Darwin or Design?

Last Friday and Saturday I attended an interesting conference of the above name organised by the Centre for Intelligent Design (ID). The venue was the very comfortable and attractive Elim Pentecostal Conference Centre in the beautifully situated village of West Malvern.

The speakers were firstly Professor John Lennox , professor of mathematics at Oxford, well known for his books ('God's Undertaker - Has Science buried God?'; 'God and Stephen Hawking'; and more recently 'Seven Days that Divide the World' and 'Gunning for God'); and also for being one of the few men that Richard Dawkins is willing to debate in public; and secondly Doug Axe of the Biologic Institute in California, an ID organisation. Axe gave us two clear and careful papers on how areas of biology are undermining the theory of evolution, but it was John Lennox's two more general papers that were the main attraction for me at least - along with two very stimulating Q&A sessions.

Prof Lennox began by saying that every scientist is confronted with evidence of a designed universe and that most will admit this even if they reject a designer. The reason why the idea of design is controversial is that religion and science are deemed to be inimical and intelligent agency is usually identified with God. What we have is a world-view conflict. He helpfully discussed the case of Galileo who was not challenging 'the church' initially, so much as an Aristotelian world-view held by the scientific establishment as well as by the church of his time. The irony is, said Prof Lennox, that (following Whitehead etc) modern science would not have been possible without confidence in a lawgiver.
There are two mutually opposed world-views - materialism, and that which allows for transcendence. The result of materialism is that one ends up with a 'very tiny' human being - the'self-contempt of man' as Nietzsche said. 'Scientism' (Peter Atkins, Dawkins, Sam Harris et al) says 'What science cannot tell us man cannot know'. But where, for example, do ethical convictions come from? 'Bottom up or top down'? 'The sense of the world must lie outside the world' (Wittgenstein).
There are two questions in ID which should be kept separate: 1. Is there evidence of design? and 2. Who is the designer? The first question is scientific; the second is religious.

In his second paper Prof Lennox addressed the wide ranging question: why does it matter? He embraced a number of questions that had been asked during the conference. He touched on issues he had raised earlier, discussed world-views a little (materialism, pantheism, theism) and dealt with two matters which he believes are crucial in dealing with atheism: the first is that it undermines rationality - how can an atheist/evolutionist trust his own brain? How can an evolved brain be interested in truth? Why is it not simply interested in successful reproduction? Secondly, theists must insist that the existence of a law (eg gravity) does not do away with a designer. A law in itself is not an explanation for anything. It simply describes how something works. Yet even top scientists keep saying that because we have a law, we can dispense with the lawgiver.

Other important arguments are: from cosmology which provides evidence for design and is quite independent of evolution; and the highly current issue of information (DNA, the human genome etc) which is supremely important and with which evolutionist struggle at present.

All design, he insisted more than once, begins with a complete idea - it does not begin with one bit and then add another bit and grow piecemeal, which is what evolutionists expect us to believe.

So it was very stimulating. But what of the ID movement itself? Why, some people there were asking, are scientists so sceptical of it (well they knew that really) but more, why are some Christians sceptical of it?

Let me suggest briefly two reasons - both limitations which I believe ID should acknowledge and work with - I am not suggesting they are fatal flaws with ID but simply issues which cause reserve in some quarters.

The first is to do with the limits of science. Intelligent design is really a scientific theory. It is a theory of great explanatory power, but from the scientific point of view it should be based on evidence (no problem there ) but also be willing to yield to any contrary evidence and better theories. An 'ID movement' gives the impression that people are committed to a theory and want to promote that rather than be 'scientific' and be willing to follow the evidence wherever it takes them. ID as a 'movement' gives the impression that it is science with an agenda and that inevitably that agenda may just interfere with the objectivity to be rightly expected of scientists. It is in danger, if that were the case, of being little better than what we accuse the evolutionists of being.

One may say that a Christian of course will inevitably believe in a designer. Correct, in that he believes in God, but in his science he should be prepared to cope with any evidence he might find that, say, contradicted the theory of design. That is not impossible; there are plenty of things that challenge our faith in a good God and a purposeful God - evolutionists are throwing them up all the time, even though we know in the big picture God will always be vindicated. But science is not about God's ultimate vindication; it is about what can be discovered and analysed here and now. And ID may be suspected, as some at the conference said, of being a cover for crypto- creationists unless they can show they really do science wherever the evidence leads, and for the sake of Truth, not just supporting their theory of design.

I am not suggesting ID scientists are anything other than scientists of complete integrity ; I am saying that they perhaps need to do more to make sure this comes across.

The second reason for reserve is theological. There is firstly the issue as to where belief in a designer gets you - Muslims can give you a good argument for design or from design which in many ways differs little from a Christian's account. I know unbelievers who will often say they are convinced of God's existence because of the wonderful world we live in. But there is another argument along these lines. In Romans 1:19,20 Paul says 'For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and invisible nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.'

Now where is there mention of a designer there? We tend to assume Paul is speaking of people knowing that God is the designer in these verses. But is he? 'Eternal power' and 'divine nature' may include the fact that God is designer, but then again it may not, and may include things that are deeper than and perhaps different from 'design'.

So perhaps design, and the fact that God is designer, are not the most important things that can be said about God. It certainly is not the thing Paul seems to major on here. So when we are evangelising, we know we have a good friend in the mind of the believer - a witness to God's existence, eternal power and divine nature (and knowledge of judgement - Rom 1:32), but it seems that Paul is saying that this is something more powerful than the inference from nature that he is a designer. And is not perception (Rom 1:20) a different and deeper thing than inference or induction?

This is not to say that the argument from design has no uses, and with some people and in some contexts it may be very helpful, but it is not perhaps the hugely important thing that some people think - and they think so largely, one suspects, because it is the most obvious response to evolutionism and it is also the thing to which scientific evidence can point most easily. But that is to limit theology by the limits of science where we should be guided by the Word of God.