If I were God...

Reading yet another criticism of Intelligent Design (by a Christian) reminded me of how tricky the evolution "debate" can be.

It has long been argued that it should be possible to tell whether this world has been designed by some sort of intelligence (cf. Paley's argument for the existence of God). It shouldn't be hard to see why this argument is so appealing--if this world was designed by an intelligent being, then there really is a transcendent purpose for this life. That's good news.

The central complaint made against this argument is the same, whether it's in the context of an argument about the existence of God or in a debate between evolution and "intelligent design": there are plenty of things that an intelligent designer clearly would've done differently.

Dr. Ayala makes this exact argument:

"I do think that people of faith may find in the world many reasons that support their belief in God. But I don’t think that intelligent design is one of them. Quite the contrary. Indeed, there are good reasons to reject ID on religious grounds, in addition to scientific grounds. The biological information encased in the genome determines the traits that the developing organism will have, in humans as well as in other organisms. But humans are chock-full of design defects. We have a jaw that is not sufficiently large to accommodate all of our teeth, so that wisdom teeth have to be removed and other teeth straightened by an orthodontist. Our backbone is less than well designed for our bipedal gait, resulting in back pain and other problems in late life. The birth canal is too narrow for the head of the newborn to pass easily through it, so that millions of innocent babies—and their mothers—have died in childbirth throughout human history."

It sounds as if we're not debating science at all, but rather theodicy--how can God exist if there are bad things in the world?

Believers in God almost all do the same thing in this debate: they find some way to make bad things not God's fault. Ironically, that goes for both believers in intelligent design (or creationism) and opponents of intelligent design. While creationists say God designed the world good and humans introduced evil, theistic evolutionists say God allowed evil by way of a "hands-off" policy. (Perhaps "deistic evolution" is more accurate.)

I think what's really going on here is a tricky balance between two important desires. One desire is to find beauty in the world. It is natural that studying the world should leave the impression that it is designed, because there is so much out there to inspire awe and wonder in the human heart.

But the other desire in this balance is to rid the world of suffering and death. Just as it is natural to think the world is designed because it is beautiful, so it is equally natural to think the world is not designed (or unintelligently designed) because there is so much suffering and death. As much as this world can be awe-inspiring, it can be equally heart-breaking.

Many people tend to cling to both desires equally, and yet on the question of whether the world was designed, they seem forced to choose yes or no. In either case, something has to be rationalized away. Those who insist that the world was designed find a way to rationalize the existence of suffering and death (this is theodicy).

Those who believe the world was not designed have their own rationalizing to do. On the question of why the world is beautiful, usually the answer is that it comes down to arbitrary human preferences ingrained in us as a result of millions of years of evolution. I find this at least as weak as any explanation for why a loving God would allow evil.

I guess I find it hard not to simply keep these two desires--one for enjoyment and the other for justice--in tension. Resolving this tension never satisfies me. Scripture never really resolves this tension, either. Just read Ecclesiastes and the prophets side by side. Maybe it is sheer vanity that we persist in this debate. Given the way we seem to talk past one another, that can't be far from true.