I feel my earlier piece on “Intelligent Design” needs further clarification. Like most of us, I sometimes (often?) fail to adequately express the totality of what I intend, and writing at 2:00 in the morning leaves me most susceptible to this failure.
A thoughtful response from a devout fellow Christian friend provokes this re-examination. He reminded me that “evolution” has not been proven beyond dispute. I believe he is correct insofar that scientists concede evolution does not answer every question about the creation of life. Further, within the scientific community there is debate over many aspects of evolution, for instance neutralism versus selectionism in molecular evolution; adaptationism; group selection; "Cambrian Explosion"; mass extinctions; interspecies competition; sexual selection; the evolution of sex itself and evolutionary psychology among others.
My citing the certainty of evolution was NOT that man necessarily evolved from a fish or from any disputed origin. It was only to observe the validity, the TRUTH, of evolutionary science, that which has been repeatedly proven and accepted as fact by those who have independently studied the subject.
As Eugenie Scott, director of the Oakland, California-based National Center for Science Education says, while those who study peer-reviewed scientific literature will find documented disagreements over the pattern and process of evolution, "they won't find arguments over whether living things have common ancestors.”
Intelligent Design on the other had has absolutely no scientific basis. It is based on philosophy and theology. Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island explains academia’s opposition to explanations that rely on God as a causal agent because such explanations go against the very definition of science: seeking a natural explanation for natural events and phenomenon.
The intelligent-design movement, Miller said, seeks to allow a non-natural explanation into science. "By altering the definition of science, they seek a playing field where the supernatural can have scientific meaning."
Personally I believe God started it all, somehow, some way. We have science to thank for answering some of “HOW” God works his miracles, whether it be the changeable nature of matter, or how a huge stalk of corn grows from tiny seeds in just a few months time.
Science sheds light on truth.
And what is God if not truth?
For now, like the wind that we cannot see but for the trees that wave, God’s reality shines forth from a child’s smiling face, a merciful donation or one of a billion examples of goodness and grace. Ironically, it is the honest pursuit of science that may eventually uncover the verifiable truth of God’s existence.
Yet will faith survive that day?
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