thinkevolution.net

NOTE: This post was originally published on November 23, 2006, on an old version of this site.

Today Marty Moss-Coane interviewed Michael Shermer, author of Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. In his book, Shermer writes, “Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.” Shermer is a former creationist who now defends evolution and explains that it makes “good theology” and that we need not find it contradictory to religious belief. He is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, columnist for Scientific American and founder of the Skeptics Society. Marty Moss-Coane is the host of Radio Times, a daily radio show from NPR radio station WHYY, 90.9 FM in Philadelphia, PA. You can listen to this show from the Radio Times archive.

Michael Shermer makes an intelligent and educated case for integrating science with religious belief. He points out that the theory of gravity, which explains the formation of planets and our solar system, is not contradicted by Christians in our country; it is largely accepted that this is “how God did it.” I agree perfectly with his argument that evolution need not challenge faith either. Science simply offers explanation of the world we live in. I particularly like Shermer’s insistence that, fundamentally, science can’t contradict faith, because science is the best tool we have for illuminating the world we live in, and no one should feel threatened by that.

Shermer directly confronts intelligent design as a guise for creationism and points out that the anti-evolution philosophy suffers from a specific fallacy of pseudoscience. Intelligent design abandons the quest for knowledge at the precise point at which it is most critical: while science seeks to investigate those things that we don’t understand, intelligent design invokes the “irrevocably complex” cause when our knowledge of a system is incomplete. He points out that this pseudoscientific process of “chasing the gaps” and using God as an explanation for those things that we do not fully understand is the opposite of how science works. Hence these arguments for God or a creator may be philosophical or theological, but not scientific.

Shermer also made an interesting point that I had never heard before. In explaining Charles Darwin’s argument that the evolutionary environment of our ancestors, which included important social interactions and group cooperation, may have played a role in developing a natural moral code, he points out that most conservatives and Christians do believe that we all have innate dispositions. It is typically liberals who try to explain human behavior by external influences. However, these perspectives are perfectly reversed when it comes to an explanation of sexual orientation! Conservatives and Christians are more likely to believe that homosexuality is environmentally influenced or chosen, while liberals typically argue that sexual orientation is innate.

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