The Case for a Creator (14 page)

“As a result, the opinion developed that arguments for God’s existence don’t work and that therefore there’s no rational basis for faith. Then Darwin, by showing that the appearance of design could be explained through natural mechanisms without an actual designer, contributed to the conviction that there was no rational or evidential basis for believing in God.

“In light of that, religious believers had a choice: reject faith, because it has no rational foundation, or reject the idea that you need a rational foundation for faith. The ones who remained believers took the latter, by saying, ‘I believe, I just don’t have or need a rational basis for doing so.’ They would then adopt strategies that would compartmentalize faith and reason, which led to the conclusion that faith and science occupy two different realms.

“But there’s a third option, which involves making a persuasive case for faith without using deductive proofs. Mathematician William Dembski and I wrote an article in 1998, articulating a model of reasoning that we think can be used to support theistic belief. It’s called ‘inference to the best explanation.’

“This is a form of practical reasoning that we use in life all the time. It says if we want to explain a phenomenon or event, we consider a whole range of hypotheses and infer to the one which, if true, would provide the best explanation. In other words, we do an exhaustive analysis of the possible explanations and keep adding information until only one explanation is left that can explain the whole range of data.

“The way you discriminate between the competing hypotheses is to look at their explanatory power. Often, more than one hypothesis can explain the same piece of evidence. For instance, as we just agreed, deism and theism can both explain the beginning of the universe. Okay, fine. But if you keep looking at the data, you find that only theism can explain the evidence for design in biology after the origin of the universe. And so theism has superior explanatory power.

“We reach conclusions with a high degree of confidence using this form of reasoning in our everyday life. This is what detectives do. This is what lawyers do in courts of law. Scientists use this approach. This model can enable us to achieve a high degree of practical certainty.

“And when we look at the evidence I’ve mentioned from cosmology, physics, biology, and human consciousness, we find that theism has amazing explanatory scope and power. The existence of God explains this broad range of evidence more simply, adequately, and comprehensively than any other worldview, including its main competitors, naturalism or pantheism. And the discovery of corroborating or supportive evidence is accelerating.

“In 1992, the historian of science Frederic Burnham said the God hypothesis ‘is now a more respectable hypothesis than at any time in the last one hundred years.’
¹⁷
I’d go even further. More than just being ‘respectable,’ I’d say that the God hypothesis is forceful enough to warrant a verdict that he’s alive and well.”

THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS

Several questions popped into my mind as I listened to Meyer’s analysis. “I gave you the opportunity to offer six strands of scientific evidence for theism, and I’ll be following up with specific objections when I explore them in-depth with other experts,” I said. “But I don’t want to leave without posing at least four overall challenges to you.”

As he listened, Meyer removed his gold-rimmed glasses and started cleaning them with a handkerchief. He looked up at me and said, “That sounds fair. Go ahead. What’s your first question?”

I glanced down at my notes before speaking. “If the scientific evidence for theism is so compelling,” I began, “then why don’t more scientists believe in God? A study in 1966 showed that sixty percent of scientists either disbelieve or were doubtful about God, and the percentage goes up if you look at the most elite scientists.”
¹⁸

Meyer pursed his lips as he reflected on the question. “Initially, I’d say that it takes time for new discoveries to percolate and for their implications to be fully considered, and some of the best evidence for theism is very new,” he said. “Scientists who are focused on one particular field may not be aware of discoveries in other fields that point toward theism.

“Also, the materialistic worldview has exercised dominance on intellectual life in western culture for a hundred and fifty years. It has become the default worldview in science, philosophy, and academia in general. It’s presupposed. Some people who dissent from it have experienced intense hostility and sometimes persecution. That could discourage others from exploring this area or speaking out favorably toward it.”

This point reminded me of a quote by Sandage, who once told a reporter that the scientific community is so scornful of faith that “there is a reluctance to reveal yourself as a believer, the opprobrium is so severe.”
¹⁹

“Finally,” continued Meyer, “within the scientific culture there are belief systems that are philosophically very questionable. For instance, many believe that science must only allow naturalistic explanations, which excludes from consideration the design hypothesis. Many scientists put blinders on, refusing to acknowledge that evidence, and a kind of ‘group think’ develops.”

His answer sounded plausible, but it prompted a second line of inquiry. “There’s a flip side to that issue,” I said. “Skeptic Michael Shermer said almost all the people he sees in the Intelligent Design movement are Christians.
²⁰
Doesn’t that undermine the legitimacy of their science? Maybe they’re only looking for what they want to find and aren’t open to naturalistic explanations that might be sufficient.”

This challenge seemed to push a button with Meyer. “Every scientist has a motive,” he said firmly, “but motives are irrelevant to assessing the validity of scientific theories, a case in court, or an argument in philosophy. You have to respond to the evidence or argument that’s being offered, regardless of who offers it or why. If every person in the Intelligent Design movement were a fundamentalist who attends Baptist Bible Church, it wouldn’t matter. Their arguments have to be weighed on their own merits.”

“But is this an exclusively Christian movement?” I asked.

“No, it’s not,” he replied. “There are scientists who are proponents of intelligent design who are agnostic or Jewish, but I still don’t think that’s relevant. The vast majority of people who advocate Darwinism are naturalists or materialists, so you could play the motive-mongering game either way.

“Besides, look at it this way: if a scientist becomes persuaded by the evidence that theism is true and thus becomes a follower of God, should he or she then be disqualified from doing science in that area? Of course not. I say let’s get beyond this side issue and let the evidence speak for itself. Is design the best explanation or not?”

“That leads to the third question,” I said. “If scientists do allow the possibility of the miraculous as an explanation, then doesn’t that foreclose further investigation? Biologist Kenneth Miller has suggested that inferring the existence of an intelligent designer would result in a scientific dead-end.
²¹
Why continue to explore an area scientifically once you’ve thrown up your hands and said, ‘God did this’?”

Meyer immediately fired back. “I think the shoe is exactly on the other foot,” he said.

“How so?”

“Let’s take the issue of origins, for example,” he said. “The question that’s asked is, ‘How did the cell arise on earth?’ If you say, ‘We’re only going to let you consider answers that involve materialistic processes,’ then that shuts down inquiry, because one of the possible causal explanations for the origin of life is that intelligence could have played a role.”

“So,” I said, “you believe that ruling out the possibility of intelligent design stifles intellectual and scientific inquiry.”

“That’s exactly right,” he replied. “And I’ve seen it happen far too often.”

I pointed at him. “You want to change the rules of the game, don’t you?” I said, my tone suggesting I had just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.

“In a sense, yes,” he conceded. “I don’t think it’s right to invoke a self-serving rule that says only naturalistic explanations can be considered by science. Let’s have a new period in the history of science where we have methodological rules that actually foster the unfettered seeking of truth. Scientists should be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it leads—even if it leads to a conclusion that makes some people uncomfortable.”

SEEING EYE TO EYE

My fourth objection concerned a topic called “disteleology,” which refers to apparent poor design in the biological and physical world. “To adopt the explanation of design, we are forced to attribute a host of flaws and imperfections to the Designer,” Miller wrote.
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The implication is that an imperfect design disproves the existence of a perfect God.

One example Miller cited is the vertebrate eye. “We would have to wonder why an intelligent designer placed the neural wiring of the retina on the side facing the incoming light,” he wrote. “This arrangement scatters the light, making our vision less detailed than it might be, and even produces a blind spot at the point that the wiring is pulled through the light-sensitive retina to produce the optic nerve that carries visual images to the brain.”
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Other Darwinists, including Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, also have decried the eye’s poor structure, with George Williams going so far as to declare it “stupidly” designed because “the retina is upside down.”
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This seemed to be a compelling counter-argument to intelligent design. “If there is a designer,” I said to Meyer, “doesn’t the botched eye design prove he’s not really intelligent?”

He pounced on the issue. “There’s an important physiological reason as to why the retina has to be inverted in the eye,” he said. “Within the overall design of the system, it’s a tradeoff that allows the eye to process the vast amount of oxygen it needs in vertebrates. Yes, this creates a slight blind spot, but that’s not a problem because people have two eyes and the two blind spots don’t overlap. Actually, the eye is an incredible design.”

With that, Meyer stood and walked to the other side of the room, where his briefcase was leaning against a desk. He rifled through some papers and finally withdrew a photocopy of an article.

“In fact,” he said as he handed it to me, “biologist George Ayoub wrote this piece to refute the claim that the eye was badly created.” I glanced at the technical article, in which Ayoub, a professor whose expertise is the cellular physiology of the retina, concludes:

The vertebrate retina provides an excellent example of functional—though non-intuitive—design. The design of the retina is responsible for its high acuity and sensitivity. It is simply untrue that the retina is demonstrably suboptimal, nor is it easy to conceive how it might be modified without significantly decreasing its function.
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Feeling a little chagrined, I put down the article. “Okay,” I conceded, “maybe that’s not a good example of disteleology, but there are a lot of others.”

Meyer interrupted. “Don’t move on too quickly,” he said. “There’s a good lesson here. People make a lot of claims about bad biological design, but sometimes the entire picture is changed when you hear the rest of the story. For instance, people claim a design is bad because they look at only one parameter and claim it could have been better designed. However, engineers know all designs require optimizing a whole suite of parameters, and so tradeoffs are inevitable to create the best overall result.”

That was a mouthful that demanded elaboration. “Give me an example,” I said.

He gestured toward the Apple computer in the open briefcase at my feet. “One illustration that’s sometimes given is a laptop,” he said. “You could look at the screen and say, ‘Bad design; it should have been bigger.’ You could look at the memory and say, ‘Bad design; should have had a larger capacity.’ You could look at the keyboard and say, ‘Bad design; should have been easier to use.’

“But the engineer isn’t supposed to be creating the
best
screen, the
best
memory, and the
best
keyboard—he’s supposed to be producing the best computer he can given certain size, weight, price, and portability requirements. Could the screen be bigger? Yes, but then portability suffers. Could the computer have more memory? Sure, but then the cost goes too high.

“So there are inevitable tradeoffs and compromises. Each individual part might be criticized for being suboptimal, but that’s not the issue. The real issue is how well the overall laptop functions. That’s how good engineering works—and that explains some of the examples of supposed disteleology that are raised.”

While that made sense, it didn’t answer everything. “You’ll have to admit that there are other illustrations of disteleology that are more difficult to explain away,” I said.

“I don’t deny that,” he relied. “Some are just silly. Others are more thoughtful and serious, and they require effort to think through. For instance, Gould claimed the panda’s thumb looks jerry-rigged and not designed. Well, experts on the panda say it’s a pretty efficient way of scraping the bark off bamboo. In the absence of a standard of good design, which Gould can’t provide, it’s really hard to say whether it’s good or bad. It seems to perform its function exceedingly well.

“Other illustrations of disteleology get into issues of theodicy, or reconciling belief in God and natural evil. For example, what about viruses and bacteria that harm people? Did God create those? Natural theologians in the nineteenth century believed that if a perfect God created the world, then it would be perfect, so they were ill-equipped to deal with Darwin’s disteleological arguments.