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 PrintableVersion Intelligent design 101Against naturalismINTELLIGENT DESIGN 101 In his introductory chapter to Intelligent Design 101 Phillip Johnson describes the state of the creation-evolution debate in 1959. 1959 was the centenary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s epoch-making book On the Origin of Species. 50 years later we have another anniversary, and an even more profuse blizzard of books, conferences and television documentaries. In 1959 many of the atheists in the scientific world were quietly confident that evolution had removed the God hypothesis from educated minds and there now remained only a mopping up operation in the cultural war against theistic religion. Intelligent Design 101 helps us catch up with one strand of the debate since then. Intelligent design (ID) takes issue with Darwinian evolution at one specific point. Using the modern discipline of information theory, ID proponents argue that the present ‘irreducible complexity’1 or ‘specified complexity’2 of biological systems cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution alone. They insist that, on purely scientific and rational grounds, it is more reasonable to posit a creative mind behind the universe, than to ascribe its present state to purely blind forces. The book introduces us briefly to the concepts of ID, but focuses mainly on a range of areas in which proponents of ID and ‘Huxleyite’ forms of Darwinism often called neo-Darwinism, are at odds. There are articles on the nature of science, and on what are considered to be the philosophical, anthropological and legal consequences of neo-Darwinism and ID. There is much of great value in this book, but, for me at least, it failed to totally convince. ID is thoroughly convincing in one respect. We do not yet have watertight evidence for a Darwinian explanation of the origin of species. There are gaping holes in the fossil record and a thousand unsolved conundrums. ID is at its strongest when it is pointing out these deficiencies and refuting the often cavalier assertions of some Darwinists. However, underlying much of the argumentation in the book is the assumption that adherence to a basically Darwinian mechanism for evolution is theologically deeply dangerous for Christians. Christian philosophers and theologians have long protested that this is not so and that God is well able to work concursively alongside natural processes.3 When Scripture says that ‘the LORD thundered’ (Psalm 18.13), it does not in any way imply that there was not a sufficient scientific explanation for the storm described, it simply affirms that God had his purposes within that natural phenomenon. Just as advances in meteorology need not threaten Christians’ belief in the sovereign providence of God over storms, so the discovery of evolutionary mechanisms need not threaten a robust confidence in God’s control over his creation of man. At times this book seems about to acknowledge this. Eddie Colanter’s article on the philosophical implications of neo-Darwinism affirms that it is important to distinguish between strong neo-Darwinism which is committed to philosophical naturalism, and a weaker variety which is not hostile to theism.4 However, Colanter’s article then goes on to deal only with the strong variety of neo-Darwinism, leaving the impression that Christians are stuck with a choice between a God centred world of ID and a godless world of natural selection. Many evangelical Christians are not convinced that they must make this choice. My own reading of this book comes after a long period of interest in and admiration of the ideas of ID. However, over the last decade I have felt a slowly growing unease about pinning my apologetics on irreducible complexity. The truth is that numerous mysteriously complex systems have been found to be governed by simple laws. In cosmology where once Christians marvelled at God because of the mysteries of the stars, they now marvel at God because of the grandeur and simplicity of the laws of the universe. It is not particularly surprising that systems as complex as living creatures continue to confound our efforts to explain them fully by means of simple natural processes, but it is a brave person who asserts that we never will. Does evidence for God have to rest on the flimsy foundation of irreducible complexity? I want to stand alongside proponents of ID in the battle against philosophical naturalism. It carries with it all the dangers outlined in Intelligent Design 101. However, I am not convinced that ID is as durable a weapon in the battle as this book suggests. Peter Comont,
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