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Authors: Michael Shermer
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If there is a God, the avenue to Him is not through science and reason, but through faith and revelation. If there is a God, He will be so wholly Other that no science can reach Him, especially not the science that calls itself Intelligent Design.
DEBATING INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.
—Herbert Spencer,
Essays Scientific, Political and Speculative
, 1891
Debating creationists on the “science,” rather than the theology, of Intelligent Design is problematic, and I have been encouraged not to do so by such friends and colleagues as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, whose wisdom I consider inestimable. They argue, correctly, that there is no debate about the reality of evolution—the issue was settled a century ago—and that the numerous debates about
how
evolution happened are all well within the normal borders of science. In any case, public debate is not how the validity of a scientific theory is determined, and participating in a debate could send the wrong message to the public: that evolution is debatable.
But eschewing public debate has not kept the Intelligent Design movement at bay, nor has the public decided that evolution should not be debated. On a balmy spring Southern California evening in 2004, for example, I entered the four-hundred-seat Physical Sciences Lecture Hall on the campus of the University ofCalifornia, Irvine, to find it chockablock with five hundred people. I was there to debate the incorrigibly insouciant Kent Hovind, Young Earth Creationist, Defender of the Fundamental Faith, and the fastest talker I have ever met. On the docket that evening was the defining question of this controversy,
Creation vs. Evolution: Creation (supernatural action) or Evolution (natural processes)—which is the better explanation?
So, in contrast to many other scientists, I believe there are legitimate and important reasons to engage in the debate between evolution and Intelligent Design:
1. Debates will occur anyway, so they might as well include someone with expertise and experience in science. Better still if they also have expertise and experience in debating, and can employ diplomacy, wit, and warmth along with scientific facts.
2. When a controversy receives as much media attention as evolution and creationism have garnered over the past century, refusing to engage in public dialogue or debate can be misconstrued as a weakness in one’s position. Intelligent Design advocates have made a cottage industry out of exactly this point.
3. Debate forces both sides to put their cards face up on the table for everyone to see. Intelligent Design creationists have no science to speak of, and debates provide opportunities to demonstrate that a pretty PowerPoint slide is not science. As John Stuart Mill argued in his classic 1859 treatise
On Liberty:
“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” 1
4. Debate is a chance to educate people about science and evolution. As we have discussed, muddled misunderstandings about the science of evolution—and the theology of Intelligent Design—far outnumber concrete understanding. In general, the world may be divided into three types of people: True Believers, Fence Sitters, and skeptics. Religious True Believers will never change their minds no matter what evidence is presented to them, and science-embracing skeptics already accept evolution. The battleground is for the Fence
If there is a God, the avenue to Him is not through science and reason, but through faith and revelation. If there is a God, He will be so wholly Other that no science can reach Him, especially not the science that calls itself Intelligent Design.
DEBATING INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.
—Herbert Spencer,
Essays Scientific, Political and Speculative
, 1891
Debating creationists on the “science,” rather than the theology, of Intelligent Design is problematic, and I have been encouraged not to do so by such friends and colleagues as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, whose wisdom I consider inestimable. They argue, correctly, that there is no debate about the reality of evolution—the issue was settled a century ago—and that the numerous debates about
how
evolution happened are all well within the normal borders of science. In any case, public debate is not how the validity of a scientific theory is determined, and participating in a debate could send the wrong message to the public: that evolution is debatable.
But eschewing public debate has not kept the Intelligent Design movement at bay, nor has the public decided that evolution should not be debated. On a balmy spring Southern California evening in 2004, for example, I entered the four-hundred-seat Physical Sciences Lecture Hall on the campus of the University ofCalifornia, Irvine, to find it chockablock with five hundred people. I was there to debate the incorrigibly insouciant Kent Hovind, Young Earth Creationist, Defender of the Fundamental Faith, and the fastest talker I have ever met. On the docket that evening was the defining question of this controversy,
Creation vs. Evolution: Creation (supernatural action) or Evolution (natural processes)—which is the better explanation?
So, in contrast to many other scientists, I believe there are legitimate and important reasons to engage in the debate between evolution and Intelligent Design:
1. Debates will occur anyway, so they might as well include someone with expertise and experience in science. Better still if they also have expertise and experience in debating, and can employ diplomacy, wit, and warmth along with scientific facts.
2. When a controversy receives as much media attention as evolution and creationism have garnered over the past century, refusing to engage in public dialogue or debate can be misconstrued as a weakness in one’s position. Intelligent Design advocates have made a cottage industry out of exactly this point.
3. Debate forces both sides to put their cards face up on the table for everyone to see. Intelligent Design creationists have no science to speak of, and debates provide opportunities to demonstrate that a pretty PowerPoint slide is not science. As John Stuart Mill argued in his classic 1859 treatise
On Liberty:
“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” 1
4. Debate is a chance to educate people about science and evolution. As we have discussed, muddled misunderstandings about the science of evolution—and the theology of Intelligent Design—far outnumber concrete understanding. In general, the world may be divided into three types of people: True Believers, Fence Sitters, and skeptics. Religious True Believers will never change their minds no matter what evidence is presented to them, and science-embracing skeptics already accept evolution. The battleground is for the Fence
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