Intelligent Design is Not a Conspiracy! (At least, that's what they told me to say)

This Palm Beach Post editorial accuses ID of duplicity and trickiness. But ID's agenda is not tied to religion nearly as much as they think it is, and it's certainly not hidden. Sure, ID leaders would like to see better balance in public school education--the teaching of evolution's difficult areas along with its strengths. But nobody's hiding anything; certainly not the leaders of the movement, at any rate; and they're not trying to insert religion into public school education.

But then you may say, "Here we have an ID proponent whose blog is called 'Thinking Christian.' Who's he trying to fool?" So let's make some distinctions clear, for the record:

1. Intelligent Design is in no way dependent on any religious belief. As a scientific program it will stand on its own merits, or it will fall on its own.

2. Intelligent Design does challenge the worldview of philosophic materialism, however. This again is not dependent on any specific religion. Philosophic materialism's unwarranted assumptions render it wide open for challenge, without reference to any religion whatsoever.

3. If ID succeeds, philosophic materialism will take a serious hit. Philosophic materialists will have to ask themselves hard questions that may have religious implications. Such questioning will likely trickle down, as philosophy often does, to others who pay less attention to such things. That's as close as ID stands to implying any necessary religious belief.

From the other side of the question:

4. Christianity is in no way dependent on the success of ID as a science. This has been amply pointed out by the dozens of pundits saying, "You don't have to disagree with evolution to be a Christian."

5. Christianity's influence or epistemic status may be enhanced if ID succeeds, because of (3) above. To that extent, Christianity has a stake in ID, though because of (4), it's not a huge issue to most Christians, and some even disagree with ID.

6. Christians are hardly counting on ID to spark a revival. It is not the only religion that might stand to gain with ID's success, for one thing; for another, we know that belief in God is considerably more complex than this one issue can account for.

And finally,

7. Some of us happen to believe that ID is more likely to be a true description of nature than purely materialist evolution is. The funny thing is, that might be the reason we're trying to promote it!

That's a start, an outline, that should help explain the "connection" between ID and religion. I may come back and expand it someday [later update: done]; you're also welcome to do so in the comments. (If you don't have a sense of humor about this entry's title, you're not allowed to comment .)

I hope, for the sake of the Palm Beach Post, that this is open and honest enough. What more could they ask?

Posted: Fri - July 15, 2005 at 07:27 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Intelligent Design is Not a Conspiracy! (At least, that's what they told me to say)

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson