A couple weeks ago, I read an excellent New Yorker story covering the “intelligent design” trial in Dover, Pennsylvania. The writer expressed admiration for the judge overseeing the trial and predicted the judge would strike down the school board’s attempt to bring the philosophy of intelligent design into public school science classrooms. And that’s exactly what happened. I find this whole “controversy” to be both amusing and a little sad. People who support the teaching of ID tend to be fundamentalist Christians who are normally quite vocal in their faith, but they get all coy when they’re asked to identify who the intelligent designer might be behind such wonders as the human appendix and the blind spot in the human eye. Was it a race of superintelligent aliens? God? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
On this question, ID proponents are oddly silent.
I’m an atheist, but I understand the need to believe that there is an order, a purpose, to our lives. Life, even at its best, is difficult and it’s so comforting to think that we are all part of some grand design overseen by a benevolent and omniscient power. And people should feel free to believe that if it makes existence more bearable. However, it’s impossible to ground this belief in science. Science is the ongoing endeavor to observe and explain natural phenomena through methods that can be tested and proven. It’s not wish fulfillment.
