Fools, Damned Fools, and Creationists

The Australian media recently reported a statement by the federal Minister for Science that she was not in favour of “intelligent design” (ID) being taught alongside evolution in Australian public schools. Her reasoning, according to the reports, was that “Christian ideology” does not equate to scientific fact.

Whilst the Minister’s decision is laudable, the sentiments upon which they are based are troubling. Afterall, how “Christian” is ID? Indeed, is it at all fair to characterise ID as “Christian ideology”?

Many proponents of ID would agree with the Minister: “intelligent design” is not about Christian belief. Instead, the “intelligent designer” alluded to by ID is merely a “higher intelligence”, not necessarily the God of the Bible, and ID is not so much concerned with identifying this “intelligence” as ascribing the existence of the cosmos to their activities.

The truth, however, is that this is just an attempt by ID apologists to gain secular “credibility” by (nominally) eschewing any notion that ID is aligned to any one faith. The reality is that the proponents of ID are almost entirely Christians – that is, they are conservative, literalist Christians, people who regard the Bible as the product of God’s “divine authorship”, and the Book of Genesis as a factual description of the formation of the cosmos and the development of life on earth. Indeed, they produce books and DVDs and television programs which purport to “scientifically prove” the literal truth of the Book of Genesis.

The problem with tackling ID and the theological and scientific sham which it represents lies in understanding what it actually argues. Simply put, ID rests on an appeal to “irreducible complexity”. This notion states that examination of even relatively simple biological structures such as human cells reveals within them further, smaller structures that are too complex to have been formed through the process of natural selection. In other words, the very intricacy of these structures suggests, not that they evolved over millions of years through random processes of biological change, but that they were deliberately designed with their complexity “built in” from the beginning.

In other words, the creation story in Genesis is literally true because evolution by natural selection cannot explain the existence of such complex structures within supposedly basic formations such as human cells.

It’s an impressively elegant argument built around apparently unassailable logic. Unfortunately for ID – or, more relevantly, for those who might be taken in by ID apologetics – this elegance derives not from its concise explanation of natural phenomena, but from its simplistic and misleading reading of biological science.

To begin, the proponents of ID are, to an extent, correct: evolution by natural selection can’t explain all the observable phenomena of the biological world, nor can it provide a complete account of the presence of life on earth or the emergence of the human species. But here’s what the ID-ologues don’t tell you: no biological scientist worth their salt claims natural selection is the “be all and end all” mechanism underpinning life on earth.

The essence of natural selection, as proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, is that those species which are the “best fit” for their environment leave more offspring, whereas those who are not leave fewer offspring and, eventually, become extinct. If the environment changes, those species who are coincidentally better suited to the new environment flourish, whereas those adapted to the old environment decrease.

However, Darwin and Wallace proposed their theory of evolution by natural selection a whole generation before Gregor Mendel uncovered the process of genetic inheritance. Mendel (who, ironically, was an Augustinian monk) discovered that the process of genetic inheritance in individuals can lead to atypical variations that were not representative in the wider population. These variations occurred independently of environment, and could be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral in their effect. Moreover, such variations were transferable across individuals within a species through breeding, thereby enriching (or weakening) the genetic structure of the species as a whole. Over time, the accumulation or diminution of such variations has as significant an impact as environment on determining the survival or otherwise of entire species.

In other words, while evolution through natural selection might be the foundational mechanism through which biological sciences explain the existence and variety of life on earth, it is not the only such mechanism which science has identified as meaningfully involved in this process. Thus, the suggestion by ID apologists that evolutionary theory is fundamentally flawed because of its reliance on natural selection, conveniently and misleadingly ignores the richness of biological science and the discovery of the multiple processes – such as genetic inheritance – which impact on species evolution.

But what about this supposed “irreducible complexity”? Actually, as an argument, it’s a non-event. Scientists have known for decades about the various structures within a cell, such as the nucleus, and the even smaller structures contained therein (such as DNA). Indeed, there are even smaller structures than the average human cell called prokaryotes which exist in the human body in enormous numbers. And as physicists and chemists have discovered, the atomic structure that underpins all material being is far more complex than we imagined; there are sub-atomic particles even smaller than the electrons, neutrons, and protons with which most people are familiar: strange beasts with exotic names such as fermions, leptons, neutrinos, bosons, and so forth. The point being that there is no such thing as a universe in which a point of “irreducible complexity” occurs; as human understanding of the cosmos expands, so the richness and amazing subtlety of natural phenomena becomes increasingly apparent. This is complexity, pure and simple; to assign “irreducibility” to it is not only ignorant, it is the height of arrogance: it is reducing God to human dimensions.

So how “Christian” is ID? Is it fair to describe ID as “Christian ideology”? I would argue that ID is nothing of the sort. To be sure, it does represent an attempt by certain Christians to re-package their literalist interpretation of the Bible in “scientific” terms and offer it as a viable alternative to biological science; but this very fact strips such attempts of their “Christian” status. For ID is, supposedly, an attempt to explain the existence of the material universe, not a means for articulating the relationship between the human and the divine. It is an attempt to de-legitimise science by utilising, however incorrectly (or ironically), the language of science.

Christianity is not concerned with the language of science or explaining the natural underpinnings to the cosmos. Instead, Christianity is a “theology” – it is concerned with the language and Word of God as the ultimate and authoritative articulation of the relationship between humanity and God. Granted, these must necessarily be conveyed in human terms and through human means; and these terms and means will contain the flaws inherent in our broken humanity. But the point of Christianity is not to explain how we got here but why we are here, and why our presence necessarily involves us in a relationship with God.

To be sure, as science brings us closer to a deeper understanding of the natural processes underpinning the cosmos, the experience of majesty and sense of wonder these discoveries generate can provide a useful insight into the human relationship with the divine. But in many respects, ID is an attempt to shrink away from this majesty, to turn our backs on the vast horizons scientific discovery opens to us; it is an attempt to reduce God to a kind of paternal cosmic tinkerer who slapped the universe together and manipulates the outcome like a puppet master. But this is neither the language of science, nor is it in any sense Christian.

Ultimately, ID neither accurately describes the universe as it exists, nor does it point to that vaster, greater communion to which God wills all creation; it is just a petulant child, arms crossed angrily (and defensively) across its chest, its hostile frown a scared and self-indulgent rejection of an approach to both the cosmos and faith which is vast, deep, timeless, and always growing.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: If you think education is expensive - try ignorance. (Derek Bok)