The question that will not go away
What is science? and how does it relate to the Christian faith? These frequently-asked questions are highly relevant to at least 50% of our young people, thinking particularly of those being educated in science, technology, engineering or medicine.
The questions are significant for adults also, for most of us are exposed to television, radio, newspapers and magazines. All provide some coverage of scientific issues. Features on the natural world, cloning and pro-life issues are the most likely occasions for the issues to be raised and answers offered.
A notable characteristic of the answers we get from the media is that God is irrelevant to science and the natural world. It is as though everything goes on quite happily without him. Many are quick to see the implication: a God who is irrelevant might as well not exist. Humanity needs to “grow up” it is said, leaving behind the crutches of belief systems.
With messages like this thrust upon us, it is very important that Christian people are alert and that we have appropriate responses. We need to be able to help and support one another. Diagnosing the messages put out in the name of education and science is also one of the ways we can help the communities of which we are part.
For most of history, this indifference to God has been absent. A major reason for this is that people were convinced that God’s design and handiwork could be seen in the world around them. Complexity, beauty and harmony were all interpreted as pointers to the wisdom and power of the Creator. For Christians, this was eminently biblical (Genesis 1-2). In addition, death, suffering and pain reminded them of the entrance of sin into the world and the Edenic Curse (Genesis 3).
All of this changed in the 19th Century. The pivotal figure was Charles Darwin. Although his theory can be challenged, few will dissent from saying that he was the catalyst for change. Darwinism did not just affect thinking about origins; it ushered in a new intellectual world. Darwinism claimed that the features of the living world previously thought to be evidences of intelligent design were actually the products of chance variations selected and accumulated by an environmental filter. For Darwinists, there is no guiding influence on the process and no external supervision. According to them, there is no scientific basis for thinking that the living world is intelligently designed.
Some Christians, however, have sought a harmonisation between Darwinism and belief in a Creator. They have promoted the concept of complementarity. A favoured illustration is an artist’s painting. We see the work of a creative person and describe it as beautiful. A scientific analysis will look at the ways different pigments are distributed on the canvas, the stimulus this makes to the retinal cells in our eyes, and the brain activity that results. The scientific analysis operates on a different level to our aesthetic appreciation of beauty. This illustration is fine as far as explaining the concept of complementarity. The problem comes when this is applied to evolutionary theory and biblical Christianity.
To show that some things are complementary does not mean that the principle can be applied to everything! History, for example, is a case in point. History does not provide a complementary perspective to science, for otherwise forensic science would not be eligible as a scientific discipline. Nor is history complementary to Christianity, because the Bible records how God has made himself known through real events in the past affecting the lives of men and women. Attempts to apply complementarity to Genesis must be looked at very carefully, because Genesis brings us a history of origins.
Most examples of complementarity involve a subjective human reaction to the world around us. Studying the world can take place completely independently of our aesthetic experience of the objects of our study. But what about design? Can complementarity be applied to our appreciation of design?
Sensing design is not like sensing beauty. When we take pleasure in beauty, certain characteristics of an object evoke our aesthetic appreciation. The response is subjective. We can say the object has value, but it is a value we place upon it – it is an imparted value. Design is not like this. We do not turn an object into a designed artefact by the response we make to it. Design is something done by a designer. Saying that something is designed is to make an objective statement, not to express a subjective feeling.
Design implies “mind”. There is a concept and a plan. When the designed object becomes a physical object, the plan has been executed. These thoughts are easy enough to relate to human experience, and exactly the same approach can be taken to God’s design. Declaring that the eye is designed for seeing and the ear for hearing (Proverbs 20.12) is to say something objective about the eye and the ear. We are not affirming a subjective feeling about these parts of our body. Furthermore, if the statement is an objective reality, then it occupies ground claimed by science and we cannot allow it to be interpreted as wishful thinking or fitted into the “complementarity” approach.
If we go around saying that living cells, animals and plants, the human body and its organs are designed and that this is objective knowledge, we soon run foul of contemporary scientists. Reasons come thick and fast!
- “Science does not have any tools for recognising design”. But this is wrong, because archaeologists and forensic scientists have developed tools to do it routinely.
- “Science cannot consider God’s design because God cannot be studied in a laboratory”. But this also is wrong, because it is not necessary to study the designer in order to recognise design. For example, archaeologists may have no clue as to the identity of the person who made a stone tool, but the diagnostic features of intelligent design are present.
- “Science can only work on the basis that all effects have a natural cause. Supernatural causes are excluded from science”. This is wrong on two counts. First, it is not true that all effects have natural causes – there are also intelligent causes. Second, although supernatural causes cannot be studied by science, we can study the consequences of a supernatural cause. We can’t see the wind, but we can see the effects of the wind blowing.
- “There are far too many cases of bad design for anyone to accept that there is an intelligent designer.” This is wrong on several counts. A few cases of bad design cannot overthrow the many evidences for good design. In general, the claim of bad design is misguided. At very least, we ought to be very careful about any statements of this sort, for who are we to tell the Designer what he should do? Nevertheless, closer study of the issues usually reveals that the design is far more sophisticated than we first thought. Furthermore, some cases may be better understood as degeneration since creation – things are not today as they left the Creator’s hand.
- “If a Creator/Designer is responsible for these things, he is not a god to whom I want to pray or offer worship”. Darwin is often quoted as saying something like this after recounting the apparent horrors of insect parasitism. Many others have followed his lead. Ultimately, this objection to design is an expression of the “problem of pain” (How could a good God create a world in which there is so much pain, suffering and death?).
The fact that Darwinists use arguments 4 and 5 repeatedly is highly significant. If the data can be allowed to count against design, then it cannot be regarded as unscientific when intelligent design advocates respond with “here are answers to your objections and also evidences that point strongly to design”. However, arguments 1-3 are then brought out to exclude such design arguments from scientific discussion.
The reason for this behaviour is that the rules of discourse are effectively controlled by people with a particular philosophical agenda. They have adopted materialism as their worldview, with the accompanying atheism or agnosticism. Science is used as a tool to support their philosophy, and they are continually seeking to redefine science in a way that reinforces materialism in the minds of the population at large.
These are the people who make sure that our culture does not overlook the Darwinian revolution. Darwin’s theory was not just a scientific theory of origins; it ushered in a brave new world where intellectuals could develop atheistic thinking without being troubled by thoughts of a Creator. Their worldview has deeply affected education and the media. If we do not address these issues, we cannot properly bring the Word of God to our generation.
Ultimately, this is why the Design issue has to be thought through carefully. We must not let hostile challenges to design rob us of our appreciation of God’s handiwork (Psalm 104). Nor must we let design become comfortably confined to a “faith” compartment in our lives where there is no engagement with the world of science. To allow that is to throw in the towel to the materialists of our day and to retreat into an intellectual ghetto protected by “complementarity”. When we do that, we shift apologetics away from understanding truth and we move towards a message of existential experiences.
There is, of course, no justification for any of this. The design question is a good starting place to explore many of the issues of our day. The hallmarks of design are not difficult to recognise. Probably the majority of the people we meet will acknowledge this – despite suffering a lifetime of propaganda to the contrary. Evangelism to the Gentiles started by introducing them to the Creator God (Acts 17:22-31, 14:15-17) and something similar seems eminently appropriate to challenge the foundations of those influenced by the Darwinian Revolution.
David J Tyler
This article first appeared in Evangelicals Now, March 2003, page 20.
