Is Intelligent Design faith-based? A response to Melissa Cain Travis
Many people are aware of the debate which has been ongoing between naturalists and theologians since Darwin first published on his theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Unfortunately, however, since it’s always the squeaky wheel which gets the grease, most people only ever hear about this subject in terms of science-denying Young Earth Creationists standing opposed to godless heathen anti-theist scientists. The truth is that there exists quite a spectrum of middle ground, on the subject. There are theists who keep strict separation of their scientific peanut butter from their theological chocolate, and there are atheists who believe that there does exist some metaphysical design to the universe. One such middle premise which has been gaining immense public popularity, in the last few decades, is the Intelligent Design movement. Proponents of Intelligent Design say that it is an open and objective scientific study based on the hypothesis that at least some of the complexity of the cosmos is better explained by the intercession of an intelligent entity than by blind, natural processes. Opponents say that it is just faith-based Creationism cloaked in a pseudoscientific cowl.
In her blog– Science, Reason, & Faith— a Christian apologist named Melissa Cain Travis responds to some critics of ID. According to Ms. Travis, these sources (which apparently include the Huffington Post) jumped on the fact that an Intelligent Design presentation was hosted by a church in order to claim that ID is therefore religiously motivated. Ms. Travis rightly corrects some non sequitur argumentation which she has perceived in these sources. However, I will contend that even with such correction, Melissa Cain Travis is wrong to claim that Intelligent Design is not a faith-based movement.
Before I start into my argument, let’s take a look at the points which Ms. Travis specifically lists as correction to ID’s critics. Her first major point is that “There is a huge difference between an idea being inherently religious and an idea having positive implications for religion.” I absolutely agree with her, here. In the late 1920’s, when physicist Georges Lemaitre first began to speak to other scientists about his new idea– one which would eventually be called the “Big Bang”– a number of other men wrongly accused Lemaitre of incorporating his religious bias into his work in physics. You see, Lemaitre was a Jesuit priest as well as being a scientist, and prior to his work, the prevailing view was that the universe did not have an age, at all. The universe was static and eternal, and any intimation that it might have had a beginning must simply be this priest trying to shoehorn the cosmos into the first verses of Genesis and John’s Gospel. However, those early detractors were wrong. Lemaitre was not religiously motivated. He truly was just working from the data which already existed. As such, eventually, the scientific community revised its views on the subject, and Lemaitre’s theory was vindicated.
Her second point is that “ID theory does not constitute evolution denial.” While I cringe at her use of the word “theory” in this context, I will agree with her overarching statement. Intelligent Design models do not necessarily deny that evolution occurs. They don’t even necessarily deny that evolution specifically by natural selection occurs. They simply state that, for some specific processes, it is more likely that the process is the result of an intelligent intercessor than that it is the result of blind, natural laws. There are ID proponents, for example, who completely accept the vast majority of evolutionary biology, but hold that human rational consciousness must have been designed.
So, if I agree with Ms. Travis two main points, why is it that I disagree with her conclusion?
Intelligent Design proponents– including Ms. Travis– claim it to be a purely scientific, rational, and objective outlook on nature. And, once again, the primary claim of Intelligent Design is that there are certain occurrences in nature which are better explained by an intelligent intercessor than by natural processes. So, what scientific observations do ID researchers proffer in support of this claim? The Discovery Institute, one of the leading organizations in the ID movement, maintains a page which purports to list over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting Intelligent Design. While there are a number of problems with many of the papers listed there, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that these are all legitimate scientific papers which yield uncontestable conclusions. How many of these papers give positive support to the claim that an intelligent intercessor could have produced any pattern found in either the laws of physics or in the complexity of life? How many hypothesize a mechanism by which an intelligent intercessor could even produce such design? How many show that intelligent intercession is at all possible in such processes, let alone a better explanation than blind physical law?
Not a single one.
For Intelligent Design to be at all reasonable, there must exist some intelligent intercessor which is not, itself, governed by the processes which are being hypothesized as having design. Proponents of Intelligent Design offer absolutely no observable evidence that such an intelligence can exist. Nor do they offer any mechanism by which such an intelligence could, say, fine-tune the gravitational constant of the universe or coerce genetic diversity into developing an eyeball over successive generations. If they cannot show that these things are even possible, how can they hope to show that such an intelligent intercessor is the better explanation of any given process?
Furthermore, the leading proponents of Intelligent Design often, themselves, link the movement to their religious views. The Discovery Institute’s own website says that the institution decries the denial of “the reality of God, the idea of the Imago Dei in man, and an objective moral order,” as well as the denying “the relevance of religion to public life and policy.” Dr. William Dembski, a PhD in mathematics and one of the senior fellows at the Discovery Institute, defends Intelligent Design against criticism from Biblical literalists by saying that “ID is part of God’s general revelation” and that “it opens the path for people to come to Christ.” Even the conference which Melissa Travis cites as having inspired her own post was called “REASONS: Conversations on Science and Faith.”
The simple truth of the matter is that proponents of Intelligent Design are presupposing, based on their particular faith, that a mechanism exists by which an intelligent agent can design nature. They give absolutely no scientific evidence that this is the case. Since Intelligent Design requires that both the intelligent agent and the mechanism by which it acts exist, and since the belief that such an agent and mechanism exist is not based upon any observable science, we must come to the conclusion that the belief is based upon faith. Despite Melissa Cain Travis’ protestations to the contrary, Intelligent Design is not simply an observable scientific model which happens to lend evidence to religious claims, similar to Lemaitre’s work. Intelligent Design is a movement which presents, as its central claim, an inherently faith-based assertion.