Ripon College Days

If the "theory" of intelligent design truly married science and religion, it would be the most important intellectual event of the 21st century barring contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Unfortunately, intelligent design (ID) does not provide such an honest synthesis. At best, it's a hopeful syncretism rationalizing the belief in God by appealing to the wonderful complexity of the natural world. At worst, it's an ideological ploy to reintroduce religious creationism into public schools and further divide the U.S. along cultural fault lines.

Either way, though it masquerades as science, ID does not articulate rational knowledge.

To see why, we first have to appreciate that the things we believe and the things we know fall into different categories, divided neither by science nor by religion but by philosophy. Science articulates that which can be reasoned to be the case based on empirical evidence. Religion articulates that which must or must not be believed to be the case. Philosophy articulates that which can be rationally believed to be the case, despite lacking definite knowledge.

In short, to be human is to believe, but it is also to strive to know.

Teaching ID in American public schools, however, is an affront to both the human capacity to believe and the human desire to know because it conflates these two noble drives. It promotes an unscientific belief as coequal with scientific knowledge, at the same time inappropriately implying that the scientific theory of evolution denies the validity of belief in God.

Before attending Ripon College, I studied for 12 years in Catholic schools. When we studied evolution, there was no sticker on my biology textbook telling me "psst...God did it." No teacher in any science or religion class taught us the "theory" of intelligent design. These religious schools devoted to teaching Catholic values had good reasons not to teach ID, some of which remain valid reasons to reject ID in public schools.

Because ID does not provide a falsifiable hypothesis, there is no way to test to see if it's true or not. Therefore it's not science and will not advance the questions of science.

Nor will it advance the mysteries of faith, as no one has to choose to believe in the unknowable if ID declares that evidence directs us to the answer of the most important human question (Why is there anything at all?).

On the surface, ID addresses this Why? question like a religion but also pretends to be science, deriving knowledge from evidence. But because the nature of science is limited to that which can be known about the material world, the Why? question lies beyond its scope. So not only does ID not employ the scientific method, but it is grappling with a question beyond the frontier of scientific knowledge.

Thus, answering the Why? question in public schools with ID both respects an establishment of religion by endorsing ID's belief in an ultimate Intelligent Designer, and prohibits the free exercise of religion by supporting an ideology that fails to engage its participants in the mysteries of faith, preferring to mold young American minds in only one way of thinking about their maker. This violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The ID argument also relies upon unscientific assumptions to make an inductive leap into the unknowable. That's okay for religion and sometimes okay for philosophy, but it's not okay for science, and so ID cannot even be considered on the same philosophical plane as a scientific theory like evolution.

The ID argument-the natural world is so complicated it must have been intelligently designed-rests on the all-too-convenient assumption of an intelligent designer (logically identical to God as Creator) who can do precisely what we would like it to do to explain our experience of the natural world. It also assumes human knowledge of this designer's methods-specifically, that the designer does not use evolution by natural selection, a method which ID proponents claim cannot satisfactorily explain the complex natural world.

There is no definitive evidence to support the existence of the Creator referred to in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the best potential natural evidence for belief in such a Creator is that we're all here rather than not here. If you choose to believe it, that's pretty good evidence. But that's not scientific evidence, nor is it conclusive even if you're disposed to it. It must be taken on a leap of faith-and that's what belief is all about.

Science cannot tell us why there is something rather than nothing. Beyond this boundary we must believe.

But we don't have to believe in evolution. There is evidence to support it. And that's what ought to be taught to our children in schools as science. We all remain free to exercise belief in our Creator in whatever capacity we choose.

The humans of 200 and 1,000 and 10,000 years hence will judge our still childlike progress through the realms of religion, science and philosophy. They alone, with the wisdom of hindsight, will laugh at our stumbling and rejoice at our bouts of brilliance as we have done to those who have walked this road before us.

But we must not today give in to a potentially insidious ideology motivated by fear of the unknown that presumes an either/or universe of either evolution or God.

If, as ID proponents would have it, we believe that faith and reason cannot peacefully coexist, that science and religion are locked in mortal coil, it's because we're either thinking only as "knowers" or as believers. We have to think as philosophers to get outside the dichotomy. Philosophy shows science and religion dancing in a yin-yang where scientific knowledge continually pushes back the Why? boundary, while fundamental assumptions continually underlie the groundwork of scientific knowledge. Only through embracing this tension is it clear that you can be both a rational "knower" of evolution and a believer in God, without the need for an artificial substitute like intelligent design.

Science does not answer questions of philosophical value, only of survival value. Hence, the scientific method has provided one of the most comprehensive rational systems exploring the history of biological life in terms of survival value-evolution. It's the best theory we have to fit the evidence of the biological world and its fossil record, and it has withstood, accommodated and adapted to new evidence while repeatedly proving its predictive utility. The theory details the process of life changing over time, and sticks to that which the rigor of the scientific method can predict, confirm or falsify. If and when a better theory arrives to explain the evidence, scientists will be the first to adopt it.

God is a beautiful belief, and one undeserving of being dragged into the classroom or the courtroom with a shameful pseudonym. To cite the complexity and wonder of the natural world as evidence for a Creator is correspondingly beautiful-and while it's not rational knowledge, it remains a philosophically justifiable belief. It is one many people including myself already share, without ever having a class in intelligent design. But those who truly hold this belief, and who honestly and carefully examine it, will discover it to be clearly one believed in the absence of certainty.

This may illustrate our noblest capacity-our almost magical ability to create an aesthetic synthesis from the best of uncertain belief and limited knowledge.

But that's what it means to be human.

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