Thoughts in a Haystack

Gerson seems implicitly to wrap up "evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change" in a big bundle, all equally factual and unworthy of further questioning. However, there's a huge difference between, on one hand, the first and last items in that list -- if by "evolution" you mean Darwinian theory as to the mechanism underlying evolutionary change -- and the second and third items, on the other.

Gerson also seems to think that no scientific notion could be a legitimate source of "tension" with faith. He writes about the Big Bang, observing that

the idea of a universe that began in a flash that flung stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies across the vast canvas of space is, to put it mildly, compatible with Jewish and Christian belief: "Let there be light."

Of course he's right, which is why some scientists have resisted the Big Bang: along with cosmic fine-tuning, it does appear to confirm a theistic view.

But to think that no assertion from science can challenge religion is to make your faith basically fatuous. If it so forgiving, so content-free, as to accommodate any statement whatsoever about the universe, about reality, valid or invalid, so long as the statement comes from a scientist, I don't see that as a formula for a religion that's worthy of consideration.

For example, the idea that biology gives no indication of purpose or creativity on God's or anyone else's part would seem to be, from the perspective of traditional Judaism or Christianity, a bridge too far. If Darwinism were right about that, it would surely undercut my own Jewish faith.

Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at The Discovery Institute and author of the New York Times best-seller Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, told CP on Tuesday that he also believes "the big bang theory supports a biblical understanding of creation."

"If you look at scientific history, the theory that persisted before the big bang was the steady state theory of the universe, which fits well with Carl Sagan's famous line: 'The universe is all that ever was, all that is, and all that ever will be,'" Meyer said. By suggesting a concrete beginning, the big bang hints toward creation, rather than the eternal universe, as proposed by Sagan and presented in the new series, "The Cosmos."

Meyer even suggests that the recent evidence for inflation supports the scriptural depiction of an expanding universe.

"We find repeated in the Old Testament, both in the prophets and the Psalms, that God is stretching or has stretched out the heavens," he noted, suggesting that there are "at least a dozen references" to this idea in Scripture.

"Space expanded very rapidly, and this is additional evidence supporting that inflation," he said, referring to the study. ...

Meyer's [sic] also pointed to three large scientific discoveries in the past century that supports the biblical account for creation: the big bang, which says, "the universe had a beginning;" "the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe," which claims the rules of matter work in a way best suited for human life; and evidence of the information-bearing properties of DNA that the basic building blocks of life have a sort of knowledge.

He also commented on his article, "The Return of the God Hypothesis," which he said explains that only theism, not deism, pantheism or materialism, can account for these new discoveries.

Meyer reiterated his belief that Christians must use the best available scientific evidence and the best available understanding of the Bible and reconcile the two.

No school board or school administrator may prohibit a teacher in public or nonpublic school from providing instruction on intelligent design or other related topics.

I wanted students in high school and college both to … you know … to hear both sides of the story, whether its global warming or environmentalism or evolution versus creationism.

And I think that our society has gotten to be real one sided in schools. Where the kids can't afford to go to a private school they should be able to have the both sides of the societal debate during school because we claim we want to get them ready for life and so that would be the way to go.

There were a lot of misconceptions out there about what the bill would do and there just no way to go against the misconceptions on the one side. On the other side, even though it was a good bill and even though the intentions were good and it had tons of support, I think the good that would have come from it would have been outweighed by the trouble that would have been caused with lawsuits with the state based on what's happened in other states and there are better ways to go about what I'd like to achieve for the teachers and for the students.

For me, the main idea for the bill was to make it so a student would have a choice whether to believe they came from some animal or developed from monkeys or some other mammal or amphibians or repti ... whatever they just are told they evolved from. They should have another side of the story saying, no, you're special, you were made for a reason. But we don't get that side in the schools and I just wanted to have a balance.

This leads to the second key point. A theory like Darwin's that purports to explain all of nature and of life itself cannot be separated from the metaphysical commitments of its founder.

... Meredith's downplaying of Darwin's religious views as a mere rejection of the young earth design argument à la William Paley is seriously misleading. Meredith winds up serving as an apologist for methodological naturalism at the expense of viable theism. He isn't the first to be so deluded. What apparently is true of God and money is also true of God and Darwinism: "No one can serve two masters" (Mattew [sic] 6:24).

Discovery of the so-called "God particle" not only helped two physicists win this year's Nobel Prize, it also unwittingly bolstered the arguments of the Intelligent Design movement, according to Southern Baptist scientists.

The particle, whose scientific name is the Higgs boson, derives its popular name from the title of the 1993 book, "God Particle," by atheist physicist Leon Lederman. However, "a closer consideration of the function and properties of the Higgs boson is very enlightening from a theistic perspective," Bruce Gordon, associate professor of the history and philosophy of science at Houston Baptist University, told Baptist Press in an email interview.

"In direct opposition to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg's remark that 'the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless,' we can only recommend the more obvious and rational view that the greater our comprehension of the universe, the more we should be given to doxology: The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psalm 19:1)," said Gordon, who also is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that plays a leading role in the Intelligent Design movement, which argues that the universe is the product of intelligence rather than blind chance. [Emphasis added]

William Nettles, professor of physics at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., agreed that discovery of the Higgs boson suggests the universe is orderly and designed, but he urged Christians not to blow the new scientific insight out of proportion.

The discovery "does not detract from the faith-held fact that God created the universe, and all things hold together in the Son," Nettles told BP. "We just have a better picture of God's details ... Our mission is still to bring glory to God through telling His Gospel to all.

The pastor of Cornerstone Ministries in Murraysville, Pa., last spring hosted a six-part series, Origins, in which he portrayed the teaching of evolution as a triumph of secularists and "neo-Darwinists" who want "to drive God from the marketplace and ... keep us from being able to give God the glory for what he's done."

"We are the spiritual children of the founders of this nation," Chapman said. "This has been stolen from us. We need to take it back and give it back to God."

Although Saccone said in an interview that the "academic freedom" bill had nothing to do with religion, he told the Origins class, "God is part of our government. We just need to get the word out. We, too, can turn back to our godly heritage."

As a physics teacher, he doesn't talk about biology, but introduces the concept of fine-tuning in the universe. ...

Brown used to teach origins by telling students how some people believe the universe was created, and others believe it just popped into existence. At the Discovery Institute's intelligent design seminar this summer, though, science research coordinator Casey Luskin advised him that approach was technically considered teaching intelligent design—and therefore illegal.

Johnson soon realized her new job environment would not be drastically different. While the school does believe the Bible is true, Pope John Paul II encouraged Catholics not to abandon science, which many took to mean embracing Darwinism. In her advanced biology class, she is allowed to teach the criticisms of Darwinian theory, but can't supply students with alternative possibilities. She can say, "Isn't God amazing?" while studying the design of kidneys, but can't say that it didn't come by evolution.

Ferrer believes Christians need to be the best students in the classroom. Then after they graduate, they should enter top-notch grad programs and places of influence in politics, business, and academia. Once Christians become professors or even college presidents, they have more power to change what is taught to the country's future leaders.

Martinez said attending the intelligent design seminar at the Discovery Institute this summer strengthened his faith: "I believe in the biblical frame of the origin of life. I think God came and put the conditions on Earth for life to begin." Martinez personally believes that biological life is young, perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but that the Earth itself is old. He believes Noah's flood was responsible for creating the fossil record.

She coaches students through experiments like extracting DNA from peas and fruit, and uses science to demonstrate the Bible's accuracy. (One example: Hyssop, a cleansing agent in the Bible, contains thymol, an antiseptic used in mouthwash.)

Every time I log into a computer and have to enter my password, I'm reminded of how impossible evolution is.

One little mistake on the keypad and I can't log in. There's even a website where I seem to be in permanent "log-in purgatory." I can't log in ever. Granted, it's operator error. But still …

How does this tie to evolution? Because if evolution were true, then we are to believe a whole series of complex sequences managed to get everything right – repeatedly.

Meyer adds, "It's just like in computer science. If you want to have a new function on your computer, you've got to have lots of code, lots of instruction. If you want to build these complex animal forms, we now know, you need information, you need instructions. And that's the crucial question that is really creating an impasse in evolutionary theory. Where does that information come from?"

Oh, I get it – "In the beginning was the Word …"

This week, an influential creation organization delivered a petition to Ball State University officials, urging them to protect the academic freedoms of a controversial science professor out of fears that an investigation into the teacher was "deliberately stacked" against him.

Jindal: "We have what's called the Science Education Act, that says if a teacher wants to supplement those materials, if the school board's OK with that, if the State school board's OK with that, they can supplement those materials.

"Bottom line, at the end of the day, we want our kids to be exposed to the best facts. Let's teach them about the Big Bang theory. Let's teach them about evolution. Let's teach them….

"I've got no problem if a school board, a local school board, says we want to teach our kids about creationism, that some people have these beliefs as well.

"Let's teach them about intelligent design.

So what happens when one who supports this very idea steps onto the grounds of a Christian institution? I came into the colloquium and especially the discussion in class wanting him to come out and defend against the many critiques of Intelligent Design. ...

Dr. Collins presented his points of view towards both the natural and spiritual world, but nowhere did he attempt to push ID down upon us or desperately defend his beliefs. What he did do was lay out the facts, definitions, and ideas behind Intelligent Design, describe what it means to be a good theological theory, and show those present many of the quotes and views of the leading names in the fields of science and religion that came before him. [Quote mines, anyone?]

... Dr. Collins doesn't necessarily support 100 percent of the views that more conservative ID proponents believe in. He is first and foremost a believer in the Lord, not a scientist. He doesn't define his life by what he has discovered or written about, but rather by where his heart is and how he acts through his beliefs. ...

He doesn't let his scientific values govern his core religious beliefs, and why should he? If someone is serious about following the Lord, then conforming to a certain scientific theory and all that comes with it seems extremely limiting because science itself is limited to the study of the natural world.

So, as far as the idea of Intelligent Design and all theories for that argument goes, there will always be critics and rightly so. But, as Dr. Collins showed, just because a scientist claims to support a certain theological idea, doesn't make him or her an unreliable scientist or a weak believer. It makes him or her a broken human saved by grace who uses this salvation to honor God through the study of the natural world. [Emphasis added]

Intelligent Design is a commonly accepted theory in the faith community used to explain the role of God in creation and human existence.

Collins is careful to point out the flaws that come with a belief in ID. The theory lends itself to propose "God created this, because it is 'design,' while God is not responsible for that, because it is not 'design.'" He also cautions against appealing to areas of ignorance for assertions in God, and resting faith on an absence in knowledge.

Intelligent design considers the evidence of nature and infers the activity of a designer. But science does not say who or what that designer is. It just doesn't, much as some believers might wish it did. On claims about the supernatural, ID is simply agnostic. It must be. Why can't these people understand that?

Isn't it interesting how often, confronted with scientific [!] evidence and arguments for design in nature, ID critics respond with theological countercharges. And they call folks like Stephen Meyer "preachers"?

TRUEU: DOES GOD EXIST?

By Stephen Meyer and Del Tackett-- TrueU is a DVD-based apologetics curriculum. Dr. Del Tackett, architect and voice of Focus on the Family's The Truth Project®, describes this endeavor this way:

Produced by Focus on the Family in conjunction with Coldwater Media, TrueU is an apologetics training series primarily geared to help prepare high school students for the rigorous challenges and attacks that will confront them on the university campus.

If Meyer can't adduce positive evidence that a designer created the Cambrian explosion—and I can't imagine how he could possibly do this—his argument would rest only on our current ignorance of why it happened (Emphasis added).

[Darwin] was a chauvinist pig that never evolved and believed women evolved less than men. Why are we taking a man like that and holding him up as an example to our children?

Considered in the context of the scientific method — the basic process that calls for scientists to observe, measure, experiment and test, revise and, if possible, disprove their hypothesis — intelligent design isn't science at all, opponents of intelligent design say.

They say the notion at the heart of the idea can't be scientifically tested or disproved. If the scientific method can't be applied to the idea, it isn't science and doesn't belong in a science classroom, they say. In essence, it's religion without using the word "God."

In Pennsylvania, the courts agree. In 2005, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that teaching intelligent design in public schools violates part of the First Amendment because it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Chapman, who hosts a weekly show called "Origins" on Cornerstone's Christian TV station, said schools should focus on sharing ideas and learning the truth. In particular, he advocates for teachers sharing alternate ideas — most notably intelligent design — on evolution.

Intelligent design isn't the same as creationism, he said. Creationism is a belief that God created man, animals and the earth in six days, Chapman said. Intelligent design, he said, is based on scientific evidence and points to a directed process and a designer, not necessarily God.

"Our kids shouldn't have to surrender their faith to get a good scientific education," Chapman said. "That's all I'm saying. The church and home have work to do to teach who that creator is and to bring them to know God."

[T]he [Pontifical Academy of Sciences] is run by staff that is friendly to scientific materialists and hostile to many orthodox believers who are scientists. It is not just the science issues of evolution where the blind spots appear, but also other biological and personal ethical issues. Voices normally hostile to Christian faith are considered acceptable at the Academy, while scientists who also are serious Christians and hold to Church doctrine often are not.

[T]he greatest challenge to Christianity today ... is not some other religion, but aggressive, evangelizing secularism. Materialism lies at the heart of this competitor philosophy (which might as well be a religion). It brooks no competition. At some point, the Church must deal with the source of the competitors' faith, not just the symptoms of it. Pope Benedict began that process of examination, but Pope Francis still has much to do if he wants to mobilize the Church on this crucial subject.

[There is] a need for greater intellectual clarity on the pseudo-scientific materialism that afflicts society as a whole, challenges the Church at a deep doctrinal level, and undermines faith, especially among the young and the educated elites.

What every theologian should know about creation, evolution and design

William A. Dembski

From its inception Darwinism posed a challenge to Christian theology. Darwinism threatened to undo the Church's understanding of creation, and therewith her understanding of the origin of human life. Nor did the challenge of Darwinism stop here. With human beings the result of a brutal, competitive process that systematically rooted out the weak and favored only the strong (we might say it is the strong who constitute the elect within Darwinism), the Church's understanding of the fall, redemption, the nature of morality, the veracity of the Scriptures, and the ultimate end of humankind were all in a fundamental way called into question. Without exaggeration, no aspect of theology escaped the need for re-evaluation in the light of Darwinism.

Well, a lot has happened since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Theology that is academically respectable has long since made its peace with Darwinism. Indeed, respectable theologians have long since had their understanding of the origin of life thoroughly informed by Darwinism and its interpretation of natural history. Thus when a group of Christian scholars who call themselves design theorists begin to raise doubts about Darwinism and propose an alternative paradigm for understanding biological systems, it is the design theorists, and not Darwin, who end up posing the challenge to theology.

As a card-carrying design theorist, I want to examine the challenge that design poses to the contemporary theologian. What continues to intrigue me is that the group of academicians design theorists have the hardest time engaging is not the secular scientists, but theologians and cross-disciplinary scientists whose cross-discipline happens to be theology (e.g., Nancey Murphy and Howard van Till). Why is this? The short answer is that mainstream theologians perceive design theorists as theological greenhorns who unfortunately have yet to fathom the proper relation between theology and science. Of course, design theorists think it is rather the mainstream theologians who have failed to grasp the proper relation between theology and science. (Emphasis added)

Though design theorists believe Darwinism is dead wrong, unlike the creationist movement of the 1980's, they do not try to win a place for their views by taking to the courts. Instead of pressing their case by lobbying for fair treatment acts in state legislatures (i.e., acts that oblige public schools in a given state to teach both creation and evolution in their science curricula), design theorists are much more concerned with bringing about an intellectual revolution starting from the top down. Their method is debate and persuasion. They aim to convince the intellectual elite and let the school curricula take care of themselves. By adopting this approach design theorists have enjoyed far more success in getting across their views than their creationist counterparts.

ID doesn't promote a theological doctrine that claims to explain God's actions in every instance. ID is a scientific theory that claims that sometimes we can scientifically detect design, and sometimes we can't. Just because we can't scientifically detect design in a particular instance doesn't mean that we've claimed, theologically, that God was entirely absent from that event or process. All theists who support ID affirm that God is behind, in some sense, every event. "Natural cause" never means (for theists anyway) "not caused by God." I'm not aware of any ID theorist who is also a theist and who has ever claimed otherwise. (Emphasis added)

For biblical believers, the identity of that intelligent designer is pretty clear: the God of the Bible. As we are reminded by the world around us, that Creator has intervened in the world in a remarkable way.

Now, if the biblical account of Christmas is to be believed, God intervened in humanity in a still more astonishing way. Without letting go of his divinity, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, became a human being. The same God who created the Earth, the Sun, the farthest stars and who invented whales, sunflowers and people, took on flesh and became that infant human being in first-century Palestine.

Wow. That utterly boggles the mind.

- George Berkin, "How Christmas supports Intelligent Design"