ID: Failing at theology and at science

Shalini Sehkar - August 14th, 2008 in Commentary 0 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. [The Wedge Strategy]

Despite their religious motivations, what the IDists don’t seem to realize is that ID actually damages Christian doctrine. OH NOES!!

God-of-the-gaps (Behe/Dembski)

Michael Behe’s version of intelligent design posits a god that tinkers now and then with his creation to design “irreducibly complex” structures such as the bacterial flagellum and the human eye. The idea that god is a tinkering mechanic does not hold water in light of the Biblical doctrine that god is actively involved in the world at all times. Behe’s theology is one where god resides in the gaps of human knowledge, and that god can and should retreat every time a scientific discovery is made. Behe is claiming that the study of nature by material beings would somehow destroy faith in a god, and asserts that science is superior to religious faith.

Behe’s creator is one who lies back for long periods of time, merely appearing to design one complex structure or another. The extension of William Paley’s idea of a watch requiring a watchmaker and design requiring a designer does not work in the case of Behe’s arguments, as his criteria for detecting design is merely what has not been explained by science at the time.

Behe has placed his religion in conflict with science as his argument leads to using ignorance as a reason for belief in god. This god-of-the-gaps theology ultimately undermines religion by shrinking the role of god as science marches on, and affirms the notion that religion has been disproven by the mechanisms and tools of science. When you look for god in things that science has not explained or what you think science has not explained, all you get into is a big pile of trouble.

God as a tinkering mechanic (Johnson)

Philip Johnson posits a god or an ‘intelligent designer’ which intervenes at specific moments in history to create organisms separately without any evolutionary history whatsoever. While traditional Biblical creationists claim that the earth has to be younger than 10,000 years old, Johnson accepts an old earth but rejects the common ancestry of all life due to what he claims are gaps in the fossil record.

Johnson’s view is based on the idea that god is a magician who interferes sporadically in the natural world. However, if we were to look at traditional Christian doctrine, it is theologically inconsistent because god is said to be always active in the natural world. Johnson’s ideas not only rests on a misunderstanding of punctuated equilibrium and the nature of the fossil record, but also lends a disservice to his god by casting doubt on the supposed creator’s competence.

When we look at the vast number of species that have gone extinct, we wonder why Johnson sees a necessity for an all-powerful god to perform “failed experiments” in the course of creation. Explaining design that gives an appearance of evolution and the necessity of extinction cannot be tested, disproven or investigated, and would contradict the nature of god that is revealed in his own Bible.

As we have seen, ID fails as a science and as a theological standpoint. Therefore, ID is an epic failure.