Intelligent design believers settle for second-rate God

If I’m going to believe in God, I want to put my faith in a top-notch creative power. The very best. A1. That’s why the God of evolution is so much more appealing than the God of so-called “intelligent design.”

Which doesn’t seem to be a very intelligent divinity. I mean, what kind of half-baked god creates human beings then, according to intelligent design dogma, slaps himself on the head and says, “Oy! I forgot to make eyes that work! Better get going on some redesigning.”

Creationism, after all, has been discarded (publicly, at least) by Christian fundamentalists. Their new Godly poster child, intelligent design, often is considered to co-exist with Darwinian evolution. Up to a point.

That point is reached when random mutations and natural selection are insufficient mechanisms to produce some highly complex feature, such as the human eye. The intelligent designer then supposedly steps in and makes things right.

I’d always thought that this notion showed a lack of faith in God. But it took a letter to the editor in the July 9, 2005 issue of “New Scientist” (which I just got around to reading) to convince me that such is the case.

Vasudev Godbole (how I hope this is his real name!) of Seevetal, Germany writes:

You report that the Smithsonian has cancelled the screening of a film that “ponders ‘purpose within cosmic evolution’”—the idea that has become known as “intelligent design”. One interesting question that no one seems to ask is why people feel a need to adopt this viewpoint.

An engineer who builds a plane that travels from London to New York without a pilot is more intelligent than an engineer whose plane needs a pilot. Yet passengers may feel better in the second type of plane.

Similarly a God who creates evolution, which needs no further intervention, is more intelligent than a God whose creation needs constant supervision and directives. Perhaps some people feel better and more cared for by the second type of God, and then out of gratitude declare this to be the more intelligent.

This psychological problem is at the root of a lot of the hostility shown by advocates of intelligent design (ID) towards those who argue for evolution. This gratitude can become so compulsive, vehement, “holier-than-thou” and even neurotic that the ID-ists start vilifying those who reject ID.

When the evolutionists refuse to buckle under, the ID-ists become even more angry and hate-filled, and wish to take over the state and enforce this “gratitudinal” behaviour and related “holiness” by means of laws or other threats. “How dare you deny or be ungrateful to a caring God?”—that is their bitter-angry question.

They are 110 per cent sure that a God who intervenes every half an hour is more caring than a God who intervenes only at infinity. In the depth of their psychology this is what motivates the ID-ists and drives them to ridicule or demonise the evolutionists.

Much nuisance has emanated from those who wish to enforce gratitude towards their God.

Yes, indeed. This relates to the drive to seek God’s approval that I talked about in my last post. The truly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God of evolution (and of the Taoists, and the Buddhists) doesn’t need our recognition or respect.

The semi-intelligent, shaky, mistake-prone, insecure, devotion-starved God of fundamentalist Christianity does.

So which God should you put your faith in? It’s clear to me: the God of evolution.

Comments

[Edward]

"Penguins pondering nuclear physics," was a recent way I heard this type of discussion described.

Are you really purporting to understand what it would take to create a world, to the extent that you could actually distinguish when and if a creator intervened?

Other peoples' actions are often a nuisance. They might even bring danger.

Maybe the God of these systems, (Taoist, Buddhist, Hittite,) requires only regard: as though the point of creating, rather than making a wind-up toy and walking away, would be to have a co-equal in creation. Maybe no knowledge is "final" enough to be satisfactory. We certainly aren't satisfied with a divinity that has no moving parts.

Evolution and Intelligent Design are both rather crude models to describe the actualizations of the truly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent; neither is worth fighting over.

[Brian]

Edward, I agree that ultimate reality has to be--it just has to be--beyond our ability to conceptualize it. But even though I'm a penguin, and not a nuclear physicist, I can still look around the ice floe and try to make sense of what I see.

Evolution theory may be ice floe-ish. Yet intelligent design isn't standing on anything substantial at all. To ignore what is right around us in favor of imagined otherworldliness: what a waste of what could very well be (and probably is) our one and only chance to comprehend creation.

Also, while evolution and intelligent design may, in the cosmic scheme of things, not be worth fighting over, the fight is being waged here on Earth. It can either be ignored, or a side taken.

For me, taking the "ignore" path is to proclaim, in effect, all is equal. However, I don't see them as equal. Nor does science. So I feel driven to choose and take up sides, though in the long run, of course, I'll be dead and sideless.

For now, I'm on the short run.

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,
What happened to the pursuit of Wu?
Robert Paul Howard

[Brian]

Robert, good question. If I knew the answer, I suppose I'd have caught Wu--the ultimate nothing that is something.

The way I see it, leaving aside my inability to have much of a clue as to what "it" is, Wu is like the Wu Chi posture in Tai Chi.

You start from it. You end with it. And along the way you're always passing through it.

Yet it isn't possible to remain in Wu Chi continously. It's the nature of things to be in motion, to bounce between yin and yang, to be this or that rather than none of the above.

More and more, I'm comfortable with my seeming contradictions. Last night I hugely enjoyed watching a taped episode of the next to last "So You Think You Can Dance."

During that hour, I don't know what happened to my pursuit of Wu either. It's still happening, I'm pretty sure. I Wu my way along every day, in various fashions.

Not a straight journey, though. If there's anything I'm sure of, it's that.