The ID Report

I believe we can reinvent what we hold sacred as a view of God that is not a supernatural Creator, but the ceaseless and unforeseeable creativity of the universe that surrounds us.

--Stuart Kauffman, who argues in his forthcoming book that nature's infinite creativity should become the basis for a new worldview and a global spiritual awakening.

Imagine for a moment that the Bible did not exist. No old testament, no new (and no religion too). Picture a world without the Bible's account of creation, and, of course, without its creator God as well. What might origins science look like in a Bible-less world? With no metaphysical apparitions to drive men to safe imaginations of multiverse pumpkin patches and panspermian storks, might science actually adhere to its much-touted method and permit the logical inference that what looks designed is designed? If not, why not?

Before dismissing the thought, consider: it's a testable and tested proposition. Historically many with no knowledge of the Bible or its God logically and reasonably concluded the necessity of a causa sui, the non-intuitive but logically necessary "cause of itself" creator of the universe. Whether Plato's "demiurge" of divine wisdom and intelligent design as the creator of the cosmos, or Aristotle's "prime mover" as an eternal being of thought, Bible-less super-thinkers of old followed logic to its etymological and ontological beginning, a scientifically necessary Logos.

Today Plato and Aristotle would be thrilled to learn that modern science confirms their early science with elegant evidence of intelligent design. But, alas, in the United States today both would also risk being banned from biology class, being lectured to in the lab, enduring teaching without tenure, and receiving the insult of all insults: being caricatured as creationists. And creationists they were, if by "creationist" is simply meant anyone who believes that an intelligent creator is somehow and in some way the cause of creation. By this definition almost everyone today is a creationist, from theistic evolutionists to intelligent design theorists to young earth, six-day creationists. But the term "creationist" became corrupted somewhere between Plato's Academy of science and the National Academy of Sciences. Rather than broadly encompassing many to the exclusion of a few, today the caricature alone survives to narrowly describe only a few to the exclusion of many.

How did we reach a place in science where no one is free to consider creation in any form? The answer is two-fold. First, the near complete surrender of institutional science organizations to scientific materialism all but smothers true free inquiry from the likes of Aristotle, to the detriment of both free-thought scientists and thought-constrained origins science. Consider the modern scientific conundrum: how to marshal a purely materialistic (that is, mindless and un-intelligent) causal explanation for the origin of life that exhibits the hallmarks of being created (thoughtfully and intelligently) for a purpose. Like trying to explain light using only terms of darkness, the intellectually encumbered materialists of modern origins science grope about impressing only their peers while their metaphysically challenged contortions cast embarrassingly strange shadows on the walls of their Platonic cave.

Take "multiverse" theory, for example. Because by every account, whether by materialist or creationist, chance assembly of the first replicating life form by physics and chemistry alone is impossible, creative types enslaved to scientific materialism have landed on a solution: multiverses--the evidence-starved, largely untestable, and non-predictive idea that life from non-life is inevitable (yes, inevitable) if we imagine we inhabit not a finite uni-verse, but an infinitely expanding multi-verse consisting of an infinite number of universes. Materialists welcome musings of an infinity of eternal, unseen (and undetectable) universes as "science" because thoughts of eternal omnipotent matter, like a great metaphysical salve, temporarily soothe the mind, leaving for another day the stubborn necessity of an eternal logos, a sentient creator of matter itself.

Multiverses are only slightly less scientific based on the evidence than the UFO-beholden theory of "panspermia", another "scientific" theory held by serious scientists despite the lack of any compelling evidence. Leading scientists such as Francis Crick of DNA discovery fame entertain serious thoughts that life reached earth as an "infection" from another planet. Recognizing that the theory of extraterrestrial living organisms reaching earth from another star or meteorite by chance is "unlikely", Francis Crick set about fixing that problem by proposing the more creative "Directed Panspermia". Not to be confused with the earlier unlikely version, Crick proposed Directed Panspermia as "the theory that organism were deliberately transmitted to the earth [on spaceships] by intelligent beings on another planet."

Let's get serious. Both multiverse conjecture and panspermia speculation represent in-the-box thinking for those inside the dark box of materialism. But all such theories only push out or back (while highlighting the need for) that solid rock of immutable truth--the out-of-the-box causa sui of ours or any universe. Why can we not, as did the pagan Greek Heraclitus, who first applied the term logos five hundred years before Christ, simply posit a rational intelligence behind creation? Why must we be resigned only to the just-so stories of modern materialistic origins science? Are they not patently absurd?

Yes. "Patent absurdity" of some of materialistic science's "constructs" is leading evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin's refreshingly honest way of describing the "unsubstantiated just-so stories" of those like him and all dogmatic Darwinists, who do this only because they have "a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism." Such admissions are helpful, but do not reach the real reason why today's forces in origins science impose and enforce patent absurdity upon us all. After all, most Darwinists are not full-fledged materialists. Most of the public is nowhere near being any kind of materialist. So why must we all suffer the truth-suppressing curse of absolute materialism under the guise of modern science? Lewontin tells us in terms that are surprising only for their frankness, providing the second and most important of the two reasons people are not free to identify as creationists by a broad definition. Voicing a sentiment parroted incessantly on this subject Lewontin admits: "Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Eureka! Materialism is enforced against non-materialistic contenders not because it is true--but to keep God out. It's not the Bible's creation story that's the problem; it's the Bible's creator. After all, Genesis-account creationism is no more strange, less supported, less probable or less believable than Koonin's unseen, eternal multiverse or Crick's intelligent, deliberative spaceship creators. The problem with Genesis-account creationism is not that it is absurd to non-believers, but that the theory comes with a Divine Foot, and not just any Divine Foot, but that foot presumably connected to that Divine Body. Eliminate that Divine Foot, and there is absolutely no reason not to consider the design hypothesis that what looks created is created.

Not convinced? Try this at home: Ask anyone you know who opposes intelligent design or any form of creationism, why it is that they reject the design hypothesis. The answer you receive will invariably parrot one or more of the words, "God" or "Bible" or "Genesis" or "10,000 years" or "six days" or "religion" or "faith". Then ask your friend to imagine there is no Bible, no book of Genesis, no God of the Bible, no religion, and ask the question again. And wait.

The silence you will hear, like a great resounding trumpet of truth, might set a captive free. Because the dirty big secret of the materialists who rule and make rules in origins science today is not their collective commitment to scientific materialism, but the reason for demanding absolute commitment from everyone: a great fear of the Divine Foot in the door. And whose foot might that be? How does Lewontin or any God-fearing materialist hiding behind the label of "atheist" have any knowledge of any divine feet at all?

In a better world discussion of Divine Feet would follow, not prevent, a discussion of divine footprints. But the Bible has spoiled all that. Because the only being now known to be causa sui, the great I AM, capable of creating footprints ex-nihilo, is also revealed in the Bible as a living God with a claim on conscience. And the specter of that Divine Foot affords no safe haven for boxed-in theophobes haunted by the one door having light shining in underneath.

Which leaves all but the open minded stranded in materialism's dark world of the absurd. In the materialism box it's scientific to believe in eternal, unseen and undetectable infinite multiverses. It's respectable to believe in intelligent beings from another planet using spaceships to direct life to earth. Its even tolerable to believe in non-creative and otherwise uninteresting toy gods of religions that used to matter. Regardless how silly, evidence-lacking, unbelievable, and otherwise absurd a scientific theory of origins appears, it gets great admiration if it in any way avoids that Divine Foot.

Blame the Bible for that Divine Foot. Ironically, with it some are creationists; without it we might all be creationists. Why? Because, well . . . why not?

Roddy Bullock is the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio (www.idnetohio.com) and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by Access Research Network. Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.

Copyright (c) 2008 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

Publisher and agent inquiries welcome.

References:
Kauffman quote: Stuart Kauffman, "Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity" New Scientist magazine, 07 May 2008, page 52-53
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html

Eugene V. Koonin paper on the theory of multiverses: http://www.biology-direct.com/content/pdf/1745-6150-2-15.pdf

Francis Crick paper on Directed Panspermia: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/C/C/P/_/scbccp.pdf

Lewontin quotes: Richard Lewontin, "Billions and billions of demons," The New York Review (January 9, 1997), 31. Full quote: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."