Posted by I think one of the more annoying aspects of human curiosity is the demand for the NOW answer. We want everything to be definitively explained NOW. And so we fill in the blanks for questions whose answers we aren’t prepared to answer yet.
Who created us? What came before the Big Bang? Why is Cleveland allowed to exist? When will the world end?
Quite often we use religion to fill in the gaps of our scientific knowledge, that is, until science progresses enough to answer the question definitively. How old is the Sun? How old is the earth? Does the earth orbit around the Sun or vice versa? What is our physical place in the galaxy, the universe – central or not?
Is it so wrong to admit that we don’t know the answer to a question at the moment?
There are any number of problems I have with Intelligent Design, which according to Wikipedia is “assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”
Intelligent Design isn’t science. It doesn’t ask scientific questions; it asks theological questions. As a believer, I find it insulting that some generic Designer is used to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge. What came before the Big Bang? Oh, an intelligent designer.
Growing up, I never thought that science was incapatible with God. What we understood about science is/was an affirmation of God’s creation. And for issues we don’t yet understand, it’s only a matter of time. After all, why would God want to prevent us from gaining knowledge. Then again, I’m not liable to believe in the literal truth of scripture.
But more importantly, the NOW answer stifles thought. If an Intelligent Designer is used to answer a question that science cannot (yet) answer, how are we to continue searching for the truly scientific answer.
The leap needed to believe in God admits doubt and accepts the incapacity of Man to understand God’s greater plan. Our maturation as a species should be to grow to understand more and more of God’s creation through thought, debate and science, even if we never truly get there.
