I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (26 page)

First, when we conclude that intelligence created the first cell or the human brain, it’s not simply because we
lack
evidence of a natural explanation; it’s also because we have positive, empirically detectable evidence
for
an intelligent cause. A message (specified com-plexity) is empirically detectable. When we detect a message—like “Take out the garbage—Mom” or 1,000 encyclopedias—we know that it must come from an intelligent being because all of our observational experience tells us that messages come only from intelligent beings. Every time we observe a message, it comes from an intelligent being. We couple this data with the fact that we never observe natural laws creating messages, and we know an intelligent being must be the cause. That’s a valid scientific conclusion based on observation and repetition. It’s not an argument from ignorance, nor is it based on any “gap” in our knowledge.

Second, Intelligent Design scientists are open to natural and Second, Intelligent Design scientists are open to
both
natural and intelligent causes. They are not opposed to continued research into a natural explanation for the first life. They’re simply observing that all known natural explanations fail, and all empirically detectable evidence points to an intelligent Designer.

Now, one can question the wisdom of continuing to look for a natural cause of life. William Dembski, who has published extensive research on Intelligent Design, asks, “When does determination [to find a natural cause] become pigheadedness? . . . How long are we to continue a search before we have the right to give up the search and declare not only that continuing the search is vain but also that the very object of the search is nonexistent?”
²⁹

Consider the implications of Dembski’s question. Should we keep looking for a natural cause for phenomena like Mount Rushmore or messages like “Take out the garbage—Mom”? When is the case closed?

Walter Bradley, a coauthor of the seminal work
The Mystery of
Life’s Origin,
believes “there doesn’t seem to be the potential of finding a [natural explanation]” for the origin of life. He added, “I think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there’s an Intelligent Designer.”
³⁰

Regardless of whether or not you think we should keep looking for a natural explanation, the main point is that ID scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. It just so happens that an intelligent cause best fits the evidence.

Third, the Intelligent Design conclusion is falsifiable. In other words, ID could be disproven if natural laws were someday discovered to create specified complexity. However, the same
cannot
be said about the Darwinist position. Darwinists don’t allow falsification of their “creation story” because, as we have described, they don’t allow any other creation story to be considered. Their “science” is not tentative or open to correction; it’s more closed-minded than the most dogmatic church doctrine the Darwinists are so apt to criticize.

Finally, it’s actually the Darwinists who are committing a God-of the-Gaps fallacy. Darwin himself was once accused of considering natural selection “an active power or Deity” (see chapter 4 of
Origin of
Species
). But it seems that natural selection actually
is
the deity or “God of the Gaps” for the Darwinists of today. When they are totally at a loss for how irreducibly complex, information-rich biological systems came into existence, they simply cover their gap in knowledge by claiming that natural selection, time, and chance did it.

The ability of such a mechanism to create information-rich biological systems runs counter to the observational evidence. Mutations are nearly always harmful, and time and chance do the Darwinists no good, as we explained in chapter 5. At best, natural selection may be responsible for minor changes in living species, but it cannot explain the origin of the basic forms of life. You need a living thing to start with for any natural selection to take place. Yet, despite the obvious problems with their mechanism, Darwinists insist that it covers any gap in their knowledge. Moreover, they willfully ignore the positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent being. This is not science but the dogma of a secular religion. Darwinists, like the opponents of Galileo, are letting their religion overrule scientific observations!

Objection: Intelligent Design is religiously motivated.

Answer:
There are two aspects to this objection. The first is that some Intelligent Design people may be religiously motivated. So what? Does that make Intelligent Design false? Does the religious motivation of some Darwinists make Darwinism false? No, the truth doesn’t lie in the motivation of the scientists, but in the quality of the evidence. A scientist’s motivation or bias doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong. He could have a bias and still be right. Bias or motivation isn’t the main issue—truth is.

Sometimes the objection is stated this way: “You can’t believe anything he says about origins because he’s a creationist!” Well, if the sword cuts at all, it cuts both ways. We could just as easily say, “You can’t believe anything he says about origins because he’s a Darwinist!”

Why are creationist conclusions immediately thought to be biased but Darwinist conclusions automatically considered objective? Because most people don’t realize that atheists have a worldview just like creationists. As we are seeing, the atheist’s worldview is not neutral and actually requires more faith than the creationist’s.

Now, as we have said earlier, if philosophical or religious biases prevent someone from interpreting the evidence correctly, then we would have grounds for questioning that person’s conclusions. In the current debate, that problem seems to afflict Darwinists more than anyone else. Yet, the main point is that even if someone is motivated by religion or philosophy, their conclusions can be corrected by an honest look at the evidence. Scientists on both sides of the fence may have a difficult time being neutral, but if they have integrity, they can be objective.

The second aspect of this objection is the charge that Intelligent Design people don’t have any evidence for their view—they’re simply parroting what the Bible says. This aspect of the objection doesn’t work either. Intelligent Design beliefs may be
consistent
with the Bible, but they are not
based
on the Bible. As we have seen, Intelligent Design is a conclusion based on empirically detectable evidence, not sacred texts. As Michael Behe observes, “Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent activity. The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself—not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs.”
³¹

Intelligent Design is not “creation science” either. Intelligent Design scientists don’t make claims that so-called “creation scientists” make. They don’t say that the data unambiguously supports the six-twenty-four- hour-day view of Genesis, or a worldwide flood. Instead, they acknowledge that the data for Intelligent Design is not based on a specific age or geologic history of the earth. ID scientists study the same objects in nature that the Darwinists study—life and the universe itself—but they come to a more reasonable conclusion about the cause of those objects. In short, regardless of what the Bible may say on the topic,
Darwinism is rejected because it doesn’t fit the scientific data,
and Intelligent Design is accepted because it does.

Objection: Intelligent Design is false because the so-called design isn’t
perfect.

Answer:
Darwinists have long argued that if a designer existed, he would have designed his creatures better. Stephen Jay Gould pointed this out in his book
The Panda’s Thumb,
where he cited the apparent sub-optimal design of a bony extrusion pandas have for a thumb.

The problem for the Darwinists is that this actually turns out to be an argument
for
a designer rather than an argument against one. First, the fact that Gould can identify something as sub-optimal design implies that he knows what optimal design is. You can’t know something is imperfect unless you know what perfect is. So Gould’s observation of even sub-optimal design implies an admission that design is detectable in the panda’s thumb. (By the way, this is another reason the Darwinists are wrong when they assert that Intelligent Design is not science. When they claim something isn’t designed correctly, they are implying they could tell if it
were
designed correctly. This proves what ID scientists have been saying all along—ID is science because design is empirically detectable.)

Second, sub-optimal design doesn’t mean there’s no design. In other words, even if you grant that something is not designed optimally, that doesn’t mean it’s not designed at all. Your car isn’t designed optimally, yet it’s still designed—it certainly wasn’t put together by natural laws.

Third, in order to say that something is sub-optimal, you must know what the objectives or purpose of the designer are. If Gould doesn’t know what the designer intended, then he can’t say the design falls short of those intentions. How does Gould know the panda’s thumb isn’t exactly what the designer had in mind? Gould assumes the panda should have opposable thumbs like those of humans. But maybe the designer wanted the panda’s thumbs to be just like they are. After all, the panda’s thumb works just fine in allowing him to strip bamboo down to its edible interior. Maybe pandas don’t need opposable thumbs because they don’t need to write books like Gould; they simply need to strip bamboo. Gould can’t fault the designer of that thumb if it wasn’t intended to do more than strip bamboo.

Finally, in a world constrained by physical reality, all design requires trade-offs. Laptop computers must strike a balance between size, weight, and performance. Larger cars may be more safe and comfortable, but they also are more difficult to maneuver and consume more fuel. High ceilings make rooms more dramatic, but they also consume more energy. Because trade-offs cannot be avoided in this world, engineers must look for a compromise position that best achieves intended objectives. For example, you can’t fault the design in a compact car because it doesn’t carry fifteen passengers. The objective is to carry four not fifteen passengers. The carmaker traded size for fuel economy and achieved the intended objective. Likewise, it could be that the design of the panda’s thumb is a trade-off that still achieves intended objectives.

The thumb is just right for stripping bamboo. Perhaps, if the thumb had been designed any other way, it would have hindered the panda in some other area. We simply don’t know without knowing the objectives of the designer. What we do know is that Gould’s criticisms cannot succeed without knowing those objectives.

S
O
W
HY
A
RE
T
HERE
S
TILL
D
ARWINISTS
?

If the evidence is so strong for Intelligent Design, then why are there still Darwinists? After all, these people are not dummies—their names are usually followed by the letters Ph.D.!

The first thing to note is that this is not just an intellectual issue where Darwinists take a dispassionate look at the evidence and then make a rational conclusion. Richard Dawkins has famously written, “It is abso- lutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
³²
Of course, Dawkins’s comment is simply false. There are brilliant Ph.D.s who believe in Intelligent Design. But the real question is, Why the invectives? Why the emotion? Why the hostility? I thought this was science. There must be something else at stake here.

There is. Let’s go back to Richard Lewontin’s quote from the last chapter. Recall his assertion that Darwinists believe in the absurdities they do because “materialism is absolute. For we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.” Now, that’s the real issue. Keeping God out. But why would Darwinists not want a “divine foot in the door”? We suggest four major reasons.

First, by admitting God, Darwinists would be admitting that they are not the highest authority when it comes to truth. Currently, in this technologically advanced world, scientists are viewed by the public as the revered authority figures—the new priests who make a better life possible and who comprise the sole source of objective truth. Allowing the possibility of God would be to relinquish their claim of superior authority.

Second, by admitting God, Darwinists would be admitting that they don’t have absolute authority when it comes to explaining causes. In other words, if God exists, they couldn’t explain every event as the result of predictable natural laws. Richard Lewontin put it this way: “To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
³³
As Jastrow noted, when that happens, “the scientist has lost control,” certainly to God, and perhaps to the theologian.
³⁴

Third, by admitting God, Darwinists would risk losing financial security and professional admiration. How so? Because there’s tremendous pressure in the academic community to publish something that supports evolution. Find something important, and you may find yourself on the cover of
National Geographic
or the subject of a PBS special. Find nothing, and you may find yourself out of a job, out of grant money, or at least out of favor with your materialist colleagues. So there’s a money, job security, and prestige motive to advance the Darwinian worldview.

Finally, and perhaps the most significantly, by admitting God, Darwinists would be admitting that they don’t have the authority to define right and wrong for themselves. By ruling out the supernatural, Darwinists can avoid the possibility that anything is morally prohibited. For if there is no God, everything is lawful, as a character in a Dostoevsky novel observed.
³⁵
(We’ll elaborate on the connection between God and morality in the next chapter.)