Intelligent Design in Australia
The Intelligent Design debate has migrated to Australia. There is now some discussion here about whether Intelligent Design should be taught in our schools alongside evolution.
This morning’s Weekend Australian newspaper includes an article with the clever title: “Designed to Put God into the Gaps.” The Templeton Prize-winning physicist Paul Davies offers this remark, which I think is spot on: “The problem with the [Intelligent Design] theory is that it puts God into the gaps.... There was a time when rain was a mystery, so rain gods were invented. But now we can explain it and we don’t need a rain god or anybody else.”
The Intelligent Designer is a God of the gaps; and any God of the gaps is doomed to become irrelevant as scientific knowledge progresses.
Ben,
Have you heard about the parody religion, pastafarianism, that has emerged in response to the intelligent design movement? Very funny. Check it out here: http://www.venganza.org/index.htm
And already there is a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
May you be touched by his noodly appendage.
I think an attendant issue that ID raises is that the scientific method of investigation is only one way to discover truth and reach conclusions. There is the historical method, there is philosophical reasoning. A valid point by non-evolutionists is that many scientists are blinded by their philosophical commitment to naturalism. The Spaghetti Monster theory, while humorous at points, is basically a mockery of "faith without reasons." Well, Christian faith has it's reasons, and can rightly challenge the accepted beliefs on our origins. Whether ID is the proper vehicle for this remains to be seen. Lyn
I really think you nailed the importance of the ID contribution to science, Lyn - it pushes the argument beyond the facade of "raw data" and "brute facts" to where the issues really lie, namely in the ideological and philosophical grids that are used to organize and interpret data. Without evaluating the merits of the positive argument they offer for their cosmology, their criticisms are really worth listening to, in my opinion.
Thanks -- I hadn't heard of Pastafarianism until now. It's hilarious. I was in stitches by the time I got to the "pirate regalia".
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