An Astonishingly Honest Statement

An Astonishingly Honest Statement

Right Wing Techno Pagan quotes extensively from a recent article in The New Scientist that acknowledges what I have maintained for some time--that there are some serious questions with evolution that Intelligent Design advocates raise, and which are legitimate questions--even for evolutionists. Unfortunately, the original article has now apparently gone behind some for pay firewall, but the quotes are still worth reading--especially if you are one of those who thinks the Intelligent Design critique is just a sham or a scam:

First, I have to agree with the ID crowd that there are some very big (and frankly exciting) questions that should keep evolutionists humble. While there is important work going on in the area of biogenesis, for instance, I think it's fair to say that science is still in the dark about this fundamental question. It's hard to draw conclusions about the significance of what we don't know. Still, I think it is disingenuous to argue that the origin of life is irrelevant to evolution. It is no less relevant than the Big Bang is to physics or cosmology. Evolution should be able to explain, in theory at least, all the way back to the very first organism that could replicate itself through biological or chemical processes. And to understand that organism fully, we would simply have to know what came before it. And right now we are nowhere close. I believe a material explanation will be found, but that confidence comes from my faith that science is up to the task of explaining, in purely material or naturalistic terms, the whole history of life. My faith is well founded, but it is still faith.

Second, IDers also argue that the cell is far more complex than Darwin could have imagined 149 years ago when he published On the Origin of Species. There is much more explaining to do than those who came before us could have predicted. Sure, we also know a lot more about natural selection and evolution, including the horizontal transfer of portions of genomes from one species to another. But scientists still have much to learn about the process of evolution if they are to fully explain the phenomenon. Again, I have faith that science will complete that picture, but I suspect there will be some big surprises. Will one of them be that an intelligent being designed life? I doubt it. Even if someone found compelling evidence for a designer, for us materialists, it would just push the ultimate question down the road a bit. If a Smart One designed life, what is the material explanation for its existence?

These are the reasons that I argue that even those who believe that all of life can be explained through evolutionary thought would be wise to listen to the Intelligent Design critique. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that do not yet fully and adequately explain all the details. Those scientists that raise some of these questions are helping to keep evolutionary biology honest and self-critical--even they turn out wrong in the end. Too much self-congratulation and unwillingness to hear other questions is always a mistake.