Evolution and Intelligent Design

There is some controversy in the US today around the idea of teaching Intelligent Design as an alternate scientific theory about the origin of all things. This topic touches one of the basic roots of the US strengths and weaknesses. To many outside the US, Americans seem kind of superstitious primitives, still holding desperately on to traditional ideas and beliefs long since discredited. Many in the US consider this Bible belt with its passionately conservative beliefs to be one of the great strengths of the US. The people of the Athens of Pericles, Socrates and Aristophanes were quite religious and conservative compared to much of the rest of Greece. They executed Socrates and caused several other philosophers to flee for their lives in fear of prosecution for heresy. Yet, they were the greatest power in the Greek world. Rome also was strongly religious as long as it remained strong. Religion is a powerful force, it can make a society strong, or cripple its ability to learn and grow. History provides many examples of both. To those holding onto the Bible as an authoritative source of guidance for their daily moral and ethical behavior, anything which threatens the authority of that Bible is seen as, well, evil. To many others, the proofs of evolution are compelling to anyone they consider reasonable, and the Bible is seen as a storehouse of pernicious even anti-social superstition.

Now there are really 4 issues here, not just 2, and as usual in our two party system, you are not allowed to pick and choose which issues you want to support and which you want to turn down. The issues are grouped together by party so that you cannot support the ones you like and oppose the ones you dislike and ‘core’ voters shape policy like the tail wagging the dog.

(I make it a personal policy to always vote for the 3^rd party candidate in minor elections and only vote Republican or Democrat on things like elections for Congress or President. Hopefully if enough people do things like this we will get some real choice at least at a local level.)

Is evolution a valid scientific fact? Is intelligent design a valid scientific theory? Is the Bible a storehouse of pernicious even anti-social superstition? Is the Bible a good guide to a viable standard of moral and ethical behavior? As you can see, these ideas are not mutually exclusive, it is possible theoretically that all four of them could be true at the same time. Science is empirical, fact based, and verifiable. Science explains nothing but allows you to reliably predict what will happen if you do something. Theology and metaphysics explain everything for those satisfied with the answers provided, but allow you to predict nothing successfully. If something is not factually verifiable, then it is not science. Looking at the facts is also a good way of looking at these other 4 questions.

The Democrats lean to the assumption that the Bible is a pernicious storehouse of anti-social, sexist, paternalistic, homophobic hatred and superstitions. The Republicans tend to see the Bible as an authoritative guide to moral and ethical behavior. The controversy over Intelligent Design vs. Evolution is never discussed in terms of factual reality. Both sides bring a great deal of emotional baggage to the issue. Emotional baggage which twists the debate out of all contact with reality and leaves all participants in the debate living in LaLa land.

The first question is about evolution, is it a scientific fact or just a theory on the edge of real scientific knowledge? The argument over this issue was settled for all legitimate scientific authorities more than a century ago. It is not just a theory but a fact. More recently it has stopped being just a theory which explains what we observe in a meaningful sense and has become something much, much more. Evolution has become a profoundly important engineering tool. It has crossed the line from usefully explaining the data we observe to actually allowing us to create new inventions, discover new alloys, and generally is as useful as basic laws of engineering which allow us to predict and control our world. Evolution is fruitful. It produces for us. Evolutionary programs simulated in computers are being used to create new things that we could not invent without Evolutionary theory. This is one of the fundamental tests of a scientific theory, is it fruitful, does its predictions make us stronger, more in control of our universe. Evolution passes this test with flying colors.

Now, is Intelligent Design an alternative scientific theory about creation, or is it something else? Intelligent Design has a long and distinguished relationship with Science. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Newton, Pascal, Einstein all accepted it as true in some sense. With such a distinguished body of witnesses in it’s favor, you might assume the case won. Surely, if all of those great minds believed that the order of the Universe showed an intelligent mind behind it all, it must?

No, sorry, that is argument from authority. Science is testable. Scientific theories allow us to make predictions about the universe which later investigation demonstrate to be accurate. The early Greek philosophers accepted intelligent design as a scientific fact. Knowing that God designed the universe and knowing that the circle was the most perfect shape, they believed they knew that the orbits of the planets were circular. Wrong, planetary orbits are elliptical. Knowing that God designed the universe and that therefore the part of the universe closer to Him had to be more perfect than the earth, they decided that the planets must be perfect unscarred bodies. It came as a terrible shock when telescopes revealed craters on the moon. It was considered sacrilege that threatened the entire order of the universe. Nonetheless, the moon has craters. The planets in the heavens are pretty imperfect in a simple human sense of perfection. Einstein when told of quantum mechanics said it couldn’t be true because God would not roll dice with the universe. Wrong again. Intelligent design has a record of 2500 or more years of misleading men of science into wrong ideas about reality. As a scientific theory it is completely discredited. It is not and cannot be called an alternative scientific theory. Jesus once said you should judge a tree by its fruits, if you apply that analogy to evolution as science it works, if you apply it to intelligent design as science, intelligent design is not just sterile and fruitless but actually produces ugly fruits.

Intelligent design falls into that area of ideas that cannot be proven or disproven in a scientific sense. It is a philosophical or metaphysical issue. There is nothing wrong with teaching it as a philosophic idea which many very great minds have believed. It is absolutely wrong to teach it as science. It does not belong in a science classroom. Evolution does.

It is likely that genius has a strong subconscious component. That subconscious component is made up of choices we make about what we believe. These choices must frequently be made in areas where things cannot be clearly proven. Great minds throughout history have believed in an orderly universe. Einstein once said he wished to hear the thoughts to God. He did exceedingly well at that, only making a few errors here and there. It is an empirical fact that almost all the icons of science, the men we know and can name as great scientists accepted intelligent design as not science, but as an intuitive truth about the universe. This empirical fact shows that believing in intelligent design does not cripple great minds, in fact, on a subconscious level, it may aid them. Faith in an intelligent designer and an orderly reality may help them to make sense of the universe and see the order in it where others, lacking such faith, see only chaos, or some Jove like thunder God dictating laws and events by a whim.

In a metaphoric sense there are two kinds of soil here. In one soil, the subconscious mind, a belief in intelligent design may be fruitful and bring forth good fruit in scientific work. In the other soil, the dry soil of scientific logic, modeling, and experiment, intelligent design produces false and misleading fruit. Intelligent design is not science.

There is nothing wrong with believing in intelligent design, but mistaking it for science is a horrible error. Does evolution prove that there is no intelligent design? Now, since evolution has become an engineering tool which we, presumably intelligent beings that we are, use to help us design things, even a child should be able to answer that question with a no. How can evolution prove that we were not designed by an intelligent being when we use it to help us design and build new things? Evolution is today as much a tool of design and engineering as math and surveying instruments. If we use it, then God could have used it to.

To teach children that Intelligent Design is an alternative scientific hypothesis to evolution is to teach children something that any knowledgeable adult should know is false. Regardless of whether you believe in evolution or not, you know intelligent design is not science. Teaching your children that it is accepted as an alternative scientific theory is nothing more nor less than lying to your children. It is a form of child abuse.