Intelligent Design?

"Even a cursory knowledge of living systems makes it obvious that life is jerry-built and wasteful from the genes up, often violent and cruel."

-Chet Raymo

"Intelligent design has come this far by faith."

-H. Allen Orr

So why am I venturing into those murky waters of science again this morning? The fact is, though I would prefer not to, I feel that I must. There has been much in the news in recent weeks, indeed, in recent years, about so-called "intelligent design," or I D as it is more familiarly known. Around the country, schools and school systems are being encouraged to teach intelligent design as an alternative or antidote to Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution. I D’s defenders claim that it, too, is science, but is it? Does the evidence bear them out?

According to a Gallup survey from last November, "only about a third of Americans believe that Darwin’s theory [of evolution] is well supported by the scientific evidence. . . ." On the other hand, "nearly half believe that humans were created in their present form 10,000 years ago." More than 80% of Americans say that God either created human beings in their present form or guided their development. This information ought to sober you, but it also offers some insight into why intelligent design has gotten this far.

So what is intelligent design? Simply put, intelligent design is "the theory that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand--subtle or not--of an intelligent creator" or designer [Michael Powell]. In the morning’s reading, Chet Raymo referred to intelligent design as the belief that some biological systems are "irreducibly complex" and therefore could not have "simply" evolved.

As H. Allen Orr puts it in a recent issue of the New Yorker, intelligent design holds that "Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural--or more precisely, by any mindless--process." (By the way, Orr’s article, entitled "Devolution," is one of the best I have read about I D.) As Chet Raymo wrote, "Proponents of I D do not use the G-word when specifying the designer, but they are almost invariably evangelical Christians who wish to preserve a continuously active role for God in an ongoing creation."

Orr provides the following additional, helpful clarification:

First of all, intelligent design is not what people often assume it is. For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism. Unlike earlier generations of creationists--the so-called Young Earthers and scientific creationists-- proponents of intelligent design do not believe the universe was created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah’s flood. (Indeed, they shun the label "creationism" altogether.) Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth. Although the movement is loosely allied with, and heavily funded by, various conservative Christian groups--and although I.D. plainly maintains that life was created--it is generally silent about the identity of the creator.

For unlike science, religion’s claims are not empirically provable. They are not susceptible to the scientific method at all. "Science," Chet Raymo has written in another place, "is an international, non-sectarian truth-seeking enterprise based on consensus, and the antiquity of the earth and the unity of life by common descent are at the heart of the contemporary consensus, universally accepted within the scientific community. Even the Pope, for God’s sake [at least the last one], admits that evolution is more that ‘just a theory.’"

Religion, on the other hand, does it’s greatest work through symbolism and metaphor. The biblical creation stories offer a way to understand our world and our place in it that is not scientific, but metaphorical. Those stories are not factual, but they are truthful in what they tell us about what it means to be human: to have foreknowledge of death, and to be capable of both good and evil. To confront the mysteries of human sexuality and reproduction. They are not literal accounts, and to treat them as such is to kill their spirit by the letter.

Despite what proponents of intelligent design would have us believe, Darwin’s "theory" of evolution is, in H. Allen Orr’s words, "one of the best theories in the history of science." When the mainstream National Geographic magazine teased on its front cover, "Was Darwin Wrong?" the answer inside was an emphatic "NO. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming."

The problem with Darwinian evolution, of course, is that although it does not specifically reject God, it does reject the notion that there is an intelligent creative mind behind everything that happens. That is, it rejects a certain kind of God. Darwinism holds that change is the only real constant. As Boston Globe columnist and former priest James Carroll writes, "The ‘theory’ of evolution . . . assumes the permanence of change as such, and makes a nice target for those who long for a static universe. . . . Indeed," writes Carroll, "the question of ultimate beginnings, whether pursued through fossils in time, telescopes in space, or the Biblical imagination, invites a similar response from scientist and believer alike, which is to bow before the essential mystery of what is."

Why, in singer-songwriter Iris Dement’s words, can we not simply "let the mystery be"? As Carroll concludes, "the religious impulse and the scientific impulse are related. Both are at home with the inevitable experience of uncertainty, which, for faith, compels a restless desire to be with God, and, for science, drives the mind farther into what it does not know."

I say it again: evolution does not specifically reject God, but it does reject the idea of "teleology," the idea that there is a given meaning or end to our existence. In the words of my colleague John Gibbons, "Darwinism says that every teleology is bunk: we do not know, we cannot know, the story is still being written, revelation is not sealed." This is either comforting of disconcerting, depending on where you stand along the continuum of need for certainty.

Religious conservatives--those who favor intelligent design, for example--hate the uncertainty. They long for a purpose and a meaning for life. They want it to be intrinsic. But what if it is up to us to give life its meaning and purpose? What if it is our responsibility? What if this is what God expects of us? As my friend John writes, "[one] of the ways that Darwin and evolution have transformed our culture and informed a liberal understanding of religion is by affirming the priority of justice first, doctrine second. Ortho-praxy, that is doing that which is right--is so much more vital than having the right opinions, ortho-doxy. Love comes first; philosophical explanations are a distant second."

In other words, it is up to us to act justly, lovingly and compassionately on God’s behalf. Whatever our religious beliefs, we must ultimately act as if there were no God.

This idea makes even some religious liberals, well, uncomfortable. We, too, long for a universe which is orderly and sensible, in short, a universe that is meaning-full. We long for assurance that we are as highly evolved as we believe we are. In the past, religious liberals actually looked to evolution for confirmation of their conviction that human beings would progress "onward and upward forever." Evolution, they thought, proved the belief that we human beings are ultimately perfectible. Indeed, it is this attitude of inevitability about evolution--the idea that it proves anything--which has stuck in the craw of religious conservatives.

The truth of the matter is, as H. Allen Orr writes, "evolution has no goal, and the history of life isn’t trying to get anywhere." He continues,

If building a sophisticated structure like an eye increases the number of children produced, evolution may well build an eye. But if destroying a sophisticated structure like the eye increases the number of children produced, evolution will just as happily destroy the eye. Species of fish and crustaceans that have moved into the total darkness of caves, where eyes are both unnecessary and costly, often have degenerate eyes, or eyes that begin to form only to be covered by skin--crazy contraptions that no intelligent agent would design. Despite all the loose talk about design and machines, organisms aren’t striving to realize some engineer’s blueprint; they’re striving (if they can be said to strive at all) only to have more offspring than the next fellow.

So where does this leave us? It seems to me that at a minimum, religion must leave science to the scientists, and scientists ought to leave religion--whether positively or negatively so--to the religionists. They are not mutually exclusive--both, as shown, may share an appreciation for mystery--but they are pretty clearly different ways of understanding the world. Both can offer "truthful" interpretations of our existence, but each is partial. Maybe it is that religion and science can ultimately complete each other. We can always hope.

Writing in an editorial in the Globe in response to a defense of intelligent design by columnist Jeff Jacoby, one Christopher Blood wisely said, "There is room in this world for both science and religion. No one would attempt to build a bridge based on faith alone, just as no one would turn to a biologist to comfort a grieving family member. There are many forums in this country to teach and explore religious views. The public schools don’t happen to be one of them."

Darwin himself was uncomfortable with the reality which he had articulated in his Origin of the Species, the idea "that there is a great procession of life evolving over millions of years by the blind happenstance of natural selection [Gibbons]." He was far more uncomfortable, however, with the notion of a God who would or could condone suffering. He once wrote,

The impossibility of conceiving that this wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came, and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the (theological) difficulty (posed by) the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgement of many able people who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of human intellect; but we humans can still do our duty.

Science alone, however, cannot penetrate the mystery of all that is. In spite of this, we humans can still do our duty: by practicing loving kindness, by acting with justice and mercy, and by keeping an attitude of humility in the face of all that we still do not know. There will always be a role for religion. May we learn to "let the mystery be," even as we strive to make the world, and ourselves in it, the best that we can be. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock