Our recent coffee
table book discussions proposed intelligent design as a requirement for the
books’ subject matter. The personal appeal of the volumes displayed on our sun
room coffee table or the tables in our doctor’s waiting room often depends on
our ability to identify a mind speaking through the book’s pages. As we thumb
through the pages of a Chronicle of the
American Automobile, or peruse photograph-rich Cabin Fever to appreciate the architectural design and appeal of
early vacation camps and dwellings, or even exult in pictures and descriptions
of the unique beauty, behaviors and functions of creatures in National
Geographic’s Animal Encyclopedia, we
are left with an inescapable impression that design surrounds us everywhere.
Moreover, the designers’ creative mental blueprints speak more powerfully
beyond physical designs.
Returning to over
1000 high quality photographs and 2500 written descriptions of animals in the
National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia,
the impressions of intelligent design are ubiquitous and overwhelming. The
former buzz term intelligent design (ID)
does not appear anywhere in this 2012 published volume authored by Dr. Lucy
Spelman. We did not expect the term to appear in a secular science book. What
is highly unusual, however, is that the term evolution does not appear anywhere in the text either. I have long
observed that repeated and wearying use of the term evolution does nothing to fortify the concept of naturalistic
evolution in a book not written explicitly about evolutionary theory. Rather,
frequent use of this word serves more aptly as cheerleading propaganda in the
face of serious weaknesses in evolutionary theory.
Intelligent design
has been touted as a relatively recent religious concept sometimes standing in
for or supplementing the scriptural doctrine of creation. The willful
production of designed features in our cosmic domain by the Biblical Creator
and the process of supernatural creation in
the beginning or at intervals since
the beginning both speak of the work of the God of the Bible. Whether or
not the terms intelligent design and creationism are interchangeable, one
thing is certain: In our modern culture, both intelligent design and
creationism are characterized as non-science by our modern evolutionary
scientific elite. Even theistic evolutionists disparage intelligent design and
creationism on grounds ID and creationism are non-science.
The intense secular
effort to remove discussion of life’s development from any reference to God is related
to the effort to preserve the distinction between science and non-science. This
distinction is frequently an effort to deny the reality of God and God’s work
as designer and creator. Pronouncing concepts of theistic design and creation
non-science, unscientific, or pseudoscience obscures the more important quest
for truth concerning the origin and history of man and life on this planet. The
science profession has succeeded in establishing science as unable and
unwilling to consider evidence for design features and creation events,
especially if that evidence points toward a supernatural
adequate cause and away from a natural
adequate cause.
Ian Hutchinson,
professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT recently generated
discussion based on distinctions between science and non-science. What
distinguishes science from non-science? We might ask if intelligent design is
science or non-science? Or is it pseudoscience? Hutchinson claims that the
current opinion in philosophical circles is that the demarcation between
science and non science has no clear solution, but there are “intuitive ways”
by which science is identified.
One of Hutchinson’s
identifiable characteristics of science is clarity.
Hutchinson may be more confident in clarity
as an intuitive means of science identification than the stiff, scholarly
characterization of methodological naturalism (MN) as an identifier of science.
This blog has repeatedly described the science profession’s embrace of MN which
does not permit scientists to include any supernatural considerations in their
explanations of reality. In brief, they practice science AS IF God neither
exists nor ever existed. Hutchinson accurately describes the codification of
science… “For much of the twentieth century philosophers of science sought
mightily for methodological descriptions or definitions of science: either to
identify and explain the methods that science uses to obtain its knowledge, or
more modestly to supply criteria that distinguish science from non-science.”
What about the
public view of ID and creationism as they have been characterized in the 21st
century? Are ID and creationism religious concepts? Are ID and creationism true?
According to the clarity by which ID and creationist conclusions about the
world of living things are manifest, we posit that adherents of ID and
creationism hold a strongly credible position. Humans possess a strong
intuitive belief in supernatural design features and supernatural creation. In
addition, realities of design features surround us everywhere we look, even
within our coffee table volumes. Intuitive beliefs in concepts of intelligent
design and supernatural creation supplement rational beliefs. It is our
position that plentiful evidences of design features surround us everywhere and
that historic evidences of sudden creation events overwhelm evidences for
gradual, naturalistic evolution.
