How intelligent design is misrepresented by its friends (Part 2)

In my last intelligent design post I complained that Expelled creates the (erroneous) perception that ID is anti-Darwin, religious, and committed to assuming God is the designer. Now on to provide some examples.

Let's begin with the point when Ben Stein considers Francis Crick's attempt to explain the apparent design of DNA. Though an atheist, Crick concedes that DNA may have been designed, but then he suggests that this design could have resulted from intelligent alien life (i.e. the theory of directed panspermia).

Instead of seriously engaging this proposal of an alien designer, Stein dismisses it with a condescending sneer: "I thought we were talking about science, not science fiction!" This may play for cheap laughs among some conservative Christian viewers, but the cost of this quip is high. How so? Because granting the possibility of an alien designer establishes that ID hypotheses are not necessarily theistic, and that is important to refute the dogged claim that ID is merely "creationism in a cheap tuxedo".

Not only is ID not necessarily pro-theistic, neither is it necessarily anti-Darwin. Remember Paul Nelson's definition of ID in the film: "a minimal commitment scientifically to the possibility of detecting intelligent causation". It follows that there is no necessary conflict between ID and the Darwinian thesis that species originated through a process of random mutation and natural selection (so long as "random" is not defined tendentiously in an absolute metaphysical sense).

Sadly, just as Expelled marginalizes non-thesistic ID theories, so it ignores pro-Darwin Christian theology. Or if not quite ignoring it, it only pays attention to it long enough to dismiss it. Consider one interview where Eugenie Scott (of the NCSC) says to Ben Stein: "The most important group we work with is members of the faith community because the best kept secret in this controversy is that Catholics and mainstream Protestants are okay on evolution."

Scott is entirely correct in noting this woefully under-reported fact. But instead of engaging the work of the many, many theologians who embrace evolution, Stein's offers this condescending reply: "Are you sure about that Eugenie?" Next, he substantiates his implied skepticism by interviewing not a theologian but rather a theologically uninformed journalist who dismisses all pro-Darwin theologians as "liberals". Unless that journalist tendentiously defines liberal theologian as "one who accepts evolution", this is merely a cheap ad hominem (assuming that "liberal" is meant as an insult).

Not content with defining all pro-Darwin theologians as liberals, this journalist then makes the following completely outrageous claim: "Implicit in most evolutionary theory is that either there is no God or God cannot have anything, any role in it. So naturally, as many evolutionists will say, it's the strongest engine for atheism." Sure Richard Dawkins would agree with that. But why not interview some of the majority of Christian theologians who would not?

It is not that Expelled completely shuts out theologians who accept evolution. Indeed, Stein interviews a number of them including Alister McGrath, John Lennox and John Polkinghorne. The only problem is that he never broaches the topic of theistic evolution, or even tips off the viewer that these theologians hold these views.

After a horribly skewed survey of the issues Stein draws his predictable conclusion: "It appears Darwinism does lead to atheism...." To this I say: only if you want it to Mr. Stein.