Gross's intent is to compare the strength of the scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution theory with what he says is the complete lack of evidence for intelligent design. The latter is a theory whose claim is:
... that Darwinian processes cannot account for the history and diversity of life because life shows evidence of complex design, and that Darwinian processes could not produce design without "intelligent" input. Ergo, presumably, there must be, or must have been, an intelligent designing agent. Never mind who.
But of course, the unnamed "who" is really God.
Gross calls I.D. "just an argument from incredulity" for which "there is, so far, zero evidence."
That it is an argument from incredulity is pointed up be an earlier article in The Sun, "Fact is, this theory is under attack," dated Feb. 5, 2005. (Sorry, I can't find a hotlink to it.) It said that the Board of Education in Cecil County, Maryland, is considering a new high school biology textbook, and:
... some school board members are asking whether students should be taught that the theory of evolution, a fundamental tenet of modern science, falls short of explaining how life on Earth took shape.
It comes as little surprise that some average, everyday Cecil Countians resent Darwin and support I.D.:
Doug Larson of Cecilton took umbrage at the board's "pushing the idea that evolution is a fact. It's a theory; it has not been proven. It takes more belief to believe I came from a monkey than to believe God created me."
Which suggests that I.D. is indeed an argument from incredulity!
And that's exactly what interests me about it. Though I happen to believe in God, it has always been my understanding that the mere assertion of God's existence is met with a whopping dollop of incredulity by atheists and agnostics. So we seem to have dueling incredulities here.
It all prompts me to wonder where our individual credulities and incredulities come from. Why would one person think intelligent design by an unseen God to be an explanation more credible than, in Gross's apt phrase, "the making of designs by natural processes" alone? Why would another person prefer the wholly naturalistic explanation for our species' arising by descent with modification over the eons, guided by nothing more than that "blind watchmaker," natural selection?
I don't know how to answer that question, but I know it's an important one. In fact, this particular "credibility dichotomy," if I may call it that, seems to be a microcosm of our general culture war as it is being carried out today. The people who resent Darwin and support "creationist" theories such as intelligent design are the same people who oppose gay marriage, want the Ten Commandments posted in courthouses, and so on. And the people who most uphold Darwin tend to be the same ones who take tolerant, secular-humanist stands on many other issues.
Unfortunately, the tolerance of these cultural liberals does not often extend to smiling favorably on cultural conservatives, evangelical Christians, and Bible-toting fundamentalists. There is where we find a blind spot among the left. They hate cultural conservatives as much as conservatives hate them. In a mirror image of right-wing zeal, they consider it their mission in life to thwart old-fashioned religious and cultural conservatism, thereby saving the world from some awful fate.
It's another case of ideological "bubbles." (See my post on that topic in another blog of mine.) The conservatives exist within a bubble of thought and belief which, they fear, would be popped forthwith if liberals get the upper hand. Meanwhile, the liberals inflate their own ideological bubble and fear all right-wing "pinpricks" — conservative victories — in the worst way.
It's as if the continued existence of the world depends on one's respective ideological bubble not getting popped. So it is imperative that one adopt a belief system that is pure and unpoppable ... meaning, in the case of Cecil Countian Doug Larson, that one must forget how incredible the assertion of God's existence is, or ought to be. Rather, one must take God's existence and providence as easy to believe in, and any nature-only explanation of evolutionary processes as the thing which is incredible.
Ideologues are like the proverbial "boy in the bubble": they'll (metaphorially) die if they allow in any foreign ideas.
And their world is a goner if they allow their kids to be exposed to ideological bubble-poppers in school. And so the club supporting creationism's latest incarnation, intelligent design, is intolerant of Darwin-only biology textbooks.
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