A review of "Saving Darwin" by Karl Giberson

I bought this book because I was most interested in what would convince a genuine christian that evolution is true.

Giberson gives 3 reasons why he believes Intelligent Design (ID) fails:

1. Intelligent Design substitutes God for gaps in Science

This is a common argument, and goes like this:

• Our past is full of people claiming God is responsible for this or that (something they don't understand), only to be proven later by advances in Science that there is a natural explanation.
• ID is all about pointing out what the Theory of Evolution cannot explain (i.e. it identifies "gaps" and ascribes them to God).
• But we have seen in the past that Scientific advance will eventually close the gaps, so this makes ID irrelevant.

So what is wrong with the reasoning:

It assumes that a negative cannot be proven. In other words, it assumes that we cannot prove that a gap will never be "filled" by a naturalistic explanation.

But mathematics and logic show that negatives can be proven (proof of the impossible). For example, Pythagoras proved that the square-root of 2 cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers.

If we transfer this example to the ID/Evolution debate it would be like this:

The ID proponent says: you will never find a ratio of two integers that equal the square-root of 2.
The Evolutionist says: but we have not tried all integers yet.

The Evolutionist is missing that fact that it is possible to prove that something is impossible, and after this, trying to do so is just a waste of time.

Now lets look at a real ID argument:

The ID proponent says: you will never find a naturalistic explanation for DNA, because DNA is a code, and a code is a symbolic language that has meaning, and meaning is an abstract notion which requires an intelligent mind to create it.

The Evolutionist says (something like): but we have not looked at all possible chemical paths yet.

The ID argument above is true (!), and proves that looking for a naturalist explanation for DNA is a fruitless exercise. Unfortunately it looks like it will take most origin of life researchers many more years of frustration before they see the truth of this.

It is due to arguments such as the one above (and there are many), that I have no fear that the gaps identified by ID will be filled by Science sometime in the future.

2. Some things in nature are "cruel and barbaric"

This argument says that if all things in nature are designed by God, then so too are the cruel and barbaric parts, which in no way fit with a kind and loving God that is followed by ID proponents.

So ID supporters have "shot themselves in the foot".

This argument stems from the fact that Giberson believes that ID is just Creation Science in a "cheap tuxedo". This is where he is very wrong!

So this argument is easily dismissed by simply saying that the intelligence that ID hypothesizes is cruel and vindictive and likes to watch its creation suffer! For example, the Hindus have some Gods that would fit this description quite well.

In other words, since ID does not identify the intelligence, this argument is irrelevant!

3. Norene's Knees - Some things in nature are badly designed

I think this argument is well known enough that I need not explain it any further.

The argument from an ID perspective is also easily countered:

Something that is badly designed, still needs to be designed. In other words, even for a bad design, intelligence is still required!

Nothing more needs to be said about this argument. There is absolutely no reason why the Designer should build things to suite our idea of perfection.

The argument is irrelevant, just like the previous one.

Of course, as a Christian, arguments 2 and 3 above give pause for thought. However, they do not change the fact that ID has the arguments that prove that some things in nature must have been created by an intelligence.

And it really doesn't matter that I cannot square this entirely with my understanding of God, as revealed by scripture. So for better or worse, as a Christian I believe that the intelligence hypothesized by ID is the God of the Bible.