Being bandied around by a group of rather unscientific Americans (Crusaders for Christ) is a new DVD on Intelligent Design. Whilst me talking about this is no doubt what they want - publicity - I am doing so to mention an article I read by the Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University, Neil Ormerod. It was in the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday the 15th of November and should be an enlightening read for anyone who believes in the pseudo-science of “Intelligent Design”.
The philosophical issue is whether statistical causes are real causes or simply a cover for unknown causes. Even some religious believers want to cling to the type of scientific determinism which has dominated our culture since the initial discoveries of Newton.
Nonetheless, we human beings can use statistical causation - chance - to produce determinate outcomes. What the promoters of intelligent design argue is that God is not intelligent enough to produce determinate outcomes using statistical causation.
Do they think that God is not intelligent enough to use statistical causation? If we allow that God is more intelligent than us, then the whole basis of intelligent design is undermined. It is an unnecessary hypothesis which should be consigned to the dustbin of scientific and theological history.
Read more of Prof. Ormerod’s Article.
Update
Mike Rundle has been talking about Intelligent Design on his blog regarding Kansas in the USA.
Daniel has made a great comment, copied on his blog.
Good point! Not that I’m on either side, but it does make a good ‘Devil’s Advocate’ argument.
This is a much more specific version of the idea that God, as creator of all the elegant and sometimes befuddling wonder around us, should be smart enough to have been able to imbue nature with a self-regulating process of improvement, i.e. evolution or natural selection. There is nothing fruitful in the dichotomy of, on the one hand, the supposition that the universe is so complex and at times counter-intuitive that we should assume it is from God’s hand; and, on the other hand, the supposition that natural selection is counter-intuitive, and so can’t be valid.
The real loss here is that there is so much commonality to be appreciated, yet it is the differences which hold ground. To wit: I may have fallen in love with Jackson’s rendition of The Lord of the Rings, and consider it so sublime as to have transcended a mere product of a movie studio, and have no interest in tearing it apart (watching the making-of footage); and you may have fallen in love with Jackson’s rendition and can’t help but pore over the making-of footage to understand its inner workings. Each of us (in this example) agrees that the trilogy is a masterpiece, but approach his appreciation quite differently.