withallyourmind.net

This is the 5th in a series of posts considering the charge by ID critics that ID is nothing more than camouflaged religion. I’ve already considered several assertions offered in support of this claim. Today, I look briefly at another, specifically - Does the observation that a theory may have religious implications mean it is nothing but religion disguised as science?

Critics reject intelligent design as science because of its religious implications. It is certainly true that intelligent design may have religious implications, but so does the science of Darwinism. It is unfair to criticize intelligent design as unique in this. The Big Bang has religious implications, but that does not disqualify it as a scientific theory. Michael Behe, in his testimony at the Dover, PA intelligent design trial, made reference to an editorial in the prestigious scientific journal Nature which…

… carried the title “Down with the Big Bang”, and called the Big Bang a ‘philosophically unacceptable’ theory which gave succor to “Creationists.”

Science should proceed to investigate and explain the natural world without regard to the theological or philosophical implications which may follow. Some critics of modern science think that a dogmatic commitment to certain philosophical underpinnings and a distaste for certain philosophical implications is detrimental to the quest of better understanding the natural world. If one excludes an entire subset of answers a priori, one runs the risk of making the data conform to the wrong explanation. As Alvin Plantinga has observed:

If you exclude the supernatural from science, then if the world or some phenomena within it are supernaturally caused — as most of the world’s people believe — you won’t be able to reach that truth scientifically.

Next, I’ll consider a final objection critics offer in their efforts to paint ID with the brush of religion.