Intelligent Design

Recently, according to Dr. Michael Zimmerman, the last nail was put in the coffin of the intelligent design debate. That nail is conclusive proof that the design of the human genome is incredibly imperfect and therefore would not have been designed by a perfect designer.

Mind you, I am totally against the teaching of intelligent design as part of a science class because intelligent design violates the first principle of science: you have to have a testable theory in order to find proof for your theory and for a theory to be accepted as proven, the test results have to be replicable by others. Intelligent design has no such theory, therefore there can be no tests and likewise, there can be no replicable test results. Therefore, by mere logic, intelligent design is not a science and has no place in science class.

It seems to me, however, that this debate goes far beyond what is what is not science. It is, to my way of thinking, nothing short of an attempt by both sides to say "I'm right and you're wrong!" Or, in other words, it's a rather childish debate where both sides seem to think that only one of them can be right. The problem is that science is also something that takes a great deal of faith to follow and most of those in the science camp are unable to accept that.

Let's define faith here. Faith is the belief in something that is beyond proof or in spite of evidence to the contrary. We all use faith in our everyday existence, even if only for short periods of time. For example, every time we sit on a chair, we have faith that the chair is going to hold us. And when we prove that it can, by sitting in it, we no longer have to have faith that the chair will hold us— until the next time we go to sit down on it. We have faith that when we turn a corner in our car or go over a hill that the road we cannot see will actually be there. And once we have proof, we don't need to have that faith anymore. We all have faith that the places and things we've seen in our lives are still there even when we're not looking at them.

Some would argue that these are not instances of faith. That the existence of the Eiffel Tower, for example, is proven and that someone somewhere is always looking at the Eiffel Tower every moment of every day and therefore we know that it's not blinking in and out of existence every time someone isn't looking at it. But that itself involves faith that what is being seen actually exists and that all of creation is not just a big wild interactive dream/nightmare.

But even if one does not accept that the above are acts of faith, the very scientific process involves faith, at least in the beginning. Many new scientific discoveries are found because someone believes that, for example, a subatomic particle exists that exhibits certain specific behaviors. This theory is put forth and then experiments are designed to prove the theory true. But until such time as that proof exists, the existence of the subatomic particle is a matter of faith.

As another example, look at the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It takes a great deal of faith to keep searching year after year after year when no results have been found after decades of searching. Statistically, with the number of stars in the universe, it is highly likely that life exists on other planets. Yet statistics are only probabilities, not actualities. It's statistically probable that if I flip a penny 100 times, I'm going to get 50 heads and 50 tails. And yet in actuality, if you flip a penny 100 times, very few of us will actually get 50 heads and 50 tails. We may never discover signs of intelligent life on another planet.

So if both science and religion involve faith, what is different about the two? The difference lies in the ability to design tests to "prove" scientific theories. And I put "prove" in quotes because it's only proof if you believe it is. Let us assume (yeah, I know the old adage about what assume does to me and u, but let's assume anyway) that a creator as described by the Christian faith exists: omniscient and omnipotent. It is entirely feasible if such an entity exists for him/her to create a universe which only appears to be millions of years old down to the smallest detail (like infrared shifts, half-lives, etc.) but is in fact only 6000 chronological years old.

There are those who say that I'm using circular logic here because I'm basing my "proof" on an unproven premise: ie, that such a creator exists. True, I am. But there is no proof that such a creator does not exist. Yes, I know, you can't prove that something does not exist. As Carl Sagan once said, "Absence of proof is not proof of absence." I am aware that Mr. Sagan never meant this to be a "proof" that God might exist, but the statement is a true one. Simply because we have never found proof that God exists does not mean that God does not exist. It could very well mean that s/he wants us to figure out for ourselves if s/he exists and so is unwilling to give us "scientific proof". If we had scientific proof that God exists, then we would lose our free will, just as we have lost our free will to "believe" in gravity.

As a minister, I can give you all kinds of personal stories about why I know that my "faith" is true. (And mind you, I know it is true for me and me alone because it is MY faith and no one else in the entire world has the same spiritual needs or has walked the same path that I have walked and therefore, no one can have the same faith as me.) But it is all personal proof that cannot be replicated and there are no tests one can do to demonstrate the truth of my "faith", but I have my personal experiences and therefore, while I still call it my "faith", it's really my personal knowledge. It can no longer be my faith because I have proof of what I believe.

Every person of faith will not be swayed by scientific arguments because faith is belief in that which is beyond proof, and science is all about proof. Conversely, no person of science will be swayed by arguments of faith or personal experience with faith because it cannot be replicated and it cannot be proven.

So while Dr. Zimmerman believes that ID is already in its coffin, I think it's still alive and well. The issue is not whether or not ID is true/false, but about whether it is science and should be taught in science class. That issue is settled. Whether or not ID is true/false will be debated as long as the idea of God's existence is debated, which will probably be til the end of time.