Intelligent Design

Alittle more than a decade ago, when I was publishing a weekly newspaper in a small Oregon city, religious conservatives were pushing for the teaching of “creation science” in the schools. Creation Science was an attempt to spread the view that the earth was young and that there had been no evolution. Religious conservatives were promoting the view that scientists had been misled by geological evidence like the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon and fossil remains of the Cambrian era. The Cambrian fossils are not 500 million years old, they argued. The evidence that scientists have interpreted as showing millions of years of sedimentary rock formation and plate tectonics and ice ages has been misunderstood, they argued. The earth was created just a few thousand years ago with all of these features already in place. Creation Science proponents argued that there was scientific evidence that the earth is young.

Eighty years ago, during the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee, the creationists felt no need to place a pseudo-scientific veneer on their claims. A literal reading of Genesis was thought sufficient. John Scopes, a science teacher, was convicted of teaching evolution. However, the Scopes trial was a humiliating embarrassment for Biblical literalists. Press accounts made them look ridiculous.

Now we have the “Intelligent Design” movement. Intelligent Design is actually a fascinating development, for it is both a retreat and a counter attack. It is a retreat in the sense that proponents of I.D. (as it is called) actually accept the fact of evolution. Their argument is that God (who usually goes unnamed in favor of a vague reference to some cosmic intelligence)—that God guided the process. This in turn is based on the conviction that life is too complex to have arisen through unguided natural processes. The complexity of life is evidence, they claim, that evolution could not have occurred through random mutations. The argument that creation is so complex that it is proof that there is a God is actually a theological argument that goes back to the Middle Ages.

More than one wit has commented that the history of creationism from the Scopes trial to Creation Science to Intelligent Design is conclusive evidence that creationism can and does evolve to adapt to its changing environment.

In a recent highly publicized trial in Pennsylvania, a federal judge ruled against a school district that had tried to insist that Intelligent Design be taught as part of the science curriculum. It was a victory for science and for the separation of church and state. However, this controversy has been raging in one form or another since Darwin published his groundbreaking work The Origin of Species a century and a half ago.

Just down the road on I-70, Kansas has been caught up in a back and forth battle over the teaching of evolution for years. Other battles pop up all around the country.

Progressive people, those who value science and are not threatened by science, have a long history of naiveté. Progressives thought the war over the teaching of evolution was won in Tennessee 80 years ago. It wasn’t won there, and it wasn’t won in the Dover, Pennsylvania, ruling not long ago. This battle will rage for many years.

One thing that has always bothered me about creationism in its recent forms is its blatant dishonesty. When William Jennings Bryan championed the cause of biblical literalism in the Scopes trial, he did so honestly and directly. For him the Bible, and a literal reading of Genesis, was the ultimate authority. If the Bible was not consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution, then so much the worse for evolution.

The modern champions of creation science and intelligent design, by contrast, are deceitful and dishonest. They seek to sell the illusion that there exists a significant scientific debate about evolution. There is no debate in biology, in paleontology, in geology. You cannot find a member of the National Academy of Sciences who thinks that evolution by natural selection did not occur. The proponents of ID know this. They pretend they are advocating open scientific debate. They are doing no such thing. They are advocating a particular conservative religious point of view. They do not seem to have read the part of their Bible that says we should not bear false witness.

Intelligent Design is not a scientific idea. I do not mean that it is an incorrect scientific idea. It simply is not a scientific idea. This point is absolutely crucial. We are surrounded by a great deal of confusion about what science is. The consequences of this confusion are very real and tragic. It is very important, therefore, to be clear about what science is and what a scientific idea is. We need to spend a few moments on this before we go on this morning.

Science is about making connections among things we can observe in the world. A scientific theory is a statement about how things in the observable world act and interact. Let’s take a famous example that does not deal with evolution. For many centuries people, including educated people, believed that the earth was the center of the universe. I mean, it seemed obvious enough. The earth seemed very large and things in the heavens seemed very small. The stars could be seen moving in the night sky as if they were on a big globe that rotated around the earth. Everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe. This was the ancient world view proposed by Ptolemy. There were some facts that just didn’t fit, however. Astronomers puzzled that objects we now call the planets did not follow the pattern exactly. Planets wandered around in the night sky. Sometimes they even seemed to move in one direction in the sky and then actually move backwards—the infamous retrograde motion of the planets. The motion of the planets was an anomaly. It didn’t fit the theory.

Five hundred years ago Copernicus proposed a different theory, a different way of viewing the same facts. He argued that the earth is not the center of the universe. In his theory, the sun is the center of the solar system and that we on earth revolve around the sun, as do the other planets. This theory was revolutionary. It was seen as an attack on religion. Eventually this view of the world prevailed because it could explain things that the previous theory could not. In particular, the retrograde motion of the planets now made perfect sense. The planets move the way they do in the night sky because our point of view is changing as we, and as they, revolve around the sun. Using this new theory astronomers could predict the positions of objects with great precision. It took a couple of hundred years for the Christian church to realize that the world view of Copernicus and Galileo did not destroy religion.

The great ideas of science are great because they powerfully explain things about the world we observe that we could not explain before. And there is another essential point. Scientific ideas can be falsified. That is, a scientific idea can be shown to be wrong. How is it shown to be wrong? It is shown to be wrong when it fails to explain new observations. The idea that the moon is made of cheese is an empirical scientific proposition. It makes a prediction of what we will find on the moon. It just happens to be wrong.

This is absolutely crucial, for it goes to the heart of why Intelligent Design is not a scientific idea. Newton’s ideas about gravity and motion were brilliant and powerful. They made all kinds of predictions that were precise and were found to be spot on. Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity went beyond Newton and made powerful predictions about time, space and gravity. Measurements years later showed he was right on the button. The theory of the Big Bang made predictions about what we would observe, including that there should be a low level of background radiation coming from all directions. Later measurements proved it was right.

Other scientific ideas have been proven wrong. For example, the idea that there is something like a thin ether in space that is the medium through which light passes turned out to be wrong. Not that long ago some scientists in Utah proposed that hydrogen fusion could occur at much lower temperatures and believed they had observed it. This was the famous cold fusion episode. It turns out they were wrong. Lots of people tried to produce cold fusion but could not.

OK. This is the end of our quick science review. The essential point here is that there is no conceivable way the idea of intelligent design can be disproved. If the work of an intelligent designer cannot be observed and there is no conceivable data that will show the idea is false, then the idea is not a scientific idea. That is OK. It is a philosophical idea, a metaphysical idea, and very certainly a theological and religious idea.

You can believe that the universe was created by an intelligent being beyond our comprehension. You can believe that this supreme intelligence mysteriously shaped the course of evolution so that it would produce you and me. If I am skeptical about that, what conceivable measurements can we make to test that idea? None.

The satirical periodical The Onion had a spoof on all this. They ran a fake news article about how some religious leaders were promoting the idea of Intelligent Falling as an alternative to the theory of gravity. The idea is that things fall because an unseen intelligence wants them to. The article is silly, but a theory of intelligent falling is not really different in form than the theory of intelligent design. Astrology is another idea of the same kind. The idea that our behavior and events in our lives are affected in some mysterious way by the motions of planets cannot be disproved. The horoscopes in the paper are entertaining, but their predictions are so vague that they can never be disproved. You may believe in astrology, but it just isn’t science.

Intelligent Design should not be taught in science class not because the idea is wrong, but simply because it is not science. It should be taught in current events, in civics, in religion, in philosophy, in American history.

Intelligent Design does have some troubling implications that its proponents never mention. If evolution is guided by an intelligence we cannot observe, that intelligence does not seem to have our best interests at heart. A lot of evolution is terribly harmful to us. The virus that causes AIDS evolved from a virus that did not harm us. The bird flu virus that killed more people around the world in 1918 than did all the battles of World War I evolved into its deadly form. The bird flu that today threatens to cause another worldwide pandemic is evolving before our eyes. All the disease causing bacteria that have become resistant to our antibiotics have evolved in the last century and continue to evolve. If there is an intelligent force shaping evolution, that intelligent force is indifferent to human suffering and death.

The real issue before us today is not whether Intelligent Design should be taught as science in the public schools. Even the Republican federal judge in Pennsylvania saw this ruse for what it is. This is just one attempt by the religious right to use the power of government to impose a religious point of view in the guise of science.

Alas, the real issues this conflict presents for us are more serious and will endure long after ID mutates into some new and more insidious form.
The first challenge is pretty simple, though very difficult. We need to join with other people, including most mainstream Protestants and Catholics, to resist the repeated attempts to turn our schools into places to teach the philosophy of the religious reactionaries. Unfortunately, we need to be ever vigilant. Proponents of ID have proved that they believe deception is all right in the pursuit of their ends. They are adaptable, resilient and fanatically determined. They run people for school board positions who do not tell the truth about their agenda or who is supporting them. Our clear duty as citizens is to resist these forces of anti-intellectualism in American life. We cannot fall into the trap of believing that a favorable court decision will end this conflict.

Our challenge as religious people is ultimately more important and more difficult. You and I need to bear witness that science and religion need not be in conflict. I am more and more convinced that the followers of the religious right are deeply afraid. They are afraid of a world in which humanity is not the center of all creation, a world where God is not an attentive parent ready to intervene with miracles. Even more profoundly, I believe the followers of the religious right fear a world stripped of meaning, a hostile and confusing world that is out of control. These people see science as an enemy who teaches that our universe began almost 14 billion years ago in a spectacular expansion, that the earth was formed around four and a half billion years ago, that life emerged around a billion years later. For millions of people, this is a frightening story—a story that flies in the face of what their religious leaders have taught them.

At the level of individuals we must respond with the ancient religious message: fear not. Fear not. We need to show by our statements and actions that science and religion are not enemies. Science is opposed to ignorance, not to religion. We need to bear witness that religious people can embrace science. Modern science is an amazing human achievement. We should delight in science the way we delight at music or literature or sculpture.

True religion is not the enemy of science. True religion is about preserving and affirming the highest ideals and deepest wisdom of the ages. Religion needs to affirm that love can transform life. Religion needs to teach that everyone is precious, that everyone matters. Religion needs to teach us that we must care for each other, help each other and encourage each other. Religious congregations exist as communities of memory and hope. A congregation like ours exists to remind us of what truly matters in life, to let us affirm and reaffirm all that gives life joy and meaning, to help us raise our children to be kind and generous. A religious community exists because deep down we know we need each other. A religious community exists because together we can be strong and do so very much more to serve our community. We exist to bear witness that we can be faithful to our vision of a loving community, what Jesus called the kingdom of God. We can be deeply religious people without retreating into ignorance, superstition and fear. This is a message our neighbors need to hear. There is a better way. Fear not! Come with us. The world where science and religion dwell together in harmony and peace is a wonderful place, a place filled with awe, with joy, with love.

The ongoing disputes about creationism and intelligent design are signs of a frightened, troubled world. Let us resist the misguided efforts to teach superstition in place of science.

But let us also remember that resisting ignorance is not enough. We must bear witness, with our words and with our actions, to the good news of another way. We have much to do.

May we be living witnesses, may our lives speak powerfully, of a religion that embraces life, deep spirituality, enduring love, and the wonders of science. So may it be.

Amen.