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No faith in ID
By: Daniel Palos, Contributing Writer
Posted: 4/24/07
Over the course of the past three weeks or so, The Daily Campus has
been publishing numerous articles regarding Intelligent Design. Most of
what has to be said deals with whether or not ID is a scientific
argument. I would like to add to the list of why ID is not a scientific
argument, but with a different approach. I am going to show the faith
in the ID argument that makes it no more scientific then the flying
unicorn in the sky.
I attended the Lee Strobel Conference this past weekend and I was not
surprised by what I heard. Lee Strobel used the same evidence any
typical creationist would: complexity of DNA, the complexity of a cell,
the precise location of the Earth, the theory of gravity and the theory
of evolution. Most would say that all of the above come from science,
and I would agree, but what Strobel and the other scientists do is
nothing but stating facts, such as "that pen is red" or "your hair is
blonde."
Stating facts is not science; it is merely stating facts. Using the
scientific method to verify a hypothesis that can be tested in the
material sense is science-this has been said many times in the past
weeks. You cannot test for supernatural things in the material sense.
Therefore, you cannot prove that there is an intelligent designer
behind the complexity of the universe and call it God. This is why
there is faith, no? Why does Strobel even need to prove that there is
an intelligent designer and that designer is God? Anyways, time for the
new approach.
One thing Lee Strobel repeated numerous times at the conference was
that the only logical conclusion one could make, given the "scientific"
evidence, is that there is an intelligent designer behind everything,
and that designer is God. So, which God is Lee Strobel talking about?
Allah? The Celestial Teapot? Hindu gods? The Jews' God? The answer is
the Christian God. So wait, Lee Strobel is saying that the intelligent
designer behind ID is the Christian God? Yes. How does he come to this
conclusion? It meshes with a belief system that he holds prior to and
above the science he claims to be using. Without that belief system, he
could not arrive at this conclusion. He has, in other words, determined
the outcome not on evidence, but on a belief that precedes any
evidence.
It cannot be scientifcally proven that the Christian God is the
designer; therefore, you are using faith to come to that conclusion.
Also, you cannot say that God is the only logical conclusion because it
isn't. If I were Muslim, I would say the designer is Allah. If I were
Richard Dawkins, I would say the designer is the Flying Unicorn. This
is somewhat like C.S. Lewis' classical argument of Jesus as the literal
Son of God.
Lewis says there are only three "logical" choices as to whether Jesus
was the literal son of God: (1) Jesus was a liar, (2) Jesus was a
lunatic or (3) Jesus was the literal Son of God. So, are those really
the only three logical choices? Of course not. It is possible that the
idea of Jesus as the literal Son of God was added after his death or is
a misinterpretation of something he said. Some say it is quite possible
that the Jesus presented in the Christian New Testament never existed.
These are all "logical" possibilities.
To Strobel, what is logical depends on his faith. In turn, one can now
see how ID depends on one's faith. So which religion's intelligent
designer is right? No one can say because every single one of those
ideas is based on faith. No one can scientifically disprove any one of
those logical conclusions because all those ideas are faith-based.
Science cannot disprove faith because they are two totally different
types of discourse. Science is science and faith is faith; you can have
both, but you cannot mix them together in the material and scientific
sense.
About the writer:
Daniel Palos is a finance and economics double major. He can be reached at dpalos@smu.edu.
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