The ID Report

Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based. ~Author Unknown

Oh boy. Here we go again. About once a year some science organization trots out a token "religious person" to insult the public by insisting that Darwinism and "faith" can coexist. This time it's Scientific American under the title The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist. Without exception Scientific American and other institutions of mainstream science driven to such patronizing spend the intervening 364 days bemoaning every mention of intelligent design and demeaning every true scientist not afraid to infer the logical inference of design in nature. With genuine abhorrence in every word, institutions of science criticize intelligent design as nothing more than "creationism warmed over" and those who support it as guilty of . . . well, letting faith and science coexist. And yet these high-minded low downs who will ruin the career of any teacher even attempting to hint at intelligent design in the classroom nevertheless have the impudence to lecture the rest of us on the topic of their faith.

Before getting too exercised over the effrontery displayed by today's closed minded free thinkers, consider that the same logic used by Scientific American could be used to support the following headlines: How the Killing of Unborn Babies and Faith Can Coexist or How the Killing of Races We Don't Like and Faith Can Coexist or How Ruining Lives and Careers of Darwin Doubters and Faith Can Coexist or even How the Sacrifice of Virgins and Faith Can Coexist. You see, for every abhorrent practice and dangerous idea there is a "faith" with which it can co-exist. The question is simply which faith. And must we all be subject not only to the suffocating science but also to the offensive faith of those who deny intelligent design?

Scientific American's token de l'annee is Francisco J. Ayala, smiling from the page as one who has made a career of "proselytizing about evolution to Christian believers," and shamelessly proffered to us as a living example of the critical "how" of a Darwinism-faith coexistence. Never mind for the moment what one who lives to proselytize Christian believers would have to say about faith that has any true meaning; the thing speaks for itself. But consider from the atheist's perspective what a fantastic find is this pawn Ayala. More than a garden-variety tare among wheat such as the many prominent yet otherwise unremarkable "religious people" who deny that creation points to a creator, Ayala is an ordained Dominican priest. Such an abstruse status offers little more than token value to Darwinists but holds a certain esoteric panache among Christians, making Ayala a more curious catch, something akin to the oddity of a figless fig tree.

Not surprisingly, Ayala's "reconciliation" of faith and science is no more than an arbitrary requirement that both be strictly naturalistic, that is, letting neither be informed by the strong inference in nature of true, intelligent design. With that kind of reconciliation it's also not surprising that Ayala is "unwilling to affirm or deny a personal belief in God" and refers instead "to science-savvy Christian theologians who present a God that is continuously engaged in the creative process through undirected natural selection." Such tenuous wordplay satisfies only those taken captive by hollow philosophy because theologians of this kind are unlikely to be truth-savvy and cannot be Christians. Material evidence points unmistakably to a creator, not away, and Christians by definition are followers of Christ, who is the very creator God that nature attests to but which they deny. Just how are God- and evidence-denying theologians "savvy"?

And Christian or not, anyone who swallows Ayala's "science-savvy" line of reasoning lacks rational thinking ability. Like referring to an artist "continually engaged in the creative process through an undirected paintbrush," such a thought is pure sophistry, disconnected from any rational reality. The foisting of such silliness upon us all is exactly why, as the Scientific American article states, "convincing most of the American public [of the ability for Darwinism and faith to coexist] remains the challenge." Despite the best of Darwinists' exoteric ramblings, most Americans still think right. You might say we are designed that way.

One thing is for certain: faith in a creative God who created man in His image ex nihilo cannot coexist with a science that demands belief only in an unguided, purposeless process to miraculously turn nothing into something, and something into someone. And it's that faith that Darwinists ridicule and it's that faith that threatens the faith belief of every Darwinist--a faith belief for which there is no evidence--that an unintelligent process produced from eternal matter the requisite voluminous genetic information to build every new and useful feature of every living being. Richard Dawkins, a man admirable only for his consistency and right thinking on this point, would agree: there is simply no argument to be made that Darwinian faith and a faith in the creative God of the Bible can be rationally reconciled. And to humbly adapt phraseology from this source of limited admiration, it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims that faith can coexist with naturalistic (unguided, purposeless) Darwinism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

The tragic irony is that it's that faith that aligns best with the material evidence in nature; there is simply no scientific reason to deny the creative work of a creative God. All of nature cries out intelligent design, and acknowledging such does nothing to hinder science or scientist. But insisting on denying intelligent design by saying (as did DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick) ignorant things like "biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved," only serves to widen the divide between dogmatic materialist scientists and an open-minded, reasonable public.

It's time to drop the artificial "faith versus science" debate, and face the true conflict: science in the service of naturalism versus science in the service of truth. After all, everyone has faith. And either one's science will inform faith, in which the unmistakable material evidence of design in nature will lead to a natural faith consideration of an intelligent designer, or faith will inform science, in which a non-belief in a creative God will lead to stupid statements about a creator creating through undirected processes.

Please, dogmatic science institutions, until you are ready for real dialog on true faith and true science, spare us your tokens.

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

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

References:

The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist, Scientific American, October, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-christian-mans-evolution

Richard Dawkins quote: Richard Dawkins, review of Blueprints by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34. http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1989-04-09review_blueprint.shtml

Francis Crick quote ("Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved.") from Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit (New York: BasicBooks, 1988), p. 138.