Intelligent Design

We were reminded on Australia Talks Back this week about the demand that the so-called theory of "Intelligent Design" should be taught in our schools. It is another one of these debates where the liberal intelligentsia are hoisted on their own petards....in wanting genuine scientific and open discussion they are open to be hijacked by those whose agendas are anything but.
That this "Intelligent Design" has some powerful backers we should be aware....it is of course a front for a more acceptable form of creationism. And as was alluded to on ATB it is not only a scientific and theological agenda that is being addressed here it is a political one.
Note this article here in the Seattle Intelligencer which alludes to Bush's role, even though it probably downplays it. There is a certain irony in that the Minister of Education, Brendan Nelson is purported to be an advocate of teaching this theory alongside evolution in our schools.(see here). Now it does seem to me that we should be open in what we teach, and there is nothing wrong with presenting competing theories....is this what will happen in the so-called "Christian" schools....I doubt it.. But surely we should only be teaching genuine alternatives. The Flat Earth theory is a competing theory but no one seriously suggests we should waste time in our schools addressing it. Are we actually witnessing Nelson, along with all other Cabinet Ministers attempting to placate the influential Christian right in its emergent forms like Hillsong in Sydney and Paradise in Adelaide.
When I was a teacher we faced this issue in a class which we were teaching about the fossil record....we simply said (aware that there were two JW's in the class) "Not everyone believes that this theory is correct." And left it at that.

Can I just say, as a convinced creationist, that I can see nothing wrong with the suggestion that the process of Evolution is the way God uses to create the world. There is intelligent design in evolution, the Intelligence...God, if you like, ....uses evolution, natural selection, random patterns...and so on to create as he wants/needs to create.
That we do not understand such things as why things are the way they are, only serves to show us that God's "intelligence" is not fully understood.
Yet! And it may never be "fully understood". What do you think?

Rearing its ugly head

I see in today's letters to the editor that the so called "intelligent design", raises its head yet again.
The writer bemoans intellectual critique that was offered earlier in the month which said that ID should be kept out of schools because it cannot be proved or sustained from the evidence.
"Aha" says the erstwhile writer. "If this is a reason for not teaching intelligent design, then it is the reason for not teaching evolution. Because evolution is a theory, and cannot be proved."
This is rather to miss the point. Virtually all education cannot be proved, it is 'theory'. That is it is open to test and then to being tested again and then again.
The writer rather misses the point that evolution as a theory undergoes continual testing and refinement.
I rather take the point that some (poor) scientists often treat theory as though it is fact, but no genuine scientist would do so. Everything surely is provisional, open to challenge and subject to refinement. Evolution has embraced this process, and continues to evolve! We are not at the point where Darwin began, and he would not expect us to be. The trouble with so-called intelligent design is that it wants to stand still at the eternal still point.
No education should stand still; history should grow and grow, any student of the Bible will tell you that it is not a static discipline. Language study that stand still goes backwards. Things change. (some previous thoughts about ID here)

More on "Intelligent Design"

It is worth printing this article from the English "Church Times" The article is called "Nature, red in tooth and claw"...without Googling what is the origin of the quotation?
The author, Giles Fraser, is Rector of Putney in the Diocese of London.

Does the existence of the Christian Right in the US constitute a disproof of the theory of intelligent design? The conservatives' latest fad is a film about penguins; and, just as they did with The Passion of the Christ, they have been bussing the faithful to the cinema.

The March of the Penguins has now become the second-highest-grossing documentary of all time, behind Fahrenheit 9/11 . It tells how a group of penguins trek across the ice to mate, and then huddle together to protect their eggs in freezing temperatures. Christian conservatives love it because, apparently, these penguins demonstrate the inherent naturalness of Christian family values.

Out of curiosity and mischievousness, I did a web search for "penguins" and "homosexuality", and chanced upon several versions of this story: "A German zoo's plans to tempt its gay penguins to go straight by importing more females has been declared a failure. The female penguins were flown in especially from Sweden in an effort to encourage the Humboldt penguins at the Bremerhaven Zoo to reproduce. But the six homosexual penguins showed no interest in their new female companions and remained faithful to each other. Zoo Director Heike Kueck said: 'The relationships were apparently too strong.'"

The existence of gay penguins - it would seem, in permanent, faithful, and stable relationships - throws into question the ways in which conservative Christians throw out terms such as natural and unnatural. "Natural" is a slippery word. Often it functions as some sort of divine kite-mark, offering a moral nihil obstat from the creator. Even atheists use natural as a mark of moral approval.

But I don't get it. Is cancer natural? Is the way the cat cruelly plays with the dying bird natural? Was Hurricane Katrina natural? Likewise, to call something unnatural indicates profound disapproval. But why? Is democracy natural, or a piece of Mozart, or most of the drugs that save lives every day?

What is topsy-turvy about the commitment of conservatives to Pingu's family values is that, while they bang on about natural and unnatural relationships, they consistently ignore the real threat to the natural: global warming.

Furthermore, though they prefer intelligent design to evolution, when it comes to politics, they are Darwinian, red in tooth and claw. In the light of the inequalities exposed in New Orleans, it is perplexing that conservative Christians don't seem to appreciate that it is the politicians they voted for who really subscribe to an ideology of the survival of the fittest.

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.

Reflecting the past

It's interesting to note the sorts of issues that have occupied the likes of me in the last few months.

• the building of a house over the road
• the saga of drug smugglers chief amongst them Ms Corby
• the many vagaries of our Federal government
• the state of the Anglican Church, worldwide and in Adelaide
• the hunt for a new Bishop
• the delights of family life and the sheer pleasure of the brashness of my daughters
• my changing life and the tiny little struggles that I delight in and/or which infuriate me
• the issue of capital punishment
• prejudice against homosexuals
• Australian xenophobia
  
• the demise of political debate
• the sadness of terrorism
• the crassness of huge sectors of the media
• ...and of course..Unintelligent thinking about intelligent design

There is much to amuse the idle mind, do I yet qualify to be a dilettante?

To be or not to be

It will be interesting to read Stephen Hawking's latest book The Grand Design which will no doubt create yet another furore in the science v. God debate. (see a couple of good articles here and here)

Basically he seems to suggest that Newton's idea that the world shows order must infer the existence of God.

Hawking's present thinking seems to be that the laws of the universe work of their own accord and therefore do not require an initial impetus (big bang). I am sure it is much more sophisticated than this!

I just don't think that this is where the dialogue of modern faith and modern science is centred. It may be where Newton was, it is not where we are.

Indeed, Garth Barber a cosmologist and member of the Society for Ordained Scientists said: 'I don't believe in a God of gaps but in the creator of the laws of science. The laws of science are God's laws of creation.'

That, I would have to say is where I sit. This way, which in Hawking's opinion does not require God, seems to me to have all the characteristics of the depth and profundity of God given creation.

That good science reporter, Robyn Williams, suggests on the news today that straight-forward intelligent people on both sides of the discussion (theology and science) don't see any conflict between science and belief in God. Me neither!!