John Young: Creationists trapped in medieval thinking

The article by Neil Broom supporting intelligent design was a departure from the usual defence of this idea. Rather than claiming that life on Earth was created supernaturally in recent times, Broom acknowledged that life arose gradually after the cooling of the primeval planet and evolved over the eons to the present.

However, the core of his article was devoted to criticising one defender of Darwin's idea and did little to show how intelligent design contributed to rational explanation for the evolution of life on Earth.

Intelligent design proposes that Darwin's mechanism for the evolution of complex life from chemical building blocks is impossible without the intervention of an intelligent designer. But if acceptance of an ancient Earth implies a gradual evolution of life from early simple forms to complex organisms, what role does intelligent design play?

Intelligent design as supernatural intervention in the world is miraculous. Were there complex chemicals on the primeval planet, but then a miracle happened, and there was life? Did this life grow and multiply in the usual way but, by a series of further miracles, was it changed from simple to complex? How many miracles were needed? Miracles have no place in science, so intelligent design as proposed is not science at all.

Evolutionists argue that 3.9 billion years is sufficient to achieve what opponents of Darwin say is "impossible". Defenders of intelligent design take inadequate account of the time available for the evolution of complex life.

Molecular biology shows that the building blocks of all today's complex plants and animals evolved in the bacteria and in single-celled animals, and it follows that these had most of the time that life existed on Earth to be refined and adapted by evolution.

How much more time do opponents think is needed? Twice times? Ten times? Or is it always "impossible"?

The argument for intelligent design is only a restatement of a medieval philosophical argument for the existence of a creating god.

Thus, if we find something as complex as a watch in a desert, we know a human must have been there. By analogy, if we find something as complex as life on Earth then it must be the result of a creating intelligence.

The reason why philosophers and most theologians reject this Argument from Design is that while we know what kinds of complex objects are made by humans, we have no basis, by analogy, for claiming that life is too complex to have occurred as a consequence of natural events or that it required the intervention of intelligence.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is unique in offering a mechanism to show how the complexities of life arose from the simpler chemical components of the non-living primordial world.

All other accounts, including intelligent design, involve an unexplained and forever mysterious supernatural being of greater complexity than the world we know.

The chilling aspect of Darwin's concept is that it brings into stark relief what is true, but what we would prefer to believe is not true - that humankind represents a small, warm and hopeful spark, isolated in a cold, barren and uncaring universe.

It is in the nature of the world we live in that there will be suffering. The successors of Darwin's theory have shown how co-operation, altruism and kindness are all factors consistent with the evolutionary model.

It is these co-operative characters that have made humanity what it is.

Science is based on reason in that all its conclusions must be falsifiable. That is to say, no scientist holds that any idea is undeniably true in the way that religious believers hold that their beliefs are undeniably true.

Science is based on a small number of assumptions, supported by observation, but these too are open to revision. The basis of religious belief invariably turns on some belief or set of beliefs that are held as a matter of faith.

But believing something on the basis of faith is to believe it to be true without reason, which seems no more than to believe it to be so because one wishes it to be so. Underlying discussion of intelligent design is the assumption that the designer is admirable. This is at the heart of religious belief.

But to believe that there exists an intelligent designer is to believe that there exists a being with the power and ability to intervene in our world, and who can and does intervene at will, and yet abandons us to the horrors of tsunamis, famines, pestilences and all natural disasters.

A being that, capriciously, "saves" one person from personal disaster (and prayers are answered) but leaves thousands, tens of thousands, millions, to suffer and die. A being that, arraigned before a court of justice, would be tried and surely found guilty of multiple crimes against humanity.

And this being is to be worshipped. It is hard to think of anything more unreasonable.

Better Darwin and reason. Huddle together, take care of one another and tend the cave, and throw another log on the fire. This isn't science, but it makes sense in the world we live in.

* John Young is a senior research bacteriologist with a Crown Research Institute in Auckland.