Danny ChaiThe Merc had this editorial the other day criticizing Intelligent Design, saying, without a hint of irony, that it can’t be treated as serious science because it can’t be verified or refuted, a fundamental aspect of science.
I don’t know much about Intelligent Design so can’t say I’m a huge fan or critic either way. And personally, maybe I’m naive or uninformed, but I’m not that bothered with evolution. Is that heretical? I’m more concerned with evolutionism, which in my mind is distinct. Not that I’m unaware of the shortcomings of evolution. For example, that some of the examples of evolution in high school textbooks (e.g. colors of moths in England) isn’t evolution at all (on a macrolevel, the evolution of new species) but variation and adaptation within a species (microevolution, which no one disputes). Or that we haven’t actually seen evolution happen, a new species develop.
And that’s the thing I found ironic about the editorial. One of the foremost criticisms of evolution is exactly what the editorial points out about Intelligent Design – it can’t be verified. It’s an interpretation of fossil records or how things are now. But there is literally no way to verify or refute it, since we haven’t actually seen it happen before our eyes.
I do think there’s a reason why the vast majority of scientists believe in evolution over something else, and there’s something in that. But based on the scientific principle of being able to refute/verify a theory alone, it’s not really different from Intelligent Design, I think. Maybe I’m wrong.
Actually, Andy Crouch had a really interesting column in this month’s Christianity Today related to this. Saying how, evolution was initially presented as a viewpoint opposed to religion, hence the religious opposition to it. He was saying one unfortunate effect was that it’s caused religious folks to be untrusting of science in general. He points specifically to environmental issues. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that human activity is contributing to global warming. Yet religious conservatives frequently cling to the extreme minority skeptical view (like Henry espouses) that human activity is not contributing to global warming. His argument is that Christians are called to care a lot about the environment, about global warming. It’s like a version of Pascal’s wager. And frankly, I agree.