Epigraph:
لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ الْأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الْأَبْصَارَ ۖ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ
Eyes cannot reach God but He reaches the human consciousness. And He is the Incomprehensible, the All-Aware. (Al Quran 6:103)
هُوَ الْأَوَّلُ وَالْآخِرُ وَالظَّاهِرُ وَالْبَاطِنُ ۖ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well. (Al Quran 57:3)
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
Why is Intelligent Design Movement (ID) bad science? I will leave that discussion mostly to the contemporary scientists. They have said enough in defense of modern science. I will start off with introducing ID, its scientific lack of merit and then describe two broad categories of reasons why it is bad theology.
ID is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.[n 1]
If my articles are boring to you, it may be that you need to read more of them, as was suggested by John Cage, an American musician, “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
Although the phrase intelligent design had featured previously in theological discussions of the argument from design,[10] its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People,[11][12] a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to creation science and creationism, after the 1987 Supreme Court‘s Edwards v. Aguillard decision barred the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds.[13] From the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute,[14] advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula.[7] This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found that intelligent design was not science, that it “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents”, and that the public school district’s promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[15]
ID presents two main arguments against evolutionary explanations: irreducible complexity and specified complexity, asserting that certain biological and informational features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection. Detailed scientific examination has rebutted several examples for which evolutionary explanations are claimed to be impossible.
It is important for me at this stage to introduce two terms methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism.
One should consider the latter as equivalent to atheism. So, as a devout Muslim, who believes in transcendent Unitarian God of the Abrahamic faiths, I cannot accept metaphysical naturalism, but I fully believe and endorse methodological naturalism. In fact I often use it not only to deny pseudoscience but also bad theology. It is my main weapon against bad theology.
So what are these terms that distinguish me from ID on the one hand and from the atheist scientists on the other?
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.[1] In its primary sense[2] it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. “Ontological” refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism.
For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no “purpose” in nature. This stronger formulation of naturalism is commonly referred to as metaphysical naturalism.[3] On the other hand, the more moderate view that naturalism should be assumed in one’s working methods as the current paradigm, without any further consideration of whether naturalism is true in the robust metaphysical sense, is called methodological naturalism.[4]
The term “methodological naturalism” is much more recent, though. According to Ronald Numbers, it was coined in 1983 by Paul de Vries, a Wheaton College philosopher. De Vries distinguished between what he called “methodological naturalism”, a disciplinary method that says nothing about God’s existence, and “metaphysical naturalism”, which “denies the existence of a transcendent God”.[23] The term “methodological naturalism” had been used in 1937 by Edgar S. Brightman in an article in The Philosophical Review as a contrast to “naturalism” in general, but there the idea was not really developed to its more recent distinctions.[24]
ID seeks to challenge the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science,[2][16] though proponents concede that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.[17] As a positive argument against evolution, ID proposes an analogy between natural systems and human artifacts, a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God.[1][n 2] ID proponents then conclude by analogy that the complex features, as defined by ID, are evidence of design.[18][n 3] Critics of ID find a false dichotomy in the premise that evidence against evolution constitutes evidence for design.[19][20]
Before we go any further, let me suggest to the open minded readers, to read on and in the words of Sir Francis Bacon, “Read not to contradict … but to weigh and consider.”
Now, moving to the second part of my article as to why ID is bad theology. It is bad theology for they often present God of the gaps. Which means inserting God in gaps of knowledge that are not yet understood by science but over time we begin to have better understanding of these domains. Secondly, they violate a principal tribute of the Unitarian God of the Abrahamic faiths, namely that He is Al Baatin الْبَاطِنُ or the Hidden as documented in the verses quoted as epigraph of this article.
The transcendent God of Abrahamic faiths is beyond time, space and matter and we cannot find his fingerprint or hand in a scientific paradigm.
The mistakes of ID are very evident in the biography of one of its pioneers William Dembski, otherwise a very knowledgeable scholar and his work I can use in Monotheistic metaphysics. Please note my emphasis in metaphysics not in science or physics.
Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience,[1] specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute‘s Center for Science and Culture (CSC).[2] On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his “formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years.” [3] A February 2021 interview in the CSC’s blog Evolution News announced “his return to the intelligent design arena.” [4]
In 2012, he taught as the Phillip E. Johnson Research Professor of Science and Culture at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, North Carolina near Charlotte.[5]
Dembski has written books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010). The second and revised edition of his first book has appeared in 2023. All his books can be useful for the Abrahamic or the Muslim metaphysics.
Why is he a bad scientist and a bad theologian, while qualifying in my opinion as a very good metaphysician and philosopher?
Dembski objects to the presence of the theory of evolution in a variety of disciplines, presenting intelligent design as an alternative to reductionist materialism that gives a sense of purpose that the unguided evolutionary process lacks[85] and the ultimate significance of ID is its success in undermining materialism and naturalism.[32] Dembski has also stated that ID has little chance as a serious scientific theory as long as methodological naturalism is the basis for science.[86] Although intelligent design proponents (including Dembski) have made little apparent effort to publish peer-reviewed scientific research to support their hypotheses, in recent years they have made vigorous efforts to promote the teaching of intelligent design in schools.[87] Dembski is a strong supporter of this drive as a means of making young people more receptive to intelligent design, and said he wants “to see intelligent design flourish as a scientific research program” among a “new generation of scholars” willing to consider the theory and textbooks that include it.[88]
In December 2007, Dembski told Focus on the Family that “The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.”[90]
So, if he is going to be an apologist for the Triune God of Christianity then every thing I have written against the dogma of Christianity, resurrection, vicarious atonement is a demonstration of his bad theology. Nevertheless, I am an apologist for God of Judaism, Unitarian Christianity and Islam and for Afterlife. I present my arguments as theology, philosophy or metaphysics and never as science and in that domain I would borrow from his scholarship.
I am a firm believer in a quote attributed to the 16th century Christian martyr Michael Servetus:
Dembski is also presenting bad theology because he probably considers miracles as violation of the natural law and I do not. He believes that he can catch the fingerprint or hand of God in the workings of our universe, while I believe in the Most Subtle and the Hidden الْبَاطِنُ God of the Quran, whom eyes cannot reach. But, He chooses to reach human consciousness, when He wills, through veils.
Dembski also knows bad religion or bad theology when he sees it. He once took his family to a meeting conducted by Todd Bentley, a faith healer, in hopes of receiving a “miraculous healing” for his son, who is autistic.[100][101] In an article for the Baptist Press he recalled disappointment with the nature of the meeting and with the prevention of his son and other attendees from joining those in wheelchairs who were selected to receive prayer. He then concluded, “Minimal time was given to healing, though plenty was devoted to assaulting our senses with blaring insipid music and even to Bentley promoting and selling his own products (books and CDs).” He wrote that he did not regret the trip and called it an “education,” which showed “how easily religion can be abused, in this case to exploit our family.”[101]
Shall we say that he has not woken up to the limitations of some of the dogma of Christianity? Let me, very respectfully, suggest additional reading materials:
Video About Historical Adam: Is it a Landmine for the Christian Dogma?
Video: William Lane Craig in Quest of the Historical Adam and My Muslim Perspective
Charles Darwin: An Epiphany for the Muslims, A Catastrophe for the Christians
The Quranic Compassion 