Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

Great article. As a discussion provoker, the article seemed to show both sides of this debate pretty clearly.

1. It seems Professor Crocker has a clear agenda. What justifies her teaching a religious theory in Biology 101?

   (Aside from personal beliefs, if I signed up for a Biology 101 course, I would expect to be taught/learn what constitutes "Biology 101", not the intricacies of an origin of life theory—without understanding the science, students will not be able to competently form their own understanding)

2. Prof Crocker’s claims "There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution," then goes on to explain/teach the fundamentals of micro-evolution. Isn’t this contradictory in and of itself?

3. You mention Dr. Behe’s book—Darwin’s Black Box. Note that it was published in the late 1980’s. Having recently finished it, while he makes a convincing argument based on his assumptions, some of his non-evolutionary assumptions are off base and have since been partially explained in evolutionary terminology (note http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html).

Without at least debating these issues in the open, people may be confined to their particular societal circle and unwittingly led to misunderstandings.

And I think you hit the nail on the head:

evolution's advocates and critics are mostly talking about different things.

Thanks again for the article.

Has anyone ever offered an intelligent, scientifically provable reason why anyone should believe in a supernatural power, such as a god?

Enjoyed your article. Isn’t the time perspective of spirituality and religion too short? Christianity has existed for 2000 years, and we walked out of Africa 2000 generations ago, but these are both drops in the bucket on an evolutionary time scale. Doesn’t it, therefore, make more sense to think of spirituality and religion as characteristics of evolution rather than the other way around? From this perspective, spirituality is evolving as much as our bodies are and shouldn’t be thought of in absolute terms. I think of the lessons of spirituality being highly important, but in an allegorical sense. They explain very well how to lead a meaningful life and interact with each other (Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus).

It’s even possible to imagine that spirituality could be anticipating some future evolutionary change, for example a higher level of integration. After all, the cells in our body and the mitochondria in our cells were separate life forms at an earlier stage of evolution. Interacting together gave them a competitive advantage.

Regards,

Peter Parker

"New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory", (Sept. 26, 2005)

Science provides information that allows us to understand a subject. It does not teach beliefs.

Religion provides information that we are to believe without question. Faith.

Should we not be concerned that we are conditioning people to accept what they are told based on the source? Could it explain why so many people accept the lies that the politicians tell them?

I am a believer in a Higher Power, and yet I am not a Christian or even a religious believer. It seems to me that when people band together in a religion, great harm can result.

I don’t think Charles Darwin was wrong in any of his Theory, and yet, he only began a search for the Truth. The Truth is what we should all be searching for, and let the chips fall where they may.

If there is a God, he will always be wrapped in Mystery to us, and that is my Faith.

John

Shankar Vedantam

What I want to focus on today is summed up by the headline of the story:

Religious critics of evolution are wrong about its flaws. But are they right that it threatens belief in a loving God?

My question is how, with even a rudimentary understanding of biology one could see a loving God creating us the way we are? Our brains tend to fall apart as we age, we get cancer, we’re prone to birth defects, many if not most pregnancies end in miscarriage (often before they are known about), our joints fail, etc. Is this love from an omnipotent God? While I am religious, intelligent design smacks of poor theology (aside from its poor science).

Great article!! I am incredulous at the naivete of the proponents of "intelligent design" when man clearly is a "mutant mess"—there is nothing exalted or sublime in a creature that masticates, defecates, urinates, fornicates, claws and struggles for scarce resources just to subsist; man is clearly just driven by the genetic imperative to procreate and propagate the species—that is the end of it. As Hobbes said, "life is short, nasty, and brutish"—reaffirmed by the nihilistic Keynes—"in the end we are all dead." Look at the "religious ideology" of a sect for who the apotheosis of being is to kill indiscriminately, seeking martyrdom in the preposterous hopes of hooking up in heaven with 27 virgins—talk about selfish genes (not to mention delusions of adequacy…) Man is all about irrational calls for jihads and religious crusades in the name of a false God. Moreover, suffering is clearly antithetical to any "meta-narratives" espoused by any religion. It is incontrovertible that man is barely one step removed from the slimy, sludge creatures of the swamps… we are all, in the words of my medical resident partner, "piss poor protoplasm"… anything beyond that is unadulterated folly.

One opponent of evolution in your article stated that no one who is pro-evolution can explain why humans should "behave in qualitatively different ways from animals." I can explain it. The brain of a human being, formed by billions of years of evolutionary pressures, developed connections that allowed it to symbolize the outer world within. Thus it became easier to recount the past and anticipate the future, making our brains the dominant force on the planet. It also gave us an upgrade in consciousness, sending us over an important threshold which now separates us from our animal cousins. This is the threshold that separates amorality (all of nature as we know it), from the moral universe which we now inhabit. This higher awareness—that other races are the same as us, that animals can suffer—compels us to act on this knowledge. At all levels above that threshold of consciousness we passed perhaps 50 or 100 thousand years ago, our morality grows as our knowledge grows. Morality is proportional to awareness, an imperative to all beings with a level of consciousness above that crucial threshold, over which only humans have trespassed in the history of this planet.

Because science, by definition, looks only for natural explanations; and since, as William Shakespeare noted, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 5); please comment on Dr. John Haught’s thought that evolution has not stopped with the human, but that with much more time, our species, particularly our minds, could evolve into much more spiritual beings.

I was intrigued by Prof. Crocker’s comment that Intelligent Design admittedly "makes for a weak theology." Instead of wading into a thicket by attacking evolution head-on, why can’t Intelligent Design proponents simply conclude that evolution was intelligently designed?

This would leave ample room for belief in a loving God—a loving God who designed a flawed masterpiece that needs continual intervention.

There were 2 issues in the article that struck me as significant. One is the idea that it wasn’t God who created us, but we who created God. If you read authors such as Jared Diamond, you come away with a very long understanding of the development of human culture and can see how religion has developed over time. This is very hard for religious people to accept.

The second point is that I agree that creationists and ID proponents have made a huge strategical error in trying to win this argument using science as the basis for their arguments. They will never win this one on scientific grounds.

Fundamentalism has been on the rise in both Christianity and Islam for the last 40 years. I think this is rooted in fear of change. In times of social turbulence, some believers long for order and stability, and they think they can find it in dogmas that claim to offer absolute truth. For many Christian fundamentalists, evolution and Epperson v. Arkansas are convenient villains for their sense of discontent. Columnist Molly Ivins puts it this way: "Fundamentalists aren’t evil; they’re scared."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your article yesterday. Along the lines of the proposed theme of this discussion, it would seem to me that science and religion are inherently separate entities, since faith and religion often fill the gaps in our understand on rational lines. That being said, I don’t think there is or can be any scientific evidence for the existence of a higher power or creator. Faith and religion fill a need in our human experience that will always transcend the empirical nature of the scientific method ("the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know"). If faith in a higher power or order somehow comforts us as a species, well and good. It seems, however, that we miss the point when we see the literal outcome of evolutionary theory as undermining our faith and ethics. Even without a God, we would still develop these qualities. It is part of our humanity, regardless of the source. I don’t see how the mechanism of evolution, even if taken to its extreme end, threatens this.

Terrific article. As a Jew married to a Hindu, I am confused as to why Christians seem uniquely affected by evolution. Many on both sides of my family are deeply spiritual, and yet they do not feel threatened by the idea of natural selection.

According to your article it appears that western philosophies seem to have reservations about the theory of evolution. And you have mentioned that eastern philosophy seems to be more more tolerant to the views of evolutionists. And yet they also have some issues as stated by the Dalai Lama.

Are you aware of any other specific reservations expressed by Buddhists or Hindus?

One of my favorite comments in regard to finding God in nature is Haldane’s quote that God must be "inordinately fond of beetles" as they make up around 1/10th of species on the planet. Just shows that it can be kind of silly to try to second guess God based on what we see.

Potomac, Maryland

Because science, by definition, looks only for natural explanations; and since, as William Shakespeare noted, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 5); please comment on Dr. John Haught’s thought that evolution has not stopped with the human, but that with much more time, our species, particularly our minds, could evolve into much more spiritual beings.

In some sense that may happen. Remember the key element in evolution is some kind of superiority leading to an advantage in reproduction. In advance societies, few people die of natural causes between five years old and their reproductive years.

We already see that religiosity correlates positively with reproduction among populations like Mormons and Muslims, who have more babies than secularized Americans, Japanese and West Europeans.

I think you are fundamentally correct that the two sides are talking about different things. The difference is that those supporting evolution don’t portray themselves to be religiously versed, but those that support ID do portray themselves to be scientifically versed.

I also teach Bio 101 locally and the first thing the students learn is that you can never prove a hypothesis to be a fact. You supply lines of evidence that outweigh opposing viewpoints which become accepted by the majority of scientists. If it is widely applicable across disciplines, then it is called a theory (in science the word theory is not synonymous with conjecture, as it is in journalism). The ID proponents point to the uncertainty in science as a flaw rather than as something inherent in all scientific understanding. In order to be science, you have to be able to test and falsify your null hypothesis. This is what separates science from anecdote, religion and rogue opinion.

Given the lack of evidence that there is any intelligence behind evolution, I’ve heard it stated that a better term is "miraculous design", which points more to the problem. The question that theistic scientists and ID supporters disagree on is not whether there is a God (oops, sorry, an intelligent designer), but whether God regularly comes down and miraculously mucks up DNA in a way that is in opposition to normal physical laws to make new creatures. The ultimate divide is whether or not miracles exist, not whether God exists (and excepting one particular resurrection, I, as a Christian, do not believe in them).

I found your suggestion that belief in evolution might be a hindrance to survival really interesting. I’ve always seen the story of the Garden of Evil as allegorical: the fruit didn’t make us mortal—the knowledge we gained made us realize we were mortal. The scary truth comes with the intelligence.

But maybe there’s a limit to how much intelligence is useful. After all, animals get cancer and get preyed on or hit by cars. They just don’t spend much time worrying about it.

For an interesting take on this debate take a look at Wilber’s book A Brief History of Everything. It will throw additional light on this debate. A question for the stew: Is the universe bio-friendly to carbon life forms? If we were a million miles closer or further from the sun would/could life have arisen on earth.

Responding to the question from

Hilo, Hawaii

Has anyone ever offered an intelligent, scientifically provable reason why anyone should believe in a supernatural power, such as a god?

I would ask him/her…"Has anyone ever offered an intelligent, scientifically provable reason why anyone should believe in macro-evolution?"

These questions force us to think about epistemology… to believe that we are limited to the physical/material arena to garner all knowledge about this universe is destructively reductionistic and arrogant. It is also a faith statement of the highest caliber… a faith statement which falls far short when compared to the faith statement, "In the beginning, God…"

I wish to thank you for writing such a balanced view of the philosophies that are the real irreconcilable differences between evolution and religion. I only wished that you had included a couple of other modern arch-Darwinists such as Daniel Dennett or Steven Weinberg, who like Huxley, use Darwinism to beat religion and religious people into submission. But otherwise a very well-written article.

Why didn’t you present the more mainstream voices? John Haught and Ken Miller were given token quotes. I feel this article—spending most of the time with the creationists or atheistic Richard Dawkins—is throwing gas on the fire. We’ve seen how well that works with Muslim cartoons…

I disagree with Alexandria. There should be no debate because there is no rational disagreement to debate. ID advocates want to create the impression that there is, to keep the topic in the news and move political opinion to allow religion in schools. Secular education should not treat religious issues. That’s the legitimate role of churches.

Reply to Shankar. Science does rely on belief in authority and, yes, faith. I am a physicist and I have not performed all the experiments for myself. (Not enough time or money.) So I believe my professors when they describe work I have not done myself. But that is different from the kind of faith behind ID, and lacks the internal logical consistency I use when I place "faith" in what I have not done myself. It’s a completely different thing.

Reply to Reston. But that is one of the illogical, nonscientific differences of opinion. Supporters of ID believe the earth is only 6000 years old—roughly. There is no time for evolution to have occurred, they believe.

I understand your point about teaching religion in the schools. In a perfect and safe world, this would be the sensible thing to do.

Unfortunately, our world is neither perfect nor sensible, at this time.

Were we to allow the teaching of religion in high schools, under the circumstances in which we are now living, those classes would shortly be morphed into diatribes about why we must accept the Lord and Savior, and the implication would be that if we don’t, we are stupid, unpatriotic, and damned to hell.

So, no, I could never support the teaching of religion at that level, and certainly not at the present time.

Let me see if I understand this correctly: Religious people are afraid that the mass acceptance of evolution will cause people to stop regarding humanity as having a birthright at the top of the food-chain???!!! If that’s the case, then the reasoning behind the Religious Right’s refusal to consider the effects of pollution becomes clear: God has given humanity a blank check to do whatever we want to do.

So am I missing something here?

N. Bahn

Wouldn’t it be a bit easier for everyone if a priori we agreed that statements about origins must be faith statements? Whether it is the materialist saying, "In the beginning, matter…" or the Christian who agrees with the Scriptures, "In the beginning, God…" Then… an open, honest discussion concerning which faith statement "fits reality" as we know it… the "humanness of man," "purpose," "morality," etc., etc.

I am a minister and an evangelical. God is it. Scripture says so. That’s enough for me. That being said, I wonder sometimes about people on both sides of the issue. Those on the evolutionary side of the issue anathematize the Intelligent Design (ID) folks because the ID folks believe God might be involved. Those on the ID often ignore the scientific evidence, and gloss over the two creation stories in Genesis. For me, Scripture is clear. God created the heavens and the earth, and He is therefore sovereign over them. How He created them is unimportant. It’s in the past. Adam and Eve sinned against God, and dropped all of humanity out of our right relationship with God. Whether they did it in 6000 BC or 6 million BC is unimportant. For me as a Christian, my calling is to be to the fallen world now and in the future a faithful witness of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ.

I live in the heart of Judge Roy Moore country. I have a letter I think will be published tomorrow in a regional paper quoting the great evangelical scholar Mark Noll as well as a quote from an author Miller who wrote Fooled Again. My letter fillets the religious right and local Baptist Church ideology and provincialism. I have on now a sweat shirt that says under a Large Monkey Face: "Our Father??" and then quotes I Corinthians 3:19, which says "For the Wisdom of Men is Foolishness to God". I think that is true, but I think Creationism and ID are a crock. I wear the shirt to tweak my fundamentalist friend. I wish everyone would read Finding Darwin’s God by the Dartmouth Prof. Just wanted to report, not more than hour and half away from Dayton Tennessee and the Scopes Trial. Would love to have a response to my Dispatch.

Thanks!

Oh, My Dad was a Baptist Preacher and I am a fan of James Wood, the Literary critic and his book, The Broken Estate.

The way I see those who argue for ID on the basis that life could not have come into existence without the hand of a superior being.

If that is the case, as everything and everyone has to have a beginning, how did this god who supposedly made everyone and everything in the universe come into existence without the hand of a superior being? And how did the very first superior being down the line come into existence if not through evolution?

Religion gives people psychological comfort while evolution implies a cold, soulless existence. That much is true. But religion ensures morality while biology causes genocide? Puleez! Since when has God stopped anyone from killing others or going to war? On the contrary, religion is more useful as an excuse to kill and hurt others. People will do awful things despite their faith and faith often gives them the justification to do it and smoothes their conscience. What does any of this have to do with either God or evolution?

Humans, along with bacteria and fish and every other species, have lived millions of years without any knowledge of their origin or "the truth." Does that change anything? Nature, the universe, i.e., the Truth, does not give a damn whether we "believe in" it or not. It’s an indifferent universe that is completely uninterested in humans’ hopes and dreams and self-image. Like Galileo said, "But the earth still revolves around the sun." Evolution happened and is still happening and will continue to happen, regardless of what is taught in American schools.

Where does Santa Claus fit in this debate? There is proof that Santa Clause exists (I’ve met the man. I have a photograph of myself with him. The cookies and milk were consumed). Yet he, as a single individual, has evolved over the years.

I don’t understand the objection to evolution based on Hitler. It seems that Christianity must similarly be false due to the number of people who have misused Christian doctrine to start wars, slaughter unbelievers, steal, etc.

Should a Buddhist professor be allowed to lecture about reincarnation in biology class?

Comment: Intelligent Design is not the same as Creationism.

Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, publishes in 1975. Observation: Genes obviously have a lot of intelligence, seeing they are able to be selfish.

Darwin, The Descent of Man; "It would be as if human beings invented God, rather than the other way around" Actually, that is inevitable according to the rules of Evolution, where the best product wins out. Hitler must have loved that notion. He thought it was injurious to the race of men that civilized nations care for and keep alive "the imbecile, the maimed and the sick" and all those he did not like.

Comment: The idea of a distant designer who set creation in motion is not the idea of the Christian metaphysician.

Lecture Paul Julienne, "…science proves there is no God…" I have always loved the beauty and precision of a Swiss watch. I used to think that an intelligent person designed that watch. But evolution informs me that when I understand how the watch is made, there is no longer a person who designed it. I.e. when I understand how the watch is made, it came together by accident.

Comment: Just because a phenomenon is explicable, does not mean that it is not a phenomenon. It means that it is an explained and understandable phenomenon.

Ken Miller, Finding Darwin’s God. I see Ken Miller’s reasoning, but find it skewed. An argument against God? This is what evolution preaches. Why is God thought not capable of science? Just because you understand the science, does not mean there is no God. Actually, you learn more about God by understanding His works, science.

Comment: Not to allow the free exchange of ideas is very limiting to all parties and visions. Rather let’s search for truth, as physicists of the past did.

I have one last question. Where did the stuff come from that "banged" during the "big bang"?

Thank you for a well thought out article. My cap off to Dr. Crocker and people like her who stand up for what they believe.

I am a Christian. I also accept as fact the theory (as used in its scientific definition) of evolution. Evolution does not threaten my belief system. What disturbs me most is this anti-intellectual streak that runs through fundamentalism—that if it’s not in the Bible, it’s not worth knowing. And for the president to say that ID should be taught in schools, cut funding for science education, and then say we need more science, well, I tend to get a little dizzy when spun that much.

How does science alone address the issue of the rise of life itself? To appeal to random chance occurrences obscures the issue. An obvious example: the DNA molecule, some 4,000 or so bases long, each one of four, is sufficiently complex that random ordering, even at several per second, would take far longer than the number of seconds in the known time of the universe (13.7 billion years), much less the widely accepted time since the rise of life (2.5 billion years). (Caveat: the suggestion it may have come on a meteorite simply pushes the same question back one level.)

Shankar, A very interesting article. Professor Crocker and others are missing a couple of big points about science, in particular evolution. The pursuit of science is designed to tackle issues/problems that are otherwise not understood; even with continual advances in any scientific field, complete understanding of that field is almost never realized. Of course there are gaps in the study of evolution, just as there are gaps in any field of study. That’s the way science works.

The other point about science that Intelligent Designers (IDs) and other opponents don’t seem to understand is that at its core, scientific study is set up to prove or disprove ideas. If Professor Crocker and others want to show that evolution is incorrect, then they can perform the necessary experiments and observations to show that it is incorrect. Rather than do this, however (which they can’t because all good scientific evidence shows that evolution is the correct theory) IDs and other opponents attempt to disprove evolution by anecdotal accounts of experiments that didn’t work or falsified results, thereby "proving" that evolution is incorrect. Which doesn’t prove anything.

One other thing that disturbed me from the article was the issue of Alan Leshner not debating the merits of evolution, because the science association believes that such events convey a false sense to the public that there really exists a scientific controversy over evolution, as stated in your article. As a scientist who has taught General Science courses to college undergraduates for many years, I can tell you that while there is not a true scientific controversy over evolution, there is definitely a lay-persons’ controversy over the issue. Scientists on the whole are not properly conveying scientific concepts to the general public. Because of this, many people misunderstand science, particularly evolution. As a community, scientists need to do a much better job of conveying scientific concepts to the general public, otherwise these same issues will continue to occur.

Isn’t the debate about intelligent design (which really is a spin-doctored name for creationism) and evolution a comparison between apples and oranges? Evolution is science, based on research and reams of data and intelligent design is a belief that some higher being did something. Evolution belongs in the science classroom. Intelligent design begins in the churches and classes about history of religion.

I was interested to see that your article included mention of Nancey Murphy, and I’m wondering if you also have had any contact with her co-author of the book On the Moral Nature of the Universe, George Ellis, winner of last year’s Templeton Prize. Professor Ellis, a internationally-known cosmologist who co-wrote another book with Stephen Hawking, would be a wonderful resource on this whole topic of evolution vs. intelligent design. If you have not had any contact with Prof. Ellis, or read any of his writings, I strongly commend him to you.

Great article. All participants in the discussion seem to be scared they will lose their audience. Who do you think seems to have the most to lose in this dialog? Who seems most vicious?

Thank you,

Bob Potter

Your opening comment about the theory of evolution undermining belief in a loving god perhaps overstates that connection. One’s belief in a loving god is certainly at risk in this world, but it has nothing to do with Darwin and everything to do with both natural and man-made disasters. Why do innocent people suffer so much and so gratuitously if there is a loving god ?

Indeed, if one looks at much of the human misery caused by other humans, one often sees the angry, contorted face of religious fundamentalism, people who claim to be doing God’s will.

In fact, Darwin can be consistent with a superior being who set the process in motion—a broader perspective which one can take to accommodate two theories which may only be contradictory on the surface. Any ethical approach to this problem must take the third possibility into account.

Dogma, on either side, does not advance the discussion or the human condition.

In 500 to a thousand years researchers will read your article—and others—on this topic and remark on how such advanced societies could be so ignorant on the subject. That is not knocking you—as we learn more and develop new investigatory tools we understand more. I am convinced that what we know about evolution is akin to what Galileo knew about the universe—a lot in his time, but not near as much as we do today. Darwin and his followers have given us a map and it should be explored. I think that God wants the human race to grow in knowledge and self awareness and he has given us mysteries that will confuse and confound us as long as we exist. We live in a divinely created Rubik’s Cube that changes with every new discovery. The intelligent design advocates should join the flat earth society. They will find kindred spirits.

Describing the issue as science vs. religion misses the point. I see nothing in evolution that contradicts personal spirituality, which is about the search for meaning and purpose. Even though we evolved from other life forms, we are still special because we have the capacity for moral choice and we have the awareness of death.

The conflict is really between science and organized religious doctrine. That’s because doctrine is about accepting certain teachings without questions, while science is about questioning everything we observe. Doctrine has little to do with faith or spirituality; it is how religious organizations exert some degree of control over their members. I don’t know what the authors of Genesis had in mind, but I view the Adam and Eve story as a metaphor for the development of human sentience and human civilization, not about women bearing the guilt for getting humankind evicted from Paradise.

Maybe the solution is for Christianity to finally give up Biblical literalism while retaining its core values. Although not from Christianity, Joel Achenbach’s January 22 column about the Dalai Lama said it all: "His teachers explained that the moon emits its own light. But one day they brought him a telescope. He looked at the moon under magnification and saw that its surface contained shadows. He had made a discovery: The moon’s light comes from elsewhere. It must come from the sun. The doctrine was directly at odds with what he could perceive with his own senses and a scientific instrument. What to do? Simple: Change the doctrine… He makes a distinction between the core values of a religion, which can’t change, and the doctrines that are mutable, like the bit about the moon. But he clearly sees no problem being fully spiritual and fully scientific. He believes in freedom, which includes the freedom to use one’s brain."

Of course traditional religious beliefs have been contradicted by evolution, but they’ve also been contradicted by discoveries in geology, astronomy, other parts of biology, and basic physics (as well as the internal contradictions in Scripture, but we needn’t go there.) What makes evolution the lightning rod for the Religious Right?

Fred Zlotnick

I don’t question that evolution is a fact regarding how animals adapt to their environment. The keen observation by Darwin and others supports that as defensible science, and mutations are also prevalent. To take that evidence and extrapolate to a position of faith where the complexity and breadth of life on earth all originated from a cosmic chemical soup is an amazing stretch. Where are the currently evolving species? Even with all our technology, scientists are unable to "engineer" life from a chemical soup. If science is about proof, evolution, regarding the origin of life, is unproven and at least as great a leap of faith as belief in a creator. Second, I have never heard the evolutionist explain the ubiquitous presence of sexual species. For the dominant pattern of life to require both a male and female to evolve simultaneously is pretty hard to explain without creative design.

Evolution vs Intelligent Design

I believe your reason for the controversy between the two advocacies—

Why have such examples failed to convince doubters? Over many months of interviews about intelligent design, I gradually came to realize that evolution’s advocates and critics are mostly talking about different things. While the controversy over intelligent design is superficially about scientific facts, the real debate is more emotional.

—misses the more fundamental reason for the dispute. While it’s true people generally respond emotionally when confronted by an idea that impacts some portion of their persona (and is at odds with it), the more basic rational for a person’s behavior is how a person has learned to think about issues, namely, how the criteria a person has adopted and uses to form the cosmos and persona that underlie his behavior, particularize it. For most people, thinking that forms their personal ideas and beliefs depend upon a score of acceptable/approved authorities and concomitantly (and more importantly) on the methodologies used by their authorities for forming concepts and conclusions. Evolutionists believe in the scientific method as the methodology for reasoning, testing ideas, and reaching conclusions. Intelligent designists believe in the faith method as the methodology for reasoning, testing ideas, and reaching conclusions. These two methods for thinking are not compatible nor, I think, reconcilable. And sensible logical arguments about evolution between adversaries, dancing around sundry particulars from their respective points of view, seem to me pointless; the engaged adversaries have essentially agreed beforehand to disagree on the criteria for an acceptance of points made.

In your article you state:

However,