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Do we need evolution as a basis for a truly spiritual sense of nature
and the mysteries of Creation?

Charles E. Little, Discussion Leader

It's nearly impossible these days to avoid reading about “intelligent design” and why, according to the President of the United States, it is okay to teach it in public-school science classes as an alternate theory to Darwinian natural selection. This proposition has now (as of December 20, 2005) been thoroughly discredited by Federal District Court Judge John E. Jones III (a Bush appointee) who called the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board's decree that ID be proposed to biology students as an alternative to natural selection, “A breathtaking inanity.” In Kitzmiller v. Dover, Jones found that “the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom . . . ”

Despite the Jones opinion, considered to be carefully reasoned, highly detailed, and legally solid, one noted ID apologist confidently predicted that the intelligent design movement would become much stronger within five to ten years. Those against teaching ID as science acknowledge that the ruling will not put an end to the movement and that states and localities will have to deal with the issue for some time to come. In Kansas, the state's board of education voted 6 to 4 in November, 2005, to redefine science to include supernatural explanations of natural phenomenon and explicitly to teach anti-evolutionary viewpoints. No one has yet predicted that they will rescind this action.

For the most part, proponents of the idea of putting ID into the science curriculum base their argument on two propositions. One is that because we have not learned everything about how natural selection works, we have, in effect, learned nothing and the entire Darwinian construct can be reduced to a nonscientific notion that can be taught alongside other nonscientific notions in science classes. That's the trouble with calling natural selection a “theory,” which in the ordinary meaning of the term it is not. A scientific theory, in fact, requires the most rigorous form of analysis.

The argument that there are gaps in our knowledge is also the basis of Creationism, featuring the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, leading to the assertion that suburban-like humans commingled with the dinosaurs, as in TV’s Flintstones. Even without the absurdities of Creationism, the anthropocentrism which lies at the base of ID (which some describe as “stealth creationism” in that it masquerades as science without being capable of scientific analysis) is clearly evident in Viennese Cardinal Christoph Schönborn's recent New York Times op-ed piece. Schönborn quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins,” adding that John Paul II did not, really, endorse evolution as is widely understood. The point is arguable, as in fact, Schönborn does. (The late Pope said that “The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration.” Nothing necessarily ID about with that.) The Catechism, says Schönborn (who was its chief editor), goes on, “We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the produce of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance.” Of course, this appeal to authority (his own), in a literal reading, runs smack into the Darwinist postulate that it is exactly blind fate or chance in the form of random mutation that enables species to adapt to their environments and, perforce, evolve.

The other proposition of ID (and it relates to the first) is how can nature be so perfect, so complex, so marvelous if not the product of a designer? This is what the noted professor of philosophy Daniel C. Dennett (Tufts University) calls a “cognitive illusion.” The illusion arises because the mechanisms of adaptation are difficult understand and one needs to make sense how certain evolved structures came into being. Dennett cites the human eyeball, which is touted as being of divine design by the ID people, but whose evolution can be clearly discerned, and is far from perfect in any event.

In the end, though, insofar as teaching ID in biology 101 is concerned, it matters little about perfection, complexity, and marvelousness, for as Dennett says, there is no scientific content in the theory of intelligent design and therefore cannot be taught as science, q.e.d.

But does that mean there is no God in nature? Tom Mahon, a writer on technology with a profound interest in its association with religion, addresses this very topic. “It's not that there is no god (a placeholder word for a reality we can't fathom). It's that we refuse to abandon the image of a static, unmoving, implacable God, even as we discover we live in a fluid, dynamic, evolving, expanding, big-bang, quantum, relativistic, uncertain, indeterminate universe.”

And so, on the one hand, it is not the biologist’s fault that some insist on supernaturalism in order to feel comfortable in a universe whose forces cannot be fully understood. But on the other hand, it's not the theologian's fault that what Cardinal Schönborn calls “neo-Darwinists” sometimes cross the line by suggesting that random mutation and natural selection must, perforce, lead to atheism.

Many, including especially the prominent Georgetown theologian John F. Haught (who is critical of Schönborn's views), point out that just as ID is not a scientific idea, so Darwinism, neo or not, isn't a theological idea. (Although ID is “appalling theology,” in Haught's phrase, and not acceptable to serious theologians.) Natural selection is, however, not only a fact of life, but necessary for a full appreciation of God-in-Nature, for it provides us with a sense of openness to future possibility. This view, says Haught, “harmonizes nicely with the eschatological orientation of biblical religion.” And, he adds, “In the depths of Darwin's recipe, it seems to me, there resides what we may be so bold as to call the ‘promise of nature.’”

It seems to me that when and if Haught's conjunction is understood and accepted—as it must be, in my view, by people of faith who seek an earth-based spirituality that does not quarrel with science—then perhaps we can move toward what he calls a “natural religion,” in which the evolving mysteries of God's Green Earth are not denied, but celebrated.

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References and Sources

Judge John E. Jones III, Federal District Court opinion on Kitzmiller v. Dover, December 20, 2005. Available at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/educate/ktzmllrdvr122005opn.pdf.

National Center for Science Education, transcripts, statements, and other materials from Kitzmiller v. Dover, available at www.ncseweb.org.

Christoph Schönborn, “Finding Design in Nature,” New York Times, 7 July 2005, p. A27. Available at http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0060.html.

Daniel C. Dennett, “Show Me the Science,” New York Times, 28 August 2005, p. 11. Available at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett05/dennett05_index.html.

Tom Mahon, “Intelligent Evolution: An Essay in Faith and Science.” Available at http://reconnecting-calm.blogspot.com/2005/08/intelligent-evolution.html.

John F. Haught, “Darwin, Design, and the Promise of Nature.” The 2004 Boyle Lecture, St. Mary-le-Bow, London, England. Available at http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk/news/boyle2004.htm. See also Haught’s statement on Kitzmiller v. Dover at http://www.aclu.org/evolution/statements/haught.pdf.