The theology of Intelligent Design
This post comes from one of my recent posts to an email forum where Intelligent Design has come up again (thanks, in this case, to a recent BBC Radio 4 programme about it). The crucial point, it seems to me, when discussing ID in Christian circles isn’t to debate the science – that will sort itself out and, anyway, most people don’t have the background to understand properly the arguments being made by the ID crowd. Rather, we need to think clearly about the theology of this theory. When parts of the Christian Church are proclaiming ID as part of the Christian faith, we need to look carefully to see whether it is, in fact compatible with that faith. And I believe that it isn’t. It has serious theological problems that arise from the compromises that were made when devising it.
In what follows, I’m using “Intelligent Design” in its currently best known meaning – the theory espoused by Michael Behe, the Discovery Institute etc. that states that evolution is insufficient to explain all details of living organisms. That is, evolution does happen, but some structures (they use examples like the bacterial flagella and the blood clotting system of mammals) are “irreducibly complex” and could not have evolved. Instead, they say that a Designer is required to explain them (although the nature of this Designer is carefully never spelled out, the fact that the major backers of ID are all conservative evangelicals is something of a giveaway).
Now, as we’ve discussed here before, there are serious scientific flaws in the theory of ID. The most basic being:
- that it’s not scientific in the first place (Behe has had to admit this in court)
- that the idea of “irreducible complexity” is itself flawed because it simply doesn’t account for incremental improvements to a system
- that it is fundamentally an argument from incredulity (“I can’t imagine how this could have happened, therefore it can’t have happened”), and
- that there has been no scientific research undertaken (as far as anyone can tell), and certainly none published – the entire campaign exists only in pop science books, magazine articles and speeches.
However, my personal problem with ID isn’t the science; left only to the scientific aspects, ID would rapidly fall and cease to be an issue. No, the problem is one of theology. ID is represented as being the way to “reconcile” modern biological science with a traditional Christian worldview in which God created the world – the rhetoric often involves a rejection of a “mechanistic worldview” that is claimed to be “behind” the theory of evolution. So, let’s talk a bit about the theology behind ID, as I understand it.
The single greatest theological flaw in Intelligent Design (it seems to me) is that, contrary to its claims and intentions, it fails to take seriously the nature of God as Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. Indeed, the system that it espouses is dualist (divided between God and not-God) and relegates God to work only in small parts of the history of life. This is because it concedes that evolution explains much of the history of life – but then feels the need to add an extra layer of “divine” intervention on top of that. In other words, they aren’t happy to say that God is really working through evolution. To feel that God is really in charge, they need to see specific instances in which evolution doesn’t explain things, hence the search for “irreducibly complex systems” and other similar structures. Thus, instead of being able to say comfortably (with mainstream Christianity through the centuries) that God created and sustains the whole of Creation, they are actually saying that most features of living organisms are explained not by God but by evolution – which they are thus framing as “just natural law”, operating separately from God. God is only responsible for a few crucial features.
By contrast, traditional Christian belief has been that God is behind and beneath everything. I (and many other Christians) would maintain that God is responsible for every feature of living organisms, in the sense that God sustains and orders Creation – not that God controls every event in the Universe but that God plans, nurtures and sustains Creation. I resist strongly efforts such as those made by ID to divide Creation up into “the bits God controls” and “the bits that God doesn’t control”. This tendency is intrinsic to the “God of the gaps” nature of ID; the system cannot be rescued from this criticism by tweaking it because the flaw is absolutely fundamental to the attempt to patch “God activities” onto an explanation that otherwise attempts to correspond to the findings of science. Simply asserting that, in fact, God also works through evolution leaves the whole point of ID vacant – if God can do that, why is there this extra layer of intervention? The problem is inherent in the dualistic approach of ID; any attempt to solve it will lead ID either to become straight science (by removing the element of design from it) or straight Creationism (by saying that God is the sole and direct cause of everything), or to remain the illegitimate child of both (by saying that, for God really to control things, there must be extra-natural design events).
To say that God is “behind” evolution is the same as to say that God is “behind” gravity. We don’t any longer look to God for an explanation of how the planets move in their orbits – although, in the past, that was the only explanation available. Rather, we know that their movements are controlled by natural forces (gravity in this instance), and say that God partakes in this because of God’s nature as Creator and Sustainer. No one would (I think) try to claim that we need to patch in divine activities to explain anomalies such as the current Voyager anomaly, or the deviations in Mercury’s orbit that were unexplained until Einstein’s theory of gravity supplanted Newton’s. No, we are quite happy to say that it is merely that our understanding of the natural forces is incomplete. Similarly, then, when we say that evolution controls the development of living things, we are not cutting God out of the equation – we are merely understanding God’s tools better. God is still Creator and Sustainer; God is still at the centre; and God is still Sovereign. Biology isn’t slipping out of God’s control. It’s merely a matter of our learning about mechanisms. There may be theological implications to this new learning – but if we are learning to read Creation better, we are reading a book that bears the imprint of its Creator.
pax et bonum
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drmoose () (URL)
4:12pm on 22 February 2006
Hammertime () (URL)
4:13pm on 24 February 2006
Whether ID is Creationism repackaged, I’ll leave to others – it always claims not to be but lots of people make that allegation. The point here is that, by trying to patch together special design with evolution, it is (counter to the intentions of those who framed it) intrinsically dualist. This is because the system has relinquished logical consistency to try and satisfy both sides. The Creationist can say that God created everything as it is, and that everything is precisely how God wanted it. ID cannot say that. The evolutionist can say that the Universe follows God’s plan not because God controls every tiny detail but because God nurtures and sustains it. ID cannot say that. Instead, ID says that most stuff happens without God directly willing it – but that some other stuff is due to direct action by God. And we’re not talking miraculous signs, here. We’re dealing with basically hidden, behind-the-scenes matters that have been conceived of only within the past few decades and can be discussed by a tiny proportion of the world’s population. ID necessarily involves a division between acts of God and acts of Nature (which is most of what happens).
(I’ve moved the discussion of science to the Darwin’s Birthday II thread, so as to try and keep the science and theology fairly separate. I hope that’s OK!)
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
11:58pm on 24 February 2006
Is it random mutations or God-selected mutations that drive evolution? It seems to be either-or to me. He’s doing it or he isn’t. I don’t feel that is a false dilemma, as any percentage of direction is still direction!
Hammertime () (URL)
9:42pm on 02 March 2006
I quite agree – direction, control, design are all effectively synonymous here.
Evolution is not driven by mutation. Mutation provides the raw material, nothing more. The driving force, the thing that makes the process non-random is natural selection. There’s nothing random about selection – this is a directional force.
I do not believe that God intervenes in the detailed, intricate way that would be required for God to be “behind” evolution. For God to act in this way would effectively require God to control every event from the molecular scale on up, and we simply do not have any Biblical evidence for God acting like that – this would be a puppet Universe. Rather, I believe that God sustains and nurtures Creation. This world follows God’s plan not because God is continually acting within Creation but because God nurtures it, encourages it, shapes it. The mechanistic view is not a good one, it seems to me. We need a more organic, relational way of talking about it.
I hope that helps!
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
10:04pm on 02 March 2006
Martin LaBar () (URL)
1:47pm on 26 April 2006