Whose "God of the Gaps"? II

Evolutionary theology reigns!

Michael Behe's "Correspondence With Science Journals: Response to Critics Concerning Peer Review" certainly helps explain why ID is not found more often in the peer-reviewed science literature. Here's one senior reviewer's reasoning for rejecting an article by Behe.

I advise you not to read the rest of this post yet: for the full astonishing impact, visit the link and read the paper yourself first. You'll reach the relevant part in just four (non-technical) printed pages.

But if you don't have time for that, here are excerpts:

"Michael Behe is depicting a hopeless situation for the biological sciences, ... just as biology is proceeding through a glorious age.... All of these studies will be amplified if there is peace in the world.

...

"The world itself, through the interactions that take place under the reign of natural law, manifests a sort of intelligence--an intelligence much greater than our intelligence--out of which our intelligence has very likely arisen as a product.... Consistently to use the phrase 'intelligent design' instead of God is almost cheating, since this use has an ambiguous relation to the presence in the universe of a sort of intelligence that, except perhaps in a pantheistic sense if one wishes to think so, has no implication regarding the existence of a God.

...

"Whatever God's role in the universe, if any, biology will be understood without reference to him. That is implied by the essence of science.

...

"Having not yet understood all of biology is not a failure after just 200 years.... let us speak about it again in 1000 years. Meanwhile, metaphysicians should spare scientists their metaphysics and just let the scientists do their work--or join them in doing it."

Behe responded to the editor, in part,

"My paper discussed published experiments on specific genes in the clotting cascade of mice, the published misinterpretation of those experiments, and why that shows we need more information than sequence similarity to explain the origin of the cascade and other systems. The senior advisor [who wrote the above], on the other hand, discussed 'our glorious age' of biology, the history of science, how the world has 'an intelligence much greater than our intelligence,' God as 'a being that combines consciousness, will, and universal power,' and so on. Yet he thinks he's being scientific and I'm being metaphysical. Go figure." (Emphasis added--TG)

And what shall we do about this 1000-year promissory note? It seems that gaps in our knowledge of nature must be filled by the breathtakingly glorious awareness that--someday we'll have an answer! This is evolution's "God of the Gaps," is it not?

And in 1000 years, this senior advisor may think enough centuries have passed to publish a Lehigh biochemist's scientific challenge to a theory.

I wonder if in 1000 years, by the way, anyone will still think that the world's "reign of natural law" constitutes intelligence. My prediction is, that will be just as incoherent then as it is now. I could go on at length about that, but I'll leave it to you if you wish to pursue it.

Related: What God of the Gaps?

Posted: Tue - April 10, 2007 at 11:53 AM |

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Whose "God of the Gaps"? II

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson