Careful Scrutiny

In his excellent column Of Many Things on Sept. 12, Drew Christiansen, S.J., mentions the contention of Michael Buckley, S.J., that the roots of atheism were in 17th-century natural theology and suggests that the proponents of intelligent design...are repeating the mistake of using science as evidence for belief in God. He seems to hint that if scientific evidence is the foundation of belief in God, science will sooner or later (or again) turn us into atheists.

It seems that both intelligent design theorists, and certain evolutionists who oppose them, share a faulty and dangerous assumption: if God is involved in the creation and development of life, we will catch him in the act. Intelligent-design advocates believe that examination of life at the molecular and cellular level provides evidence of divine intervention. Atheistic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins believe that there is no such evidence, and that therefore God does not exist or at least can have had no part in creation.

These professional scientists prove amateur theologians. Who says that if God is involved in creationeither as an intelligent designer or the directing force of evolutionwe will find evidence of it? Is it not equally possible that God’s creative activity may be so perfect, so pure and so seamless that we will, in fact, find no physical or molecular evidence of it at all? The biblical tradition itself finds evidence of God not at the molecular level, but in the glory, beauty and overarching order of creationdecidedly unscientific evidences, grounded in human aesthetic perception. If the scientists are going to moonlight as theologians, we had better subject their theology to as careful a scrutiny as their biology.

Patrick J. Nugent