One of the worst arguments for the existence of God–consistently and solidly refuted since before the birth of Christ–is the argument from design. The occasion for mentioning this today is yet another intelligent design proponent op-ed contributor to the New York Times, Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, and lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church. Impressive credentials, for a clergyman.
Like others before him in the intelligent design camp, Cardinal Schönborn confuses science with theology:
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
If the Cardinal’s objection is that scientists sometime confuse philosophy with science–claiming that there evidence shows things that it doesn’t–then we join him; such scientists would be guilty of the very same thing the Cardinal is. For evolution shows nothing either way about the theological design hypothesis. Just as no serious scientist can affirm that evolution demonstrates the existence of God; no serious scientist can claim that it does not.
The devastating problems with the design argument lie elsewhere:
Naturally, the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church agrees: “Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason.” It adds: “We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance.”
This raises two questions. First, if it is the case that the real aim of biology is to learn the design of the intelligent creator, then biology is either a version of art criticism or psychology. Second, how could we presume to understand the wisdom of the creator through his works, when discerning the wisdom of our fellow humans through their works remains an almost insurmountably difficult task. Wherein, for instance, lies the wisdom of the framers of the constitution?