Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Secondary Causes

I've been seeing a lot of stuff from the anti-evolution forces these days, and I've come to a conclusion: I'm heartily sick of the terms in which the whole debate is framed. I have gone from creationist to ID to evolutionist and back.

The various groups pushing alternatives to evolution under such names as "creationism" and "intelligent design" usually do so for at least one of two reasons. The first, and more annoying, is the belief that if God ever becomes unnecessary to explain our existence, God will Himself be disproven. The second, and more understandable, is the belief that God did indeed create the heavens and the earth, and that it would be wrong to teach anything less than the Truth.

But science isn't about Truth. Science isn't about God. Science is about God's handiwork. Science is about secondary causes.

Secondary causes are the causes after God. Secondary causes are the things we learn to understand more about the cause and effect. For instance, the first cause for a baby might be "when a mommy and daddy love each other very much...", but the secondary causes are the biological mechanisms which actually complete the intent of the first cause, and without understanding the secondary causes, our understanding of the process is incomplete. It's fine to summarize "Mommy and Daddy made a baby" or "God did it", but it leaves a lot less room for awe at the complexity.

Think about it! What glories of creation would we not know if we summarized with "God did it" or "God does it"? The heavens declare the glories of God in supernovae, in black holes, in quasars, in the faint whisper of microwave radiation broadcasted across time. God made the heavens so that light travels at a constant rate in a vacuum (or does it?), so that the moon holds the Earth safely steady on her axis, so that the sun governs the days and the stars govern the seasons. The God who knows the movements of each quantum particle is far more than the God who can chart only the fall of each sparrow or the hairs of one's head, and the God who can number the days of a galaxy far more than the God who can number my days alone.

We discover these things when we ask things like "Where does light come from?" and "What force keeps the planets in motion?" and refuse to accept "God did it" as an answer. We discover what a marvelously well-designed Creation this is when we consider it apart from its designer.

Neither creationism nor intelligent design follow this pattern. The first, as a scientific movement, falls apart entirely: it cannot work without a Creator. There is no way to explain, for example, how light and vegetation could exist prior to heavenly bodies except "God did it, it's a miracle." This is about as scientific as the Resurrection: It may be true, but it's a miraculous theological truth and not a scientific one. And no, there's no need to be insulted by that; since science is only concerned with secondary causes, why worry if it doesn't answer Primary questions? Intelligent design is similarly out of bounds. Where we cannot say how the Designer did something, it says merely "the Designer did it." Perhaps true, but scientifically cheating.

And this is why I'm going to try to drop from the scientific debate. It's a mess of science and theology and philosophy with no ground rules, no common ground, and little interest in disinterested truth. I've gone from "creationist" to "intelligent design," and now seem left with "evolutionist," which describes my scientific persuasion, but who will side with my theological persuasion that Genesis is an absolutely truthful (if not scientific, if not factual) account of creation? And who will take the time to discern among them? It's an unholy mess, and may God free us from it to spend more time doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with Him.