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Though a rare occasion, I’m always surprised to meet someone who doesn’t accept evolution and natural selection. To me, these are matters of fact. The evidence is so convincing that their untruth would mean an arrantly chaotic breakdown of the world as I know it. In short, mentally devastating.
I’ve come to believe though that I will always be surprised to hear someone advocate something other than Darwin’s emblematic doctrine, like creationism or intelligent design… the reason being simply that I profess forbearance, when really I’m just feeding a self-serving bias disguised as good will. Thus, I convinced myself of being generally tolerant of opposing views (at least enough to keep my mouth shut), and yet here I was finding it odd and ridiculous that some people believe that we, the human race, actually have or have had a conscious designer.
Before I get way ahead of myself though, let me preface this discussion by saying that the cause for my concern here is not so much religion as it is intelligent design. Obviously, the one is not at all disjoint from the other, and I realize that any word on intelligent design necessitates some mention of its religious implications (these I will address in brief). Still, let it be said that intelligent design poses some epistemological “issues” that, in my opinion, should warrant caution and skepticism regardless of spiritual alignment.
I believe the debate is easily resolved. Unfortunately, the caveats and the asides and all the pedantic technicalities of inference and argument make for a generally obscure imbroglio of politicians, scientists, philosophers, and religious thinkers chasing each others’ tails. As if you’ve never witnessed that before…
So to start, what does intelligent design offer us? Assuming I believed the theory, to what extent would I be more confident or steadfast in my understanding of life in this universe? On this planet? Show me some indication that there exist or have existed intelligently posited design decisions in the primal creation of some part of this world.
That’s about as histrionic as I plan to get.
An established fact, evolution is supported by theories — yes, theories — that are further supported by observable, tangible evidence. Intelligent design is not. Rather, it is supported by a single claim: that the complexity and functionality of the universe cannot be sufficiently explained by random chance or naturally occurring phenomena and therefore must have, at one time, been shaped by the hands of a willful creator. To the credit of the human imagination, this claim takes on several forms in the literature, but all such renditions essentially say the same thing: that the universe was built with purpose.
I have no idea what that purpose is.
Anyway, since it offers no observable evidence, I am tempted to say, as has been said before, that intelligent design is little more than an argumentative machine designed to caution people against evolution. It provides a framework for claiming simply what is not, rather than convincingly suggesting what is. I personally have no difficulty making this distinction, but that is because I am mostly incapable of faith. That is, the lack of experimental or empirical testimony for intelligent design is enough for me to dismiss it as a falsely ambitious shot in the dark. But what of you? There’s roughly an eighty-five percent chance that you, in particular, believe in the existence of some deity. Certainly, to believe in God is to accept intelligent design, so if you are such a believer, then in effect, I have charged you with being delusional.
But you’re not, right? If there’s one thing you’re completely sure of in life, it’s your faith, isn’t it?
It empowers you to behold a being you will never see with your own eyes. One whose words you will never hear with your own ears and whose guidance you will witness only implicitly. So it seems that while my notion of truth is bounded by the limitations of basic, sensory observation, yours seems to extend infinitely. My question to you then comes to mind purely out of curiosity:
What virtues have you been granted that I haven’t?
References
- My brother, Brian!
- http://www.wikipedia.org (Articles: Intelligent Design, Darwinism)
- Patrick W. Gavin: Defending intelligent design after Dover
- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html