by alecto » April 18th, 2008, 8:53 pm
One of the problems with ID discussions is that "Intelligent Design" can refer to too many things (kind of like "religion" or "Christianity"). If we take it literally as "belief that the Universe had an intelligent designer" then I am an ID theorist, Charles Darwin certainly was, and post evolutionary biologists before the 1960's probably were. If we include in the definition "and God left evidence of this within creation" I'm agnostic, but we probably still pick up Darwin and we certainly get people like Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton, the former of whom still believed the Old Testament was largely mythology and the latter of whom believed intentional deceptions existed within the current editions of the Bible.
Most people, when they attack ID ("anti-ID people") don't seem to be attacking this larger group, though there are definitely forays against it. Likewise, some pro-ID people who probably do not, say, imagine Darwin being an ID supporter, try to bring reference to this larger group in order to make claims. For example, there are biologists (e.g. Dawkins) who are now completely anti-religion and would call any religious aspirations by people like Darwin or Jefferson delusions. There are also some in the ID camp who really do think that evolution is a kind of general attack against all forms of theism. I have heard, for example, references to Darwin's beliefs on religion used to show that evolution theory has "fallen" from a prior state of being more conciliatory toward religion. Probably, the debate over theistic evolution falls within this sphere as well, since we get in this debate more general ideas about creation and the way evidence will appear, than in the "creationism vs. evolutionism" debate (under whatever name it goes) upon which most invective is focused.
The ID camps that generates and/or receives the most invective from scientists are usually those which have a more narrow view of Intelligent Design, namely those who espouse or seem to espouse one of the following additional ideas: that the Earth was made far more recently than five billion years ago (possibly 6000 years ago), and that statements in the Bible always trump statements from other sources. It really all comes down to the debate about the Bible. God creating the universe, or even messing around with evolution continuously or periodically, does not conflict in principle with scientific observation or theory, but requiring it to happen as described in Genesis does. While some scientists are "extreme" in the sense that they no longer accept this and will attack any religious idea, this is not necessary. Most ID experiments and theories that are attacked by the mainstream scientific community are not, however, general principles about God creating the world, but specific things said or done to promote the Biblical view of creation above all other models of creation, or which attack the possibility of evolution (as opposed to the probability or evidence for evolution).
During my lifetime, the following evolution (pun intended) of the debate has occurred. This is from the scientist point of view primarily. In the 1980's it was the "creationism vs. evolution" debate, by which was intended very specifically the 6000 year old literal 6-day account of creation in Genesis vs. the geologists' view that the world was much older. It was focused largely on ages and existed firmly within the religious/political context of reaction to abortion and decay of family life that Christians saw the Bible as a defense against. There was then a round of secondary reaction. Some scientists very quickly became more anti-religious, or started expressing atheistic beliefs they formerly never were public about. Many Creationists backed off on the 6000 year view and said the Earth was older, while never accepting the billion-year notion. I don't know for sure why this latter part happened, though possibly it occurred because some Christians realized that many of the church fathers (e.g. St. Augustine) did not believe in the 6000 year-old earth. In the late 1980's and early 1990's "Intelligent Design" appeared as a kind of umbrella designation to cover the different ideas about divine creation. (The term arose earlier but this is when it started becoming widely-known.) Meanwhile, and to this day, the core of "ID" as expressed in many of the articles in print and online is still very similar to what is now called "young-earth creationism" which is the belief that the Earth is much less than billions of years old. We know this because many detailed arguments attack specifics of the dating mechanisms of rocks, the validity of the fossil record, and even details of cosmology all of which pertain directly to the age and order conflicts between the scientific account of world origin and the account in Genesis.
There is a second important thread that has emerged which is in fact different from the debate over Genesis, and that is the debate over the teaching of evolution in schools. This is actually older than everything else, so "emerged" is a misnomer, but it certainly has re-emerged in the last decades, under the aegis of ID theory. At times this debate is more intelligent, because it focuses on legal and moral rights of children, about which more laymen are qualified to debate than on details of molecular biology or physics, though the debate always bogs down in such things because ID proponents attack the situation by attempting to refute evolution, rather than (as Chesterton does in the article quoted above) by focusing on broadening the education of kids. In any case the religious side usually views evolution (as it is presented in schools) as antitheistic and thus discriminatory against Christians. The scientist side views ID as a tool to get classrooms one step closer to young-earth creationism by knocking down one of the derivatives of the old-earth view.
Several other clarifying points:
The evolution/ID debate is ships firing past each other. This is because evidence that contradicts Genesis comes exclusively from geology, limnology (study of lakes and freshwater systems), hydrology in general, astronomy, and physics. Evolution could be completely excluded from the picture and we would still have all these problems. Probably, the reason why evolution has become the focus of the debate on the scientific side is that discussions about evolution is where the issues of age of the earth and order of events (contradicting Scripture) first entered public consciousness at large. Most scientists I have talked to know this, so they consider debate over details of evolution, problems with evolution, etc. to be completely meaningless to the larger debate. God could come down tomorrow and show everyone that evolution was completely wrong and explain exactly what happened in a way everyone believed, but if He didn't touch the ideas from the other disciplines at the same time, we would still be having the same argument when it was all over. We would just call it "creationism vs. geologism" or something like that instead.
Most people who are involved in the debate are not motivated solely by scientific or theological interests. They see the debate as imbedded in a far more important moral struggle. Many Christians see evolution as a bastion of secularity that is helping to erode the religious underpinnings of our culture, which in turn leads to the moral decay that has brought about the high divorce rate, abortion, unwanted and neglected children, drug abuse, violence, and other social ills. Some also see science as the tool that has brought us abortion, drugs, guns, and other things we are using to hurt each other. On the other hand, many in the "pro-evolution" camp see religion as being the vessel that preserves primitive antisocial ideas like tyranny (e.g. "the divine right of kings") and racism (e.g. people originally believing that black Africans were Hamites specifically placed in lower position by God.) They look at the attack on the World Trade Center as being an ill specific to religion. They are also often involved in modern movements (e.g. the gay rights movement) that see religion as opposing the universal rights of Mankind. In all of these contexts they see Christianity as hypocritical, which in itself angers them. They don't see that Jesus would approve of many of the things Christians do. Because of these greater moral concerns held by those supporting evolution or ID, the debate never occurs in a vacuum. It is entirely likely that when you see an "attack" launched by someone in this debate, while the target might be an idea about ID theory or evolutionary biology, the motivation is about crime, poverty, divorce, racism, homosexuality, fear, safety, or other things of this kind.
I fall firmly in the "religion is a vessel preserving antisocial ideas" camp, though my path there is from religion. I think Jesus is anti-religious, when we mean by "religion" that thing most of us have today. I think we've turned the original "argument from design" upside down and defame Creation by ignoring the evidence about it that scientist are giving us and thereby making God appear small, trivial, and unattractive to those who bask in the revealed glory of Creation. I throw a lot of stones, and I throw them really hard (hopefully at the ideas more than the people) because I am motivated both by Christianity and by science. I see young earth "creationism" as poor folks bashing themselves against rocks that God put there for us to notice and learn from. Of course it makes me really mad. Then again, I also first learned that Christianity meant something while in a biology class studying genetics and sociobiology and from someone who was never bogged down in "bibliolatrous" details. There's nothing unexpected about where I am, however unusual "emergent Christianity" might have been 28 years ago.
Multicolorium data'st nobis nova lux,
Facietur ars nova luce Dei gratia.
Sentio ergo est.
