In Humble Opposition or Perhaps he was replaced by an alien pod person

In his latest column, The Master becomes a tad . . . confusing. In an effort to explain the idiocy of Intelligent Design, Krauthammer says this,

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God.

He says that “anything pretending to be science” must be “empirically disprovable.” And,

How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

Later he says,

[God] may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science.

But here’s my question. If God is behind the creation of life and the universe, then wouldn’t that be of some interest to science? And if the Master acknowledges that there is a possibility that God is behind the creation of the universe, then why does he call the concept that makes that claim “phony?” Forgive me, but I, the humble student, am somewhat confused.

I agree that science class is not the appropriate place to discuss the nature of God and His acts. I’ve said that before. But is science class the appropriate place to dismiss the idea of God as mere superstition? This appears to be exactly what The Master is advocating. The Master proclaims that since it is impossible to empirically prove or disprove God and His acts, then He is not to be mentioned in science class at all.

But then, he says,

What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein?

And our confusion grows. Truly, what could be more elegant and sublime? But, if the Master were to have his way, science students would never be introduced to this wonder. They will be told to seek no beauty in nature, for it is all just an accident.

A very improbable accident.

I must disagree with the Master when he says that Intelligent Design cannot be empirically disproved. It can, if one can show there is no design. If there is no design, then there is no Intelligent Designer. But, in a swirl of arcane statistics, Gerald Schroeder states in his book, The Science of God,

Life has selected from the 10³⁹⁰ possible combinations the fewer than 2 x 10¹² that work. The selection of that minuscule fraction (the one out of 10³⁷⁸) of protein combinations that function for life from the vast number of possible combinations cannot have been by random point mutations on the DNA of the genome. It would be as if nature chose by random from a bag containing a billion billion billion . . . (repeated forty times) proteins the one that worked, and then repeated the trick a trillion times! If protein generation were a random process, then as with random word generation, the result would also be gibberish, but with life it would be fatal gibberish.

(From chapter 7, pg 103 in the 1998 paperback edition. I’m not a fan of MLA style.)

Certainly, there are some holes in evolution, and I cannot see what harm would come if we simply inform students that those holes exist. I can see how some may be concerned that the teacher’s desk may become a pulpit, but I cannot see how a solution is found in the opposite extreme.

So, I must disagree with the Master. The possibility of an intelligent designer should be taught in schools. Otherwise, students are being taught that there is no possibility of an intelligent designer, and even the Master disagrees with that claim.

–J.E. Heath
per-fidem.org

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