People don’t seem to talk much about Intelligent Design (ID) anymore.
No doubt it will return to the fore as current wave of increasingly reactionary Christian fundamentalism sweeps across the USA especially. Before it does, I’d like to get my tuppence-worth in. So…
ID seems to be based on a succession of false assumptions that are so transparent that it is surely only because its proponents represent a religious perspective that our culture deems inherently respectable that they are not merely laughed at.
Firstly, let us assume – or indeed prove - there are certain key problems of nature science really is unable to solve, such as the origins of the universe, the origins of life and the origins of consciousness. What follows from this? That ID is correct? That ID is at least worth considering? No. Nothing follows from this. One might just as reasonably infer (as scientists and philosophers often do) that there are simply inherent limits on our ability to grasp the universe – that we are victims of ‘cognitive closure’.
But let’s assume that the failure of science does imply that ID is correct and that there must be an Intelligent Designer. Does that mean that this designer is God? No. It only suggests that it he/she is intelligent enough to be capable of a considerable design. Other than that, it tells us nothing whatsoever about our maker. Certainly not that they are Our Maker.
But how about if we concede that our cosmic engineer is indeed divine. What does that get us? From the point of view of the usual Christian ID enthusiast, not much. Let's leave aside the problem of knowing the nature of an entity that exists on a plane where the whole of our universe is only a detail, and whose nature is, purely by virtue of this fact, unknowable in any meaningful sense. Assuming we could penetrate such mysteries, which God is it? I’m damned if I know. As it were. It certainly does not follow from anything about the concept of a divine engineer (especially not a deity we know solely through their creation of the universe) that he, she or it is Christian, Jewish or of any other denomination. Or, a fortiori, why. For all we know, it was done for a lark.
On the other hand, I’m pretty confident that, unless you want to treat the whole of Genesis as a metaphor (and therefore just another inadequate pointer to the nature of our Intelligent Designer), I can’t for the life of me see how any of this connects to the process of Creation described in the Old Testament.
So where does that leave Intelligent Design? Nowhere. It is a complete non sequitur, not only with regard to any alleged shortcomings of science but at every other step along the way. In fact it seems to me that the only way to validate the theory of Intelligent Design is by assuming that it is true!
So why do they bother? Because they are making the same mistake that Christians have made ever since Copernicus, which is the desire to have it both ways. They want to believe in a deity of such unimaginable nature, character and intentions that they would be able to create the universe, but they want to justify their belief in their unimaginable deity by imagining him/her/it anyway.
In other words, self-contradiction is built into the whole ID enterprise, and it cannot be resolved by merely human means.