Intelligent Design, Evolution, Science

QUESTION: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution – Bad News for Science

ANSWER:

When it comes to Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, the ID investigator is not committed to rules of play and conventions of “good form” aimed at protecting the consensus view. He is free to follow the phenomena wherever they point, whether to chance, law, or intelligence, whether of the material world or beyond it.

Unfettered by the groupthink of the scientific establishment, he represents a threat to those for whom Oxford cardiovascular physiologist Denis Noble writes, “[Materialistic science] functions as a security blanket.” The security of their paradigm, Noble continues, is that “It avoids the need to ask too many questions, to stare into the abyss of fundamental uncertainty.” Yet sooner or later, that abyss will be encountered.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution – Materialism is Losing
Over the last several decades, discoveries of the functional elegance and integrated complexity of the universe have made the materialistic underpinning of science increasingly untenable, leaving those so-committed to cede it all to luck or to some yet to be discovered final Law which, if found, would itself beg an explanation.

For instance, should an ultimate law be unearthed down that ever-receding shaft of exploration, it would not account for immaterial phenomena like thought, free will, creativity, and aspirations, except as illusions created by the chemical firings of neurons. Likewise, a meta-Law of the universe would neither provide, nor explain, the moral “oughtness” pressing upon the conscience of man.

If it could, humans could no more choose to violate it than they could choose to change their height or blood type. Yet not only do we violate it, we have feelings of guilt when we do, suggesting something behind Law, a teleology, a concern about humans and their social dealings—an intelligence. And that is bad news for another group.

Compliments of Regis Nicoll. This article first appeared on BreakPoint at www.breakpoint.org.

Regis Nicoll is a Centurion of Prison Fellowship’s Wilberforce Forum. He is a columnist for Breakpoint, Salvo Magazine, and Crosswalk and writes for Prison Fellowship’s blog, The Point.He also publishes a free weekly commentary addressing the pressing issues of the day.