No arguments from ignorance allowed

R.C. Sproul recently had a discussion with Ben Stein, host of a documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. This documentary takes a look at the way some colleges appear to be discriminating against their faculty who entertain the possibility of Intelligent Design (ID). It apparently makes the case that draconian measures are being used to deny tenure or even fire professors critical of “Darwinism” (as the critics of evolutionary theory customarily refer to it). I must reserve judgment upon the legitimacy of Stein et al.’s concerns until I see the documentary. My evaluation will depend on the specific basis upon which these professors are being released or denied tenure.

If college faculty bent on propagating strictly atheistic materialism are discriminating against scholars who simply allow for the possibility of divine intervention or intentionality, I will applaud their exposure with vigor. It is an affront to science to have liberal, activist academia obsessed with denying the possibility of faith. Theology used to be the “queen of the sciences” before “science” referred strictly to empirical observation of physical phenomena as the materialist empiricist philosophers have redefined it. I stand alongside Sproul, Stein, Demar, and others in mourning any unjust discrimination against scholars with a personal faith.

On the other hand, if this documentary shows that science departments are selecting people to represent them only if they agree with key tenets of their discipline, I will not be scandalized. Contrary to the beliefs of its proponents, ID is not a scientific theory or hypothesis. And before you think I’m blowing smoke, I want to describe what ID really is.

The chief tenet of Intelligent Design is that some features of biology, such as DNA itself or larger structures like the human eye, are too complicated to have arisen without being engineered. In other words, ID advocates believe that since they perceive holes in current scientific understanding and cannot imagine how certain biological structures came about by natural processes, natural processes could not be responsible for biology as we see it. The best known advocates such as Dembski and Behe have avoided the implication (and at times explicitly denied) that ID posits a specific deity or a designer, only that current biology cannot result from natural processes and hence must be the result of some sort of intervention unrecoverable by the scientific method. It is the argument from silence, the argument from incredulity, and the argument from ignorance all wound up together; it is not only not a theory, but is in fact an anti-theory. It is a God-of-the-gaps philosophy that I have described the pitfalls of elsewhere.

Imagine someone interviewing to be a meteorologist at a television station and telling his would-be employers, “You know, the weather sure is hard to predict. Even knowing the pressure systems and all the other factors available doesn’t make an accurate forecast a sure bet. If hired, my weather segments will begin with me informing your viewers that a host of unknown and unknowable factors make your competitions’ weather reports fallible and likely to be incorrect; I will then proceed to state my conviction that God is the One responsible for intervening and determining what the weather will be; I will then conclude the segment with a few tips on how to pray for specific revelation on how to dress tomorrow.” This is analogous to an academic scientist who expects to be hired/retained by a science department when the fundamental belief on science he holds and intends to convey to students is that God, in ways unknown and unknowable, manually overrode the natural processes He designed in ways that the scientific method will forever have to be ignorant about, on the sole basis that he believes science is ignorant of them right now.

Now, to the extent that this belief may be held and not used to undermine scientific inquiry for the next generation’s researchers, especially in branches of science other than biology such as astronomy, and especially to the extent that it is simply the person’s acceptance of some sort of theism that is responsible for his marginalization as a scholar, I would be not at all tolerant of a crusade by the liberal academia of any university that did discriminate against such a person. But here again, although Christians often attribute atheists’ disdain for Christianity solely to a fear of accountability to the Christian God, I contend that, while this is definitely true in many or most cases, there is the additional problem of Christians making unscientific and indeed anti-scientific claims that cause most academics to also dismiss the extra-scientific, theological claims of Christianity. If the secular intelligentsia did not always associate the former with the latter, there would be no legal justification for discrimination. As it stands, anti-scientific beliefs like ID are the perfect justification for materialistic college faculties to discriminate against Christians.

Related posts:

1. DeMar Tickles Creationists’ Ears In a recent article on his website, Gary DeMar tries to pick a fight with a strawman to encourage his anti-evolutionist choir. This has bothered...
2. Enemies united against an imaginary foe I’ve been quite vocal on this blog in pointing out my disagreements with the Christian critics of science (ID advocates and other creationists). Unfortunately, these...
3. The BioLogos campaign at work An article from Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk of the BioLogos Foundation appeared in U.S. Today on Sunday (August 9, 2009). Admittedly, its title (“We...
4. Chance and diminishing domains During the course of his interview with Ben Stein that I mentioned in an earlier post, R. C. Sproul recounted the story of his conversation...
5. Why are so many Christian scientists evolutionists? As a followup on my reason number two from Why the debate over creationism matters, wherein I state a couple sources underlying this question, I’d...