What are the Foundations of the Intelligent Design Theory?

 Good Day Stephane86

Thank you for this question: What are the foundations of Intelligent Design Theory? Do you think it is scientific?

Preface

I should begin by making my biases plain. I subscribe to the conceptual paradigm of evolution as the most likely means of human and all other biological origin and development on this world. Why? The thing is, I can't really say. I'm not a scientist and I am not prepared to give a technical defense of it. As a lay person, the "belief" in evolution is simply where I find myself.

I can tell you that I find evolution exciting and even, in a way, glorious, for the "promise" than it might hold for us. I am not speaking of evolution as a necessarily "guided" force that inevitably leads to the improvement of advancement of all life. My understanding is that most of what we call evolution is mutation, genetic mutation -- and most mutations, I understand, are either harmful or neutral.

I find evolution to be exciting and glorious for two reasons. The first is that we seem to have come a long way, developmentally over, say, a two million year period. I am something of a history buff. I'm interested in world history and part of world history, for me, is the natural history of how our species came to be -- how it is I can be communicating with you, Stephane86, right now, in this amazing way.

The second reason is that we seem to have started to open up technologies which hold the promise of taking our continued (remember, evolution presupposes that there is no developmental 'finish line') development in new directions that would not have been possible, perhaps, by "natural means." We don't have to talk about that too much here though.

Introduction

My sense of you, Stephane86, is that you are a devout Christian who, like most, do not subscribe to the paradigm of evolution. My choice of words is quite deliberate, by the way, I subscribe (for lack of a better word) to the idea of evolution as the most likely means of the "Origin of Species;" I do not "believe" in it.

I have no interest in making the typical dogmatic assertion, that usually follows such a declaration with "I don't believe in evolution. It's the truth," the way some distastefully aggressive secularists do. I "subscribe" to evolution much the same way I might subscribe to a magazine or cable channel, because it interests me.

I take it, Stephane86, that you believe in God, that he exists in a particular ontological sense based on the Trinity and so forth. I take it you also believe in creationism/intelligent design as a necessary corollary to your belief in God.

As you know, evolution comes from science, and there are people who say that science is a belief system like religion. My answer to that is yes and no. The 'yes,' for me, has to do the broader way in which I think all of us "believe" whether we are nominal atheists or nominal believers. But we don't need to go into that here.

Mostly my answer to that statement is no. Science is not an opposing "belief" equivalent to religion. In fact that's the problem with the theist/atheist debate (in a way the very fact of the debate is the problem) is that we have forgotten this. Science and religion are two separate, equally necessary means of understanding.

There's a very good Oxford-trained religious scholar called Karen Armstrong. Armstrong, one of the most original thinkers in theology, reminds us that people in ancient times understood that society needed to be guided by both logos and mythos. Logos is reason, the observational, analytical turn of mind. Mythos is sublime, psychological, yes, mythical thinking that is to be used as a resource to help people process catastrophe, dread, and the like, and then take action, yes, action, to make themselves better people. Religion is about action rather than belief, according to Armstrong.

The Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, famously never even said if he thought there was God. He discouraged speculation about such metaphysical matters.

Anyway, according to Armstrong, St. Augustine himself, a figure revered by both Catholics and Protestants, said that the Bible could not contradict science, and if a biblical passage did seem to contradict science, then another interpretation had to be found for that biblical passage. But here, take a look at this....

My aim

So, neither religion, in its true form, is about "belief," nor is science (contrary to what some religionists like to say) is about belief. Science, as you know, Stephane86, is about developing useful concepts through action (observation, theory, hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion, etc). I hope you watched that second video, especially. Karen Armstrong tells a great story about a Hebrew rabbi who was challenged by someone who offered to convert to Judaism, if the rabbi could recite the whole of the Torah while standing on one leg.

The rabbi stood on one leg and said, "Do not do what is hateful to you, to others. That is the whole of the law. The rest is commentary. Go and study it."

In addressing your question about intelligent design, I am inviting Christians to subscribe, yes subscribe (I am selling you something) to the paradigm of evolution. I am not asking you to "believe" in evolution. I am not asking you and others to exchange your "belief" in creation/intelligent design for another "belief" in evolution.

According to Armstrong, we have gotten our logos and mythos mixed up. In her book, The Case for God, she offers a very interesting thesis. The Enlightenment of the seventeenth century distorted religion in a crucial way. For the first time, according to Armstrong, the Enlightenment put every dimension of life onto a scientifically provable basis.

This meant that a schism developed in European culture (or yet another schism) . On the one hand, some people thought, if God and all that comes with "him" existed, then this reality ought to be "provable" scientifically. There were many scientists who were also devout Christians who devoted part of their efforts to precisely this task, coming up with all kinds of philosophical and scientific "proofs" of God's existence.

As time went by, more and more scientists devoted their energies to showing that there was no "conflict" between religion, where, in previous eras no such conflict had ever been assumed. Other scientists and philosophers, who know found that they could not "believe" in God, because his existence was disproven, or his non-existence was proved by science; and it was science, after all, according to their way of thinking, not superstitious nonsense such as a benevolent, paternalistic, and invisible (don't forget invisible) Supreme Being.

It was this environment, says Armstrong, that gave rise to both fundamentalism and atheism in the world.

The second reason I'm selling subscriptions to evolution, as it were, to Christians, because I think that, even within the current paradigm (am I using the word 'paradigm' enough?) evolution can make itself an unobtrusive house-mate. One of these days I shall have to write a hub about a man called Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). He was a French paleontologist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest.

He subscribed to evolution but this did not test his faith in God. He actually developed a theory that said the God worked or revealed himself to us through evolution, as matter becomes more and more spiritualized, we come more and more to "know" God. This is a very crude two-sentence summary. But I'll bring out the point further with an analogy -- a little later on.

So, Stephane86, let us actually address your original question. What are the foundations of Intelligent Design Theory and is it scientific?

Why don't Christians, as a whole, embrace evolution?

I confess to not being conversant in all of the details of Intelligent Design. However, as I understand it, at the heart of the conception is the idea that all of the organisms of this world and all the biological organisms of this world, including ourselves, are so complex, so multilayered, multidimensional, with so many "moving parts," if you will; and yet these organisms and natural systems work together with such amazing cohesion and unity of purpose -- that our presence on this world could not have come about with such random, casual, haphazard circumstance as secularists suggest; but rather, quite the contrary, the universe and all beings in it, given their immense complexity yet coherence, had to have come about by "design," there had to be an organized, intelligent mind behind it all. My, that was a long sentence, wasn't it?

Is Intelligent Design Theory scientific?

Well, given what we've been discussing, the question is not really valid, is it? The question is an improper conflation of logos and mythos. Science should not be in the business of trying to prove or disprove the existence of God.

In our everday life, within the paradigm in which we function day-to-day, why do Christians have a hard time embracing evolution?

To begin with, I think Christians think of evolution as an insult to human dignity. I think they find it demeaning, the thought that we, human beings, have any "familial" relationship to smelly, hairy, stupid, savage, "filthy," wild beast like apes (this is not quite what the theory of evolution says, but its close enough for our purposes).

But anyone who has ever watched nature documentaries about apes, know that there is something quite moving and powerful about their interaction with one another, and yes, something even "human," about it. Aside from human beings, apes have the most expressive, sensitive eyes of any other life-form on the planet. I guess what I'm trying to say, in short, is that it doesn't seem so bad being an ape.

The other major stumbling block, I think, is the Christian belief that evolution calls the perfection of God into question. I don't think this need be the case. You know, Stephane86, I'm going to leave it right there. There were one or two points I was going to elaborate on but... naaaah!

I believe we have largely answered your question: What are the foundations of Intelligent Design Theory, and is it scientific. I rather inexpertly, half-pursued an agenda with respect to the theist/atheist debate in general and evolution in particular with this hub. I suggested that evolution need not be seen as in any way contradictory to the Christian faith, and I identified the two main ideological stumbling blocks.

I don't want to hermetically seal this hub by suggesting that I have any definitive, hard, final answers to, well, anything, but most especially abstract questions like these. I suggested that evolution need not necessarily contradict the Christian notion of the perfection of God. Let me just end with this question: Why do you think human beings domesticated the wolf?

Ta-Ta!

Let's go out with this.... 'It's gonna be Alllllright!'