Letters

Intelligent Design

Peter Barnes

Contents - Mar 2006 - Buy a copy now Editorial: The challenge facing Pope Benedict - Peter Westmore Documents: Benedict's first encyclical 'Deus Caritas Est' speaks to the heart of the Faith - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Archbishop Hickey: how to address the crisis of faith - Archbishop Barry Hickey Mass: How can differences over the Liturgy be resolved? - Fr John O'Neill Liturgy: Eucharistic faith: why the Mass needs re-enchanting - Alvin F. Kimel Jr Modernism: 'New Church' not true Church: what modernists believe - Pastor Remotus Vocations: Dominican Sisters: religious vocations continue to rise in Nashville - Tracey Rowland The distribution of Holy Communion past and present: an historical survey - Fr Sebastian Camilleri OFM Media: Archbishop Hickey presents the Christian message on TV - Daniel Tobin Letters: The Fortified School - Chris Hilder Letters: The Eucharist - Jim Howe Letters: Adore 2006 in Brisbane - Tim Wallace Letters: New Age - Richard Congram Letters: Intelligent Design - Peter Barnes Letters: Canadian Lectionary - Matt Walton Letters: St John Vianney - Maureen Wright Letters: Guitars - John Daly Letters: Elitism - Jeff Harvie Letters: Relic of the '70s - Don Gaffney Letters: Vaccines and abortion - Judy Law Letters: Gender neutral - P.F. Gill Books: 'The Case For Marriage' by Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher - Kerrie Allen (reviewer) Books: Edith Stein Discovered: A Personal Portrait, by Pat Lyne OCDS - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Black Robe And Tomahawk: Fr Pierre-Jean De Smet SJ (1801-1873) - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Golden Priest, Wooden Chalice, by Fr Tim Norris - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: Stimulating reading from AD Books Reflection: Bringing Christ's love to the bereaved: a ministry for Catholic parishes - Fr Dennis Byrnes

It is true many Darwinian evolutionists are atheists who seek to eliminate God in favour of blind chance, but Intelligent Design wants to ignore the possibility of the evolution of complex biological systems because they are complex. Commonsense, it is said, dictates that complex patterns and structures must be the work of intelligent design.

Such "commonsense" is an offshoot of the mindset which has beset humanity since the days of Aristotle. Had we been conditioned over millennia to accept evolution we would see such complexity as a miracle of natural development, as many today now see the symmetry of fractals.

Intelligent Design is creationism in disguise which seeks to declare aspects of biology off limits for rational explanation. It also paints itself into a theological corner because the Intelligent Designer must also be the Flawed or Evil Designer, given the prevalence of vestigial, atavistic, and congenital abnormalities in nature. The attribution of such flaws to the operation of secondary causes in nature - natural selection - seems far more consonant with God's providential and permissive role in Catholic theology than that of a direct Designer as in Intelligent Design.

Properly understood, evolution does not deny God as metaphysical originator of the universe, always with the power to intervene in the laws of His creation, but merely claims that in the normal course of events, He operates within the framework of the laws He has created. Natural selection and quantum appear to be part of the provenance of those laws.

For these kinds of reasons, Pope John Paul called evolution "more than a theory". Prominent evolutionists such as S.J. Gould and Kenneth Miller see no necessary conflict between evolution and faith. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, looks suspiciously like Ockham's discredited voluntarism - the denial of the importance of secondary causes in nature.

PETER BARNES
Bassendean, WA

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 19 No 2 (March 2006), p. 15