The Cornell American
Unintelligent, Resign - CU's Evolutionist Inquisition
Feature Article by: Dr. Tamas Nagy on November 4th, 2005 at 3:04 PM
"At this moment, scientists and skeptics are leading dogmatists. Such dogmatism is the death of philosophic adventure. The argument on any basic issue is never closed." --Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher (1861 - 1947)
The Truth About Intelligent Design
In his recent State of the University address, President Rawlings outlined the general dissatisfaction of the scientific community to intelligent design and the strategy used to discredit it. “Discredit” is the right word here because instead of arguing using facts and logic, the secular humanists simply discard it as an outdated idea. In the process, however, they make factual and logical mistakes that ultimately render their argument null and void. Moreover, their argumentation provides valuable insights in the mindset and worldview of secularists.
Before answering the humanists’ charges one by one, some light should be shed on basic historical facts about the faith and reason debate. First, everybody has to acknowledge the fact that science (especially experimental science) developed into a powerful force only in Christendom. Yes, important discoveries have been made by pagan cultures, but these cultures never believed that scientific inquiry has anything to do with their deity/deities.
Pagan scientists were more or less observers, not really designers of experiments. Even the Greeks, who were using experiments, still thought that their gods were playing dice with the universe. However, only Christian philosophers (and Church Fathers) believed in the following: God is rational, therefore the world he created must be rational. A rational world would have laws governing it. One can discern these laws by designing experiments in which one or more parameters are changed and observe the outcome. An intellectually honest person has to accept these facts and logic, regardless of his worldview.
The second guidepost concerning the faith and reason debate is this: in order to call something religion-based, it has to come from some sort of revelation (i.e.: the Bible) by an absolute being. However, one can arrive to a logical conclusion that an all powerful, un-caused being must be present in a certain process without the argumentation being religion-based. Just because many Christians happen to believe in an idea will not necessarily make that idea religiously-based.
President Rawlings correctly noted, “Evolutionary theory states that genetic mutations and natural selection, over millions of years, gave rise to human beings and all other forms of life.” On the other hand he also said, “The scientific theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”
Here is where President Rawlings’s errors begin. Intelligent design theory does not claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause. Nor does it claim that the intelligent cause must be a “divine being”’ or a “higher power” or an “all-powerful force.” All it proposes is that science can identify whether certain features of the natural world are the products of intelligence. What is important to note that the argumentation for intelligent design never uses revelation as its starting point; therefore it is an error to call the theory of intelligent design a religiously-based idea. What is playing out here is pagan science (evolutionary theory) pitted against another theory that is organically based in Western (Christian) thought. My point can be illustrated by the following example. To an evolutionary theorist (a pagan in a Western scientific sense) a table is nothing more than a collection of legs, boards, and dowels etc. To the Western (Christian, not necessarily religious) scientist it means something else besides its components, that something else is called “design.” In this regard, to the evolutionary theorist a table is not necessarily different from a pile of lumber cut to certain dimension and hardware.
So what happens if one disturbs the design of the table by kicking out one leg or taking the lumber representing the leg from the pile of lumber? The evolutionary theorist cannot predict what will happen if and how the table will fall or the pile will crumble, because he did not realize the design where stability requires at least three legs.
He cannot predict what will happen, let alone predict the angle at which the table will fall. (In the case of the lumber heap it is almost impossible to predict what happens upon removal a piece of lumber, mostly because it lacks design.) The Western (non-pagan) scientist can predict that the table will tip towards the leg that was kicked out, because he realized the design in that table. In this sense evolutionary theory is defective because it does not recognize design.
Another weak point in evolutionary theory is this: if everything came about by a fortuitous combination of time, matter, and chance then how can we expect that everything will obey the laws of nature? The mere fact that certain experiments will yield the same result regardless of location, time, and experimenter argues for a design in nature. If there is a design, then one cannot invoke a random process to produce an orderly world.
As I noted earlier, the ideas offered by President Rawlings on intelligent design allow us to recognize the characteristics of the North American intellectual landscape as noted by contemporary scholars like Malcolm Muggeridge and Ravi Zacharias. The secular humanists have saturated intellectual inquiry with the notions of secularization, pluralization, and finally privatization.
Secularization is a process in which religious ideas, interpretations, and institutions have lost their social significance. In the past religious ideas guided one’s conduct. Due to the subversive activity of revolutionary communists, liberals, and progressives, those days are gone and, as a consequence, shame is expunged from the minds of people.
This is the reason why certain behaviors and life-styles that once were considered aberrant or harmful are now regarded acceptable or beneficial. Additionally, a prejudicial attitude has worked its way into modern debate. It is the reason why a Christian viewpoint is regarded a prejudiced one. In other words, a religious idea is automatically rejected as biased. Most secularists carry this thinking even further: an idea introduced by a religious person can be rejected merely on the basis that it was uttered by a religious person. Moreover, the secularists increasingly demand us not only to accept these abnormalities, but to join in celebrating of those who broke the “chains” imposed upon them by religious ideology. The primary vehicle of secularization is the media, the end philosophy is hedonism, and the end result is eradication of absolute moral values and loss of shame.
Pluralization is a process by which several competing world-views are available, but none is dominant. Pluralism nowadays is viewed as relativism towards the different worldviews and ethical systems (this is what the multicultural crowd peddles). However, these different worldviews are often contradictory to each other. If two of them are contradictory then they cannot be true at the same time as the law of non-contradiction tells us. In other words, truth is exclusive, and what is true corresponds with reality. So pluralism’s claim that all ideas are equal is false. The primary carrier of pluralization is the university, the end philosophy is skepticism, and the end result is meaninglessness.
The third attitude is privatization in which the private and public life are disconnected and the individual can only be allowed to find meaning in the private life. The primary carrier for privatization is technology, the end philosophy is materialism, and the end result is loss of meaning.
The secular humanists try to mask the dark (and only) side of humanism and try to hide that it leads to hedonism, skepticism, and meaninglessness. Every intellectually honest person, however, can conclude that secularism as an idea is bankrupt, because it takes away the anchor by which one can live a healthy life, leads to a loss of reason and finally arrives at alienation such that we are more comfortable with interacting with a machine than with other human beings.
The bankruptcy of secularism is due to its philosophical underpinnings, not merely because there are dastardly men who practice it. Because of this, secularism cannot be salvaged; it is rotten to the core.