higher divides: a case against intelligent design (currents magazine, 2006)
The auditorium was struck silent. Three hundred of students, professors and staff bowed their heads, or thought to themselves silently, or didn’t think at all as Pepperdine University junior Dustin Long recited the opening prayer.
“We ask you, Lord,” Long prayed, “that we may be responsible with the scientific knowledge we have.”
And with that, Pepperdine welcomed Dr. Stephen C. Meyers of the Discovery Institute – a scientist who, Natural Science Division representatives believe, uses scientific knowledge irresponsibly.
Meyers earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University and is a leading advocate of intelligent design (ID) - the belief that the universe, in all its complexity, was created by an “intelligent designer” or god (but not necessarily the God of the Hebrew Bible).
The majority of reputable scientists and theologians worldwide have attacked intelligent design.
The feud became a nationwide tug-of-war in August 2005 when President Bush endorsed the teaching of ID in public schools. Four months later, a federal judge in Dover, Penn. barred the first school district to embrace ID from teaching it in biology classes, deeming the concept to be religious creationism in disguise.
To the three hundred gathered in Pepperdine’s Elkins Auditorium on February 13th, 2006 for the two-hour, double-class credit lecture, Meyers’ presentation seemed accountable and respectable. During a Q & A session following the talk, the intelligent design proponent revealed his presentation to be correctable too.
The talk switched from a one-sided lecture to an open dialogue by 10 p.m., but not until all but seventeen students had left the auditorium, presumably believing that parts of what they had just listened to were true.
The pro-evolution and predominantly Christian science professors in the room posited that there are truths in the world that they will never understand. They also claimed to refuse to believe that such a gap of knowledge can simply be attributed to intelligent design, and took up the hour-and-a-half long task of refuting key parts of Meyers’ presentation for the few remaining students.
Meyers claimed in his introduction to have the “reticence of the science faculty to allow this discussion to go on.”
According to Natural Science Division representatives, Meyers couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Before the members of the press here tonight,” Dr. Douglas Swartzendruber, Professor of Biology, said at the onset of the Q & A session, “that’s totally untrue.”
Dr. Meyers showed signs of anxiety when he removed his coat for the first time in hours as Dr. Swartzendruber begged of him, “Where is the science?”
Intelligent design is being challenged by most scholars as bad science. Evidence of intelligent design is faith-based and cannot be tested using the scientific method, leading all but few to the conclusion that ID is not science.
To his own defense, Meyers spoke of the Big Bang theory, which can be tested using the scientific method but not proven, claiming that “the idea that you have to prove something to be true is not true of any scientific theory.”
Creationists such as Meyers and church groups who advocate the controversy widely believe the testable Big Bang theory to be obsolete and are considered anti-evolution.
When Swartzendruber pointed out that the Big Bang could be proven, Meyers replied, “Then collect the Nobel Prize for that.”
Prior to Meyers’ invitation to speak, religion professor Dr. Christopher Heard posted a blog on his Web site affirming that he is “not a creationist, not so much because creationism is bad science (though it is), as because creationism is bad biblical interpretation.”
Dr. Heard followed up the essay, titled, “Why I Am Not a Creationist,” by arguing that “if creationism were good exegesis, it would still need to also be good science (which it isn't) to be credible (which it isn't).”
Meyers, however, does not bother himself with whether ID is exegesis or not. “Intelligent design is not theocracy in schools,” he recanted during his presentation.
The host school’s Natural Science Division as a whole disagrees.
“I certainly think ID is a political movement of religious intent,” said the Frank R. Seaver Chair in Natural Science, Dr. Karen Martin. “(His is) not a group that is seeking scientific or educational truth. ID is a marketing tool masquerading as science. The Discovery Institute’s documents show inconsistencies, logical fallacies ... as well as an extremely narrow definition of authentic religion’s belief.”
ID advocates would have students believe that Pepperdine University is unique in that its science professors are also believers in Christ. Nine decades of research found this to be untrue; studies show that about 50 percent of scientists are believers in a Supreme Being and eternal life. Scientists who believe in intelligent design are a rarer breed.
Christian biology professor Dr. Stephen Davis voiced that he was also troubled by Meyers’ assertions.
“I wouldn’t want to put my God in that little box,” he said, “and say, ‘wow, look how complex it is, therefore it must be intelligent design, and that intelligence behind this is the God I believe in,’ because my God is bigger than that.”
Martin said she fears that Meyers and President Bush’s administration want “to tell students and the public what to think, or better yet to stop thinking. Contrary to what the speaker implied, we respect our students enough to let them see the data and make their own decisions.”
Students were enticed into attending the one-way speech because they could earn two class credits for attending the whole lecture – a lecture that was marketed as being grounded in science. Unbeknownst to them was that the misinformation they were given was widely considered by experts as flawed and not science.
Natural Science Division members said they would have shut down the convocation had they been given the chance, but they weren’t. The panel of faculty, staff and students that reviews convocations was sidestepped and did not convene to approve or disapprove of Dr. Meyers.
Dean of Student Affairs, Mark Davis, confirmed that he and others had “allowed the convocation coordinator (Chris Collins) to approve without convening the panel” in the interest of time.
Based on concerns raised by the approval of the convocation, Davis said his office has “revised our procedures so that all alternative convocations are once again reviewed by the panel.”
Elizabeth Price, a Pepperdine junior, approached her student government class president, Brendan Groves, with her proposal to bring Meyers and intelligent design to Pepperdine. According to Groves, Price was “denied the ability by the Natural Science Division” to pursue the event, in which case she then contacted Groves for support.
Student goverment president Leon Dixson said that the convocation “was not suppose to happen,” because department sponsorship is required to bring in an outside speaker. Due to the setback, Dr. Meyers’ Discovery Institute then resolved to financially sponsor the event if no department would.
Dixson made clear that SGA’s involvement was minimal, and that Price had planned the double credit lecture, “listing SGA as the sponsor without our consent.”
With or without SGA’s endorsement, convocation coordinator Collins was the only one who was given the duty of approving the intelligent design presentation once the panel was sidestepped. Natural Science Division professors immediately began their campaign to keep intelligent design from being endorsed as science by the school.
“It’s easy for someone to say, ‘that is not science,’” SGA’s Groves said. “I think that is really scientific shifting … when they’re closing the doors to theories because they’re not classified as science in general.”
With a moment of deliberation, Groves also said of the Natural Science Division and intelligent design, “perhaps they can meet in the middle.”
Biology professor Swartzendruber disagrees.
“I don’t care what the intelligence is,” he said. “As soon as you’re working with something in the unnatural world, it’s not going to be science.” When observing something as complex as the creation of adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP energy) inside the cell, he said that - because it is currently unexplainable - “you can’t just say that it’s intelligent design.”
Evolutionists and creationists may never co-exist like God and man can; the showdown between the higher powers and Darwin is inevitable. As the school’s science professors and theologians say, God works in much more mysterious ways than just “intelligent designing” – for a Christian university to use the scientific knowledge it has to believe otherwise would be truly irresponsible.
In the world that some higher political powers want, auditoriums everywhere will one day convene students who will bow their heads during an opening prayer, or think in silence, or as Dr. Martin noted, will fail to think at all.
Perhaps future generations will adhere to intelligent design word-for-word and contend that the universe is far too great to ever understand, and will in turn give up attempting to, for an intelligent designer planned it that way for six days and rested on the seventh.
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michael alahouzos
published in ‘currents magazine,’ 2006
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