not a scientist; I’m a
pastor! This isn’t a classroom; it’s a
church! This is precisely the place where one can say that when we look at
modern science it makes sense to believe the universe has a Creator. I
am precisely the person to make such a claim. The work of scientists is
interesting to me and suggestive of God to me, but the scientific, empirical
method didn’t give me my knowledge of God; my faith gave me my knowledge of
God. “I believe in God…Creator of heaven and earth.”
Credo ergo sum.
*****
WOW!
COOL!
THANKS!
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