Neil Broom: God's low scorecard a perverse concept

Well, at last we have a result: God 0/10; Darwin 10/10. The latest verdict from a Big Sister Federal United States judge is that a theory teaching that life was produced by an intelligent cause is banned from the science classroom.

But has science really purged God? Has life arisen in the fullness of megatime wholly by the action of unthinking material processes? This is the burning question behind much of the media interest in the "evolution versus intelligent design" debate.

As a scientist and Christian theist, let me state categorically that I am not a "young earth creationist". In my view "young earthers" misuse a sacred text. They try - and I believe fail - to construct a science of origins from a passage of the Bible that was clearly never intended to convey science.

Most serious Old Testament scholars would hold that the very language and narrative form of the early chapters of Genesis indicate that it is dealing with issues of transcendence and are thus necessarily framed in symbolic forms and powerful imagery.

"Creation science" fails to do justice to the huge body of scientific evidence that supports an ancient earth with life-forms having increased in complexity over the vast aeons of time.

In my view "creation science" is really an "anti-science" and fails to acknowledge that God-given spirit of open inquiry so important to our appreciation of the natural world and to the integrity of the scientific enterprise.

But there is another excess in the Science versus God debate, and it comes from those who claim that science has "explained it all".

Biological materialists assert with unwavering confidence that the action of wholly natural or material laws alone is sufficient to account for the stupendous edifice of life.

Probably the most influential contemporary marketeers of biological materialism in vogue are Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker), Steve Jones (Almost Like a Whale), Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea), and Peter Atkins (Creation Revisited). They all intone in different ways the materialist's slogan "there is no purpose in nature".

Biological materialists argue that mind is the byproduct of mindless, motiveless mechanicity. Nothing more than the relentless grinding away of entirely impersonal forces, acted on by the sieving action of Darwinian natural selection, has made molecules into Women (and Men).

And yet, when the materialist's storyline is analysed, it is found to be replete with misleading analogy, inappropriate metaphor, duplicitous language and disguised transcendence.

Space prevents me from sampling representatively from each of the above writers but a down-to-earth example of this abuse of metaphor can be found in Steve Jones' book Almost like a Whale.

In a chapter explaining how natural selection works he describes his student experience of working as a fitter's mate in a Liverpool soap-powder factory.

A soapy liquid is blown out through a nozzle and the pressure drop creates a cloud of soap particles. But the process originally used a simple nozzle that narrowed at one end.

This design led to several quality-control issues. Jones describes the problem of finding an improved nozzle design as simply too difficult for scientists to solve so the company resorted to evolution - "design without a designer".

Here are Jones' words: "The engineers used the idea that moulds life itself: descent with modification. Take a nozzle that works quite well and make copies, each changed at random. Test them for how well they make powder. Then, impose a struggle for existence by insisting that not all can survive. Many of the altered devices are no better (or worse) than the parental form.

"They are discarded, but the few able to do a superior job are allowed to reproduce and are copied - but again not perfectly. As generations pass there emerges, as if by magic, a new and efficient pipe of complex and unexpected shape."

Steve Jones is a professor of genetics at University College London and should, of all people, know better than to write such nonsense. The trial-and-error or hit-and-miss type of process which he claims is analogous to natural selection is actually loaded with intention, or to be exact, intelligent scrutiny.

A nozzle, said to have been modified at random, is tried and found to do a better or worse job than another. And who decides whether it is an improvement or not? A rather discerning "nozzle operator", one skilled in the art of recognising whether the change is for better or worse, one who is able to detect subtle degrees of improvement or deterioration.

Even the expression "trial and error" presupposes an expectation against which an altered performance can be judged. "Hit and miss" is all about a target that is being aimed for.

The men on the Liverpool soap factory shop floor knew precisely what end result they wanted (a better-performing nozzle) and this surely robs Jones of his convenient metaphor for natural selection.

The words "design without a designer" are little more than misleading sloganeering. What Jones presents to his readers is a piece of sloppy materialistic fiction, and its incessant repetition reveals the depths of intellectual poverty to which biological materialism has sunk in its attempt to market a persuasive science of life.

For me, neither the anti-science stance of the young earth creationists nor the incessant intoning by materialists - "there is no purpose in nature" - provides a satisfactory framework for a truly thoughtful appreciation of life's mystery. A grade of zero out of 10 for God seems to me as a scientist, oddly perverse.

* Neil Broom is a University of Auckland associate professor who teaches the science of materials and has a research interest in biomaterials, a discipline that combines engineering and biological concepts.