The place of intelligent design
This past Election Day, voters throughout the country took sides in one of America’s most contentious issues: intelligent design. Even in an o?-year election, the issue has been ubiquitous. The debate has escalated so rapidly over the past couple of years that it now seems impossible to escape. However, the implication of putting any religious belief, particularly intelligent design, into a scienti?c setting has been largely ignored.
While I am strong believer in the separation of church and state for the sake of religion as well as the state, I believe there are many additional problems with putting intelligent design into a scienti?c setting
Because religious and scienti?c terms often hold di?erent meanings for di?erent people, it is important to de?ne the terms “science,” “faith,” and “intelligent design.” Brie?y stated, faith (religious or not), is a belief in a particular truth, person, or other agent. The idea, particularly in religious faith, is that material evidence or proof is not a prerequisite. Religious beliefs cannot usually be proven. While this does not mean proof and evidence are discouraged, or that faith must always be blind, proof is simply not needed in order for faith to exist.
Science, by contrast, is a ?eld of ideas that can be proven through empirical observations. While some proponents of Intelligent Design question whether theories like evolution have been conclusively proven, those arguments are irrelevant because evolution is an idea that can be evaluated through scienti?c inquiry, unlike intelligent design.
Intelligent design is a particular religious belief stating that the universe has been created by a higher being. Because the universe was not created randomly, it must have a distinct, thought-out pattern or design. Putting faith and science together makes proof a prerequisite for faith. Yet by de?nition, faith does not need to proven – and when a Board of Education places faith in a science class they do exactly that. Such a placement assumes faith should not only be tested, but also that it must be proven in order to exist.
As a Christian, I cannot prove that the Virgin Mary was actually a virgin, but because of my faith, I don’t need to. Nor would anyone have a Catholic priest perform mass in a chemistry lab to prove transubstantiation through chemical analysis. One would not perform an MRI on a follower of Hinduism to try and see a presence of past lives. Faith is just not something that needs to be proven or tested in this way.
Aren’t there better tests for those of us with religious faith in this world, such as the su?ering of those with terminal disease, corrupt and unjust governments across the globe, and even the su?ering we feel in our own lives? These problems can produce a healthy skepticism that allows us to question the foundations of our faith, while at the same time helping us ?nd meaning in our lives and strengthening the very faith we question. There is nothing morally wrong with doubt – I personally believe that if God didn’t want us to question our beliefs, then He would not have given us free will. However, religious faith is unique because it can be tested and strengthened without ever being conclusively proven.
I am now going to turn to a speci?c problem arising from intelligent design being placed in the classroom. Because intelligent design is the belief that a higher power shaped the universe using a speci?c pattern of design, putting this idea into the realm of science creates a new problem: hubris. To combine the idea of a pattern or design with the scienti?c method of inquiry into that design implies two things: First, it imagines that we can empirically analyze faith. But secondly, and even more troubling, it also assumes that human beings have the ability to understand God’s plan.
I believe that we can never understand the exact workings of God’s mind. If we assume that we can understand a plan that spans the history of time, we claim to be equal in ability to the divine. Even if I knew the exact history of our planet – the path of every atom in our solar system – I believe God’s plans and design of the universe would still be beyond my comprehension.
Though I do believe that the universe is thoroughly planned out and was created with a design, I also believe that many so-called “accidents” could be part of a larger design. Perhaps intelligent design and evolution are not in con?ict. But that does not mean I could prove through simple observation what such apparent accidents might mean.
Science investigates and creates knowledge by looking at the past, whether using experiments preformed earlier that day or fossil records from millions of years ago. If we apply this to intelligent design we imply that we can predict the plan and design of God, perhaps the deepest hubris imaginable.
Intelligent design has a place, but it is in the spheres of philosophy, theology and in the dialogue within and between di?erent faiths. Placing faith in a science classroom demands that faith be tested and proven, which runs contrary to both the de?nition and the foundations of faith. What is worse, in applying scienti?c methods to a religious belief, we are, in e?ect, claiming the ability to understand and predict the plans of an unknowable God. As a Christian, I believe intelligent design is a powerful, meaningful, and accurate view of God’s role in the universe. It deserves to hold a place in our modern intellectual discourse. However, I do not believe that the appropriate place is in a science classroom.
