The Intelligent Designer
The world of supernatural beings is well populated: gods, angels, devils, spirits, and disembodied minds that exist for eternity. People ask me to believe in them. Fine. I know they recommend these supernatural beings to me because they care about my well being.
Now, I am asked to believe in the Intelligent Designer. I legitimately ask questions. Who is she? What does she do, and please, supply details? What is her relationship to the other supernatural beings? Are there many Intelligent Designers, ones who do physics, mathematics, and chemistry besides biology? What good does it do a working biologist to know about the Intelligent Designer?
I fight the urge to believe that the world of supernatural beings is rapidly becoming an ontological slum. I want to be fair.
posted by Lynn @ 1:10 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
I love the last line.
Obviously, there are many opinions on this issue, most of them in the form of systematic religions. The libe about "Ontological slum", is I think, fair, as many find the conflicting and downright odd assertions made by some to be the sum total of what people believe.
I'm a Christian, and so I adhere to a systematic view of the way that the supernatural works.
But it isn't the only systematic view- nearly all major religions have a fairly consistent and systematic way of interaction and describing their supernatural worlds. Islam, despite its many virulent perversions, has produced some very interesting and though-provoking ideas. Christianity, despite its (arguably more) virulent perversions has done the same. Read City of God or this book to see more detailed examples of the above. (As I'm not a Muslim, I must confess a certain ignorace as to their modes of thought, which I've been trying to rectify. The book above was recommended to me by someone at a La Mirada mosque)
As a Christian, I would pose that it is good to know of an intelligent designer (i.e., God) as a biologist, not because of any particularly practical purpose, but because of the way the generally informs your discipline.
For example, knowing something about the intelligent designer can help a biologist appreciate the complexity of life. (Not that one even needs a designer for this, but I've found that it adds quite a bit). My mother has a PhD in Molecular Biology, and I've found that her faith greatly encourages her. Knowing the attributes of the designer can spur one to great things. (See Bach, Thomas Aquinas, etc., etc.) It isn't that those who believe have a monopoly on excellence, it is simply that it is something beneficial.
There are those of us who see God as an infinitely loving being- a being so perfect that his existence is itself an act of love. Now think of a cell. Think of the thousands upon thousands of perfectly working pieces of molecular machinery. Now think of how those interact- how it allows one to see love in something like post-lysosomial cholesteral transport, or in the perfect way a protein is folded. That is the benefit, at least to me.
There are perfectly good reasons to be an aethist. But I think there are perfectly good reasons to be a theist as well.
I don't know. Just my thoughts.
Curtis,
Thanks for you comment. As usual, I find it engaging.
First, I am way more comfortable with your claim that the intelligent designer is god rather than the noncommital attitudes of some people. I've read some Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, and I at least feel I am tapped into the god tradition. That was part of what I was driving at in my post.
You bring up a lot of issues. But I'd like to play off your use of the verb inform with an example. Let us say Dick and Jane are two molecular biologists working on the resistance of bacteria to anitbiotics.
Dick believes in the intelligent designer and Jane doesn't. Just how does the intelligent designer inform Dick and not Jane regarding their work? I can see how Dick might be inspired by the concept of the intelligent designer. That is not the same as being informed. To be informed means that one agent imparts information to another agent. What information does the intelligent designer pass along to Dick, that she is not passing along to Jane? What are the specifics, or details regarding doing science? Does Dick get an aha! insight that would never come to Jane?
My question remains what are the details and specifics about the agency of this supernatural being called the intelligent designer regarding science as it is practiced in the here and now? I am perplexed by the notion that supernatural beings interject themselves into the way the universe works. Somebody says that an intelligent designer engineered an eyeball. Did she draw it, go to a lab and construct it, then stick it in the head of some animal? How the heck did she do it in terms I can understand?
I believe it a fair question.
I think it is a fair question as well, but I suppose that I cannot neccesarily answer it, because I must admit, I don't know. How do I believe that God designed the human eye? As far as I can tell, my upbringing would tell me that my religion doesn't necessarily inform me.
There is a branch of creationists (who aren't my favorite folks, by the way) who hold to the principle of fiat creationism, whereby God commands that things be, and they are. It makes sense in that God, being all-powerful, would simply be able to will all things into existence and thus not need to "draw an eyeball", but I admit, I've always found that lacking.
Perhaps that is what science informs. There are quite a few people (not including me, but I'm leaning closer- nearly sold) that see evolution as the method by which God created. The agency involved was the evolutionary process- guided and sustained by God himself. Doesn't that "fix" quite a few of the objections raised against evolutionary theory?
I've noted several times that the ID debate is often times merely a catalyzation for the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, and I think that perhaps with slight modifications, it makes sense to view it less as an attack on evolution and more an attack on natrualistic evolution. To suggest that there need be some other agency than random processes to create, say, a human eye, doesn't necessarily refute the core ideas of evolution, rather, it supplies then with a supernatural force that guides the whole.
So in that respect, I think there is a strong case for those who look at the scientific evidence for evolution and use the supernatural as the "guiding force". Is God the "self-organizing" principle?
As a sidenote, I think this makes a lot of sense- if John 1:1 states that the second person of the Trinity is the logos, or unifying rational principle of the universe, doesn't that seem to help "fill in the blanks" at all?
Also, I think that perhaps the Bible isn't meant to tell us how God created, rather, that he did. Perhaps seeking after knowledge (as is commanded mulitple times in Psalms, Proverbs, etc.) is part of the human experience. Beginning with the assumption that God is and that he loved enough to create, we move to finding out how and why.
So I suppose there are lots of ways to look at the problem, some of which don't do much other than add God to the evolution equation, and some of which see God as so infinitely powerful that his mere command is able to sum into existence the whole of creation. I'm much more sympathetic to the former view, as I think it is exegetically more sound and generally makes more sense. (That and the latter group tends to attempt to shoot down evolution and then say "see! God!", which is absolute crap in my opinion) I hold a "day-age" view of Genesis, which allows for an earth as old as science tells us and generally makes the idea of creation- by evolution or otherwise- deeply more profound.
Anyway. There is a very good book on this subject by Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana called Origins of Life that avoids a lot of the pitfalls of some of the more horrid creationist books and generally tries to show how the Bible and science can be mutually informative.
Curtis,
I really like how you put all that together.
Some atheists and some theists say that people who believe in both evolution and god hold an inconsistent set of beliefs. I don't believe that is 'necessarily' so. Demonstrating they hold an inconstitent set of beliefs requires a deep, subtle, and complex proof, one that hasn't been supplied in all its details. I have believed in god and evolution at the same time and never felt any distress from doing so.
When Napolean asked Laplace why he did not mention god in his book about celestial mechanics, Laplace replied, "I had no need for that hypothesis." I take Laplace to have meant that he was not trying to arrive at a grand explanation of everything, but merely trying to explain a peice of the universe.
My reading of the Bible leads me to believe that it isn't about science, but is about meaning of life questions.
Some atheists and theists believe that there is a necessary war between science and religion. I don't buy into its necessity because of what I believe about religion and science. I don't see it as war that either side will win. Of course, there needs to be debate about cases and public policy issues. And I bet you can guess how I feel about teaching intelligent design in biology classes. :)
My copy of the Kings James Bible sits beside my copy of the Origin Of Species on the bookshelf. I like both of those books.
I suppose that the reason I support teaching some form of ID in biology classes is simply that one cannot seperate the philosophical issues raised by origin of life theories. I think that there can be a form of ID that talks not about God, per se, but acknowledges the philosophical case for the supernatural. The reasoning for this goes something like this: It seems as if teaching some form of naturalism or supernaturalism is going to happen anyway. The current method of teaching, whether implicity or directly, teaches a naturalistic version of evolution. So I think that philosophy is being taught anyway. If we're going to teach philosophy, why not make it 1)as general as possible and 2)as fair as possible. It seems to me that, as of right now, it isn't either 1) or 2). The kind of naturalism we teach is absolute physicalism that goes out of its way to deny the supernatural. Because it is like this, I think it is only fair that when appropriate, competing philosophical viewpoints are raised. ID seems to be pretty vague and general- one could be almost any kind of supernaturalist and still hold to its basic tenets. As such, I think its only fair that we teach that there are some folks who take a naturalist approach to evolution, and some who take a supernaturalist approach- in whatever form. Some are Christian. Some are Muslim. Some are agnostic and really don't care beyond the fact that they reject the idea of a fully natural and random system. Etc, etc. That way it is presented in context of what science does tell us, and doesn't even come close to a church-state issue.
Does that seem fair?
Evolution is the successful organizing principle in biology. It does not commit one to a strictly naturalist or physicalist philosophical view anymore than certain laws of physics do. Teaching evolution does not by itself imply anything about the kinds of utlimate explanations we have been discussing. You have to add more seasoning to the soup. It seems by the logic of your argument supernaturalist explanations should be taught in every science class in the curriculum. Why should biology be singled out as the place to teach supernaturalism as science? There is a broad range of positions in the philosophy of mathematics about where mathematics comes from. Should those positions be taught in mathematics courses? Isn't learning geometry, algebra, trig, and calculus difficult enough as it is?
As far as teaching ID without mention of god, I go back to my notion of the ontological slum, and my demand for specifics as to how supernatural agents engage with the functioning of the physical world. Just what are the specifics of those agencies? One of the charges leveled against ID is that it critiques evolution, but provides nothing useful for the working scientist. As we have discussed, at this juncture, I believe that ID has not put forth a useful, positive, and practical scientific agenda.
I know it has been proposed that ID could be taught in a sort of philosophy of science course. That seems more acceptable to me. I would recemmend to everyone on either side of the issue, be careful what you ask for. Philosophy of science a covers a very broad territory, and one may find all manner of subjects discussed that are not to one's taste.
I don't buy into the idea that teachers of evolution go out of the way to deny any kind of supernatural belief. When I took my biology classes in school, I walked out of the classroom with all my religious beliefs intact. Any changes that may have taken place about those beliefs were my responsibility and none of the responsibility of my teachers. My comments in another post about G. H. Hardy's attempt to find a proof for the nonexistence of god that would convince everybody apply here.
Teaching ID without foundations seems the worst of all worlds. If somebody gives me some Aquinas to study, I might disagree with what he says, but at least I have a large visible target to shoot at. Some IDer's have done pretty good job of hiding their targets.
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