Posted on 11/06/2005 8:03:20 PM PST by Coleus
Intelligent Design or Mindless Evolution BISHOP DONALD WUERL
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The intuition of human experience that there is intelligent design in the universe is so overwhelming that only ideology would deny it a hearing alongside any other theories about the origin of life. |
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What has confused matters is that some who espouse creationism see no room for a process of development or evolution that would unfold according to a divine plan or intelligent design, always keeping human life as a distinct and unique creation. Compounding matters all the more on the part of some proponents of evolution is their insistence on the need to exclude any possibility of God or intelligent design at any stage in the process.
There seems to be in both extremes an "either/or" mentality: either everything as we know it was created as it is now by God in the beginning, or there was no creation or God of creation at all.
Yet there clearly is a middle ground — "intelligent design." In this view we recognize both God's free creation of all that is and the possibility, or even probability, that creation carried within it the plan of development which we can call evolution.
In these reflections I want to explore the reasonableness of intelligent design and its rightful place among the theories that explain the origin and development of the cosmos and life.
To start with, all of us experience the reality of the world in which we live. This is a given. There are stars, planets, rational human beings, animals, fish and all kinds of other living beings as well as what were once called the basic elements of earth, fire, water and air. Both responses, intelligent design and mindless evolution, start with the same reality, the world around us. Both engage human reason to try to understand what we experience. Both offer a frame of reference that provides a coherent way to make sense of or explain the data.
On the one hand, in the years since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1855, some scientists offer the theory that the best explanation for the existence of all life is random selection and the natural evolution of species.
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Most humans, in fact, have experienced that same wonder which led so many philosophers, who were not necessarily at the same time theologians, to posit an ultimate reality that is responsible for all that is and how it operates. The conclusions of the Greek philosophers were derived from human reason alone. They made no claim to divine guidance in their search. Least of all did they recognize divine revelation as a norm for their thinking process. They concluded that intelligent design has nothing to do with religious faith and everything to do with reason and science as we name them today.
Anyone who, as a child, marveled at the sky full of stars on a clear, dark night and concluded intuitively that there is more to the heavens than one can see is an intellectual heir to the great thinkers of the Western World and a kindred spirit to almost all humanity who, in quiet awe, knows that there is order in the world around us.
Albert Einstein was once quoted grappling with the same human experience:
"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
In the Yucatan Peninsula you can visit any number of archeological sites, such as Chichen Itza, and see the remains of the ancient Mayan observatories that charted the movement of the heavens over millennia. The ancient wise men of those observatories drew the same conclusion that their counterparts in Egypt did thousands of years before them and that their intellectual colleagues in other parts of Mexico, Babylon, and China did as well. Intelligent design in the world is a rational conclusion based on thousands of years of observation and reflection. It is not an a priori religious tenant superimposed on the facts. Rather it is the light of reason illuminating the universe.
With the most recent insistence that only the Darwinian theory of evolution should be taught to young people as they study the origin of the cosmos and human life, I went back to my old college philosophy books. First I dusted off the Richard McKeon volume The Basic Works of Aristotle (died in 322 BC). Then I got out the Benjamin Jowett translation of the Dialogues of Plato the famous philosopher who preceded Aristotle.
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Anyone who, as a child, marveled at the sky full of stars on a clear, dark night and concluded intuitively that there is more to the heavens than one can see is an intellectual heir to the great thinkers of the Western World and a kindred spirit to almost all humanity who, in quiet awe, knows that there is order in the world around us. |
Plato who died some time around the year 348 BC discusses at considerable length the ordering principle of which the world is constituted. More than one scholar of Plato recognizes his "ideas" or "forms" as the ideas in the mind of God.
Centuries later Saint Thomas Aquinas, the master philosopher and theologian of the 13th century, applied the data and reasoning of Aristotle and Plato to the basic realities of motion, efficient causality, possibility and necessity, the gradation of perfection found in things, and order in the universe. I took down off the shelf once again the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas and turned to part one, question two, article three. What the philosophers had dubbed from their aversion to religious doctrine or revelation the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Necessary Being, the Perfection against which perfection is measured, and the Purpose we see throughout the cosmos, Aquinas named "God."
One can easily conclude from reason alone that there is intelligent design in the universe. Most people, in fact, have. You do not have to invoke religious faith to arrive at such a reasonable conclusion. However, with faith you can bring unimpeachable support to that same conclusion. Our Judeo-Christian heritage presents us with the Book of Genesis. Here we find intelligent design and more. Our Catholic faith tells us that God created. But it also leaves to rational, intelligent reflection how we understand precisely in what manner God's initiative is worked out in space and time. For the faithful the intelligent design we find in reality is the mind of God at work.
The sacred writer of the creation account (cf. Gen. 1:1-2.4) portrays the work of creation as extending over a period of six "days," and says that on the seventh day God "rested from all the work that he had done in creation" (Gen. 2.3). This account is obviously not a technical report on the timing and mode of creation. As Saint Augustine noted centuries ago, the six "days" of creation could hardly have been solar days as we now know, for according to the account in Genesis, the sun was not made until the fourth "day." Rather the structure and literary form of the creation narrative are there to help us grasp what God is teaching us about creation.
Revelation tells us that only God existed forever and that God made all things out of nothing. There was nothing before God created what now is. In the marvel of that wondrous creation, there is a whole array of realities all of which reflect the glory of God. What God created is good. One can very comfortably believe that God is the Creator, and also hold the theory that creation had within it the seeds of an evolutionary development that would take place over eons.
Faith also holds that the glory of God's creation is the human being. God directly created the human soul. As the creation account reaches its climax, God is portrayed as creating man and woman as the crown of all that God had made. "Then God said 'let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion.'" (Gen. 1.26).
We are made in the image and likeness of God because God has taken the goodness of his physical creation and breathed into it an immortal spiritual reality called the soul. Because of that principle of life, we, like God, are capable of knowing and loving. We can mirror the knowledge and love that lie at the very core of God's being; hence we are called images of God.
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Saint Augustine noted centuries ago, the six "days" of creation could hardly have been solar days as we now know, for according to the account in Genesis, the sun was not made until the fourth "day." Rather the structure and literary form of the creation narrative are there to help us grasp what God is teaching us about creation. |
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, wrote in an op ed piece in the July 7, 2005, New York Times: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry may be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science."
God directs his creation toward its completion or perfection through what we call Divine Providence. This means that God has absolute sovereignty over all that he has made, and guides his creation according to the divine plan of his will. At the same time, both the evidence of the world that we discover by our human intellect and the testimony of Sacred Scripture show that for the unfolding of his plan God uses secondary causes, including the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, as well as the cooperation of our own human intellect and will.
The Second Vatican Council in its pastoral constitution The Church in the Modern World addressed the rightful independence of earthly affairs: ". . .if methodological investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith. For earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God.Indeed, whoever labors to penetrate the secrets ofreality with a humble and steady mind, is, even unawares, being led by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence, and gives them their identity" (36).
As Pascal in his Pensées said many centuries ago: "The human heart has its reasons that reason cannot know." When I hear a six year old express marvel at a starry sky, or see the wonder in the face of parents as they gaze at their new born child, or admire the resilience of enduring human love at every wedding anniversary celebration, I agree.
The intuition of human experience that there is intelligent design in the universe is so overwhelming that only ideology would deny it a hearing alongside any other theories about the origin of life.
The millennia long human intuition about the cosmos and human life explained over and over again by philosophers from just about every conceivable culture on this planet, and all done in the light of reason, should not be dismissed simply because the Darwinian theory is the politically correct version and the new secular dogma that demands acceptance.
When we examine with the light of reason the origins of the cosmos and human life then we must be prepared to respond to all the reasonable, rational, intellectually sustainable theories. Academia must never become arbitrarily exclusive of the conclusions of rational investigation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Bishop Donald Wuerl. "Intelligent Design or Mindless Evolution." Pittsburgh Catholic. (October 26, 2005).
Reprinted with permission of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. To subscribe to the Pittsburgh Catholic call 1-800-392-4670 or click here.
THE AUTHOR
Bishop Donald Wuerl is bishop of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
I don't have to trash biology. Biologists are doing a fine job of it for me.
Anyone who openly advocates slavery creates quite an impression with me.
I feel honored.
As Science Digest reported:
"Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities... Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science." 3
One example is the late Dr. Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, an honored scientist with an amazing three earned doctorates. He held many distinguished positions. 4 A former Evolutionist, Dr. Wilder-Smith debated various leading scientists on the subject throughout the world. In his opinion, the Evolution model did not fit as well with the established facts of science as did the Creation model of intelligent design.
"The Evolutionary model says that it is not necessary to assume the existence of anything, besides matter and energy, to produce life. That proposition is unscientific. We know perfectly well that if you leave matter to itself, it does not organize itself - in spite of all the efforts in recent years to prove that it does." 5
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-scientists.html
Kansas school board redefines science
New standards question accuracy of evolutionary theory
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Posted: 8:10 p.m. EST (01:10 GMT)
TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- At the risk of re-igniting the same heated nationwide debate it sparked six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
The 6-4 vote was a victory for "intelligent design" advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Critics of the language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.
All six of those who voted for the standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted against them.
"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
Supporters of the standards said they will promote academic freedom. "It gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today," said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.
The standards state that high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that some concepts have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.
The standards will be used to develop student tests measuring how well schools teach science. Decisions about what is taught in classrooms will remain with 300 local school boards, but some educators fear pressure will increase in some communities to teach less about evolution or more about intelligent design. (Read how Kansas came to this point)
The vote marked the third time in six years that the Kansas board has rewritten standards with evolution as the central issue.
In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution, a move Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said was akin to teaching "American history without Lincoln."
Two years later, after voters replaced three members, the board reverted to evolution-friendly standards. Elections in 2002 and 2004 changed the board's composition again, making it more conservative.
Many scientists and other critics contend creationists repackaged old ideas in scientific-sounding language to get around a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1987 that banned teaching the biblical story of creation in public schools.
The Kansas board's action is part of a national debate. In Pennsylvania, a judge is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit against the Dover school board's policy of requiring high school students to learn about intelligent design in biology class. (Read about the Dover debate)
In August, President Bush endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.
http://cnn.org/2005/EDUCATION/11/08/evolution.debate.ap/index.html
For the science room, no free speech
By Bill Murchison
Dec 28, 2005
Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years -- not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade -- haven't driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity.
Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones' anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools' Darwinian monopoly.
Jones' contempt for the "breathtaking inanity" of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism's "gaps/problems" is unlikely to intimidate the millions who find evolution only partly persuasive -- at best.
Millions? Scores of millions might be more like it. A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God. A Kansas newspaper poll last summer found 55 percent support for exposing public-school students to critiques of Darwinism.
This accounts for the widespread desire that children be able to factor in some alternatives to the notion that "natural selection" has brought us, humanly speaking, where we are. Well, maybe it has. But what if it hasn't? The science classroom can't take cognizance of such a possibility? Under the Jones ruling, it can't. Jones discerns a plot to establish a religious view of the question, though the religion he worries about exists only in the possibility that God, per Genesis 1, might intrude celestially into the discussion. (Intelligent-designers, for the record, say the power of a Creator God is just one of various possible counter-explanations.)
Not that Darwinism, as Jones acknowledges, is perfect. Still, "the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent scientific propositions."
Ah. We see now: Federal judges are the final word on good science. Who gave them the power to exclude even whispers of divinity from the classroom? Supposedly, the First Amendment to the Constitution: the odd part here being the assumption that the "free speech" amendment shuts down discussion of alternatives to an establishment-approved concept of Truth.
With energy and undisguised contempt for the critics of Darwinism, Jones thrusts out the back door of his courthouse the very possibility that any sustained critique of Darwinism should be admitted to public classrooms.
However, the writ of almighty federal judges runs only so far, as witness their ongoing failure to convince Americans that the Constitution requires almost unobstructed access to abortion. Pro-life voters and activists, who number in the millions, clearly aren't buying it. We're to suppose efforts to smother intelligent design will bear larger, lusher fruit?
The meeting place of faith and reason is proverbially darkish and unstable -- a place to which the discussants bring sometimes violently different assumptions about truth and where to find it. Yet, the recent remarks of the philosopher-theologian Michael Novak make great sense: "I don't understand why in the public schools we cannot have a day or two of discussion about the relative roles of science and religion." A discussion isn't a sermon or an altar call, is it?
Equally to the point, what does secular intolerance achieve in terms of revitalizing public schools, rendering them intellectually catalytic? As many religious folk see it, witch-hunts for Christian influences are an engrained part of present public-school curricula. Is this where they want the kids? Might private schools -- not necessarily religious ones -- offer a better alternative? Might home schooling?
Alienating bright, energized, intellectually alert customers is normally accounted bad business, but that's the direction in which Darwinian dogmatists point. Thanks to them and other such foes of free speech in the science classroom -- federal judges included -- we seem likely to hear less and less about survival of the fittest and more and more about survival of the least curious, the least motivated, the most gullible.
It is at least conceivable that the universe was created by a being who sat down and designed it.
But such a being is far too weak and unintelligent to be the Christian God.
This is perhaps why ID has been most readily accepted by the “Unification Church”, whose founder seems to think he is God.
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