A NEW CHALLENGE TO DARWINISM (continued)

 Biola University held a public forum on Intelligent Design theory on Dec. 1, 1999.  These scholars challenged materialism - the idea that life is the product of mindless natural forces - on scientific grounds.  Their scientific theories recognize the reality of design and the need for intelligent agency to explain it.  Design theory promises to revitalize many stagnant disciplines by recognizing mind as well as matter as a causal influence in the world.

During recent decades, evidence from many scientific disciplines has suggested the bankruptcy of strictly materialistic thinking in science and the need for new explanations and perspectives.  Consider this information, distributed at the forum by the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture:

"In cosmology, evidence suggests the universe - including all matter, space, time, and energy - came suddenly into existence a finite time ago, contradicting the earlier picture of an eternal and self-existing material cosmos."

"In physics, evidence has shown that the universe is finely tuned for the existence of life, suggesting the work, as astrophysicist Fred Hoyle puts it, 'of a super-intellect.' "

"In biology, the presence of complex and functionally integrated machines has cast doubt on Darwinian mechanisms of self-assembly, and has sparked new interest in the design hypothesis."

"In molecular biology, the presence of information encoded along the DNA molecule has suggested the activity of a prior designing intelligence."

"In artificial intelligence research, the persistence of the so-called 'frame' and 'consciousness' problems suggests a fundamental chasm separating machine intelligence and the human mind."

Consider the human mind.  Are our thoughts nothing but the products of chemical reactions in the brain, and did our thinking abilities originate for no reason other than their utility in allowing DNA to reproduce itself?  Even materialists would have a hard time believing that.  Yet many defenders of the status quo have refused to address the evidence and simply exhort each other to keep faith with materialism.

Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin, for example, urges scientists to embrace a "materialism (that) is absolute" and to stick with "material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive."

Is this what scientists should do if the evidence points away from materialism and toward the possibility that an intelligent designer is necessary?  Will they follow the evidence wherever it leads or will they ignore the evidence because their philosophy does not allow it?

George C. Williams endorsed the idea that life contains a nonmaterial component called information.  The gene is a package of information, not an object.  The DNA molecule is the medium, not the message.

We can see the separation of information and matter in the computer.  The process of transferring information from one physical medium to another and then recovering the information in the original medium brings home the separation  of information and matter.  The computer is merely the medium; the message comes from an author.  Similarly, the information written in DNA is not the product of DNA.  Where did the information come from?  Who or what is the author?

Complex information that is independent of matter implies an intelligent source that produced the information, and Darwinism eliminates that possibility from consideration.

Shouldn't students' minds be kept open and not limited by a set of beliefs?  Why can't our students discuss the idea that life was designed and was not the product of mindless natural forces?

Design theory is a new science for a new century.  New evidence demands a new paradigm, and once critical thinking in this matter is encouraged, it can no longer be restricted or contained.

Christine J. Watson

Thursday, December 30, 1999

North County Times