More about intelligent design

We will see more about “Intelligent Design” this week on the ABC’s 7.30 Report .What, you might ask is the problem with it? Surely Christians would want to believe what the Bible says…and isn’t that “intelligent design”?

Yes, I would say, I do want to believe what the Bible says. I do not want to believe what the Bible does not say ? I do not believe the Bible says that science is at odds with the Scriptures. I do not believe that the Bible says that if you accept scientific explanations then you automatically reject the Bible. That, as one commentator put it, is bad science and bad theology.
The account of the creation of the world in particular must be seen from a variety of different perspectives (there are at least two in the Bible), there are a range of scientific theories which address this issue. Now there is a lot of bad science around. Science is based on theory, that is, it is provisional. We adopt a theory and test it against the evidence. If the evidence fits we can keep on promoting it, but as knowledge increases theories can become less satisfactory. So they are modified. It is in this sense wrong to talk about Darwin’s theory of evolution, we are way beyond that. There is much about Darwin’s particular theories that has been rethought and found lacking, and so has been modified. This is as it should be.
The first year theology student would tell you that the Genesis accounts are meant to answer the theological question “why” the world was created, rather than the scientific “how”. Science cannot purport to address the theological questions, which it seems to me are much greater. Theology does not purport, likewise, to address the scientific….even though sometimes it may look as though it does. It is not essentially interested in the mechanics, it is interested in the motive. The two are different.
They are related, but they are not the same.
So we are looking forward to some good discussion this week.