Recently, I’ve joined in a discussion on the Outpost Gallifrey forum on Intelligent Design. The question of origins is a very important one when considering the truth of Christianity. Whether the story of creation as described in Genesis is true, and in what sense (literal, symbolic, allegorical etc.) it is supposed to be true, has big implications for the way the rest of the Bible should be interpreted and for its credibility as the word of God.

So I’ve been reading that discussion, looking at various links given, and have concluded that there is no reason why science should exclude the possibility of an Intelligent Designer if there is evidence for it. I think there’s a great deal of squeamishness about the idea of “design” among many in the scientific community because of the blatant religious motivations of the Intelligent Design movement. However, this does not automatically invalidate their arguments or claims. Crick and Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA, set out to be scientists because they wanted to find naturalistic explanations for things that had been used to support religion, such as the difference between living and nonliving things. That they had ulterior motives doesn’t in any way undermime the value or importance of their contribution. So if the ID crowd have any evidence for their claims, their motivation is scientifically irrelevant.

The Intelligent Design movement claims that there is evidence to support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer of life. One of the books I’m reading at the moment covers some of these. It isn’t solely about the question of origins, so I’ll give a general introduction first.

The book I’ve been reading is Total Truthby Nancy Pearcey, with a foreword by Phillip E Johnson of ID movement fame. Subtitled “Liberating Christianity from its cultural captivity”, it is aimed at breaking down the division of truth into two different realms – on the one hand, the realm of public, objective facts and on the other, the realm of private, subjective values. It argues against the confining of religion to the private, subjective realm, arguing that if religion, in particular Christianity, is true, then it needs to be true in the realm of facts and not just the realm of values, and indeed, that if Christianity is not true factually then it cannot be true in the realm of values. Truth cannot be neatly divided in such a way. The book argues the need to put the case for Christianity to be true as a comprehensive worldview, which impacts every area of life, not just the private and personal. It argues that the real conflict lies on the level of worldviews. Although it sometimes oversimplifies or overgeneralises in its overview, the book presents an excellent case here on why Christianity is so ineffective in our culture, and what we should be doing to make Christianity intellectually robust and relevant to the whole of life.

Pearcey then takes the question of origins as an example, and devotes a section to the impact of the Darwinian worldview. The book claims that Darwinism is only so compelling on the basis of various philosophical/religious assumptions. She argues that the Darwinian worldview means the death of objective truth, and attempts to sketch a positive case for Intelligent Design.

Pearcey claims “There are three main areas where exciting new evidence for design is being uncovered: (1) the world of the cell (biochemistry), (2) the origin of the universe (cosmology) and (3) the structure of DNA (biological information)”.

Her arguments for design include:

• Irreducible complexity – some biological structures, especially the cell, only work if all the complex, interdependent components are fully working, and so in principle cannot develop in small, gradual steps.
• The universe is “fine tuned” for life – The universal constants and so on are all fine-tuned to be able to support life. There are many different variables, that if slightly different, would make life impossible. (However, the book doesn’t answer Douglas Adams’ “Puddle” argument, that life develops to fit the universe it is in, and so for us to say that the universe is designed for life is like the water of a puddle saying the hole in the ground it is in is designed for it to fit into)
• The highly specified, complex biological information of DNA displays “specified complexity” – under Dembski’s “Explanatory Filter”, which purports to give criteria for deciding whether something is due to chance, law, or design, DNA displays a complexity that in principle cannot be generated merely by chance plus law-like processes.
• Information requires an intelligent source – most of the sequences of chemical “letters” in DNA are chemically arbitary. So where does the cell’s “linguistic convention” come from? DNA is the medium, not the message, and to look for the origins of the information necessary for life on the level of natural causes is to address the problem “at the wrong conceptual level”. Genetic information must come from the realm of information and intelligence.

Anyway, I’ve not yet decided either way on this, so I’m going to continue reading up on the subject to try and give both sides of the argument a fair hearing. Any comments, arguments, links to books or articles warmly welcomed – just use the comments feature!