Twenty years ago, when I was an undergraduate, many in academia considered me a walking contradiction: I was both an aspiring biologist and a practicing Catholic. As I was told quite bluntly by one of my zoology professors, “Evolution has demonstrated that there is no God!” I was not convinced. Today I find that I have lots of company.

In recent years, the supposed Darwinian argument for the absence of God has been turned upside down as evidence mounts pointing to the existence of an “intelligent design” behind the creation of the known universe. If there is an intelligent design, of course, there must be an intelligent designer.

Intelligent-design theory has been generating increasing interest on campuses across North America, as documented in a report in the Dec. 21 Chronicle of Higher Education TITLEd “Darwinism Under Attack.” Deeply skeptical science professors are scrambling to discourage their open-minded students from even entertaining intelligent design as a valid scientific theorem. But, while they've been succeeding in keeping intelligent design out most science departments, they can't do much about the full classrooms that turn out when the theory is seriously engaged in philosophy and theology courses.

Mark of the Mousetrap

The biological argument in favor of intelligent design was originally outlined by the biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University in his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, in which he argued that some biological systems are “irreducibly complex”. Behe distinguishes between two types of complexity — reducible and irreducible. Reducible complexity is that which is observed in the communication system of a modern city, which can be reduced to an accumulation of simple systems: Keep removing portions of it, and it still works. Irreducible complexity is the simplest level that a system can be reduced to and still function. Behe's example is a mousetrap: Take away just one part and it is useless.

Behe insists that the precision of biological processes at the molecular level, such as are associated with sight and blood clotting, are examples of irreducible complexity in nature. Behe, a Catholic, is not anti-Darwinian, as some critics have charged. He accepts the idea of common descent for living organisms, and that Darwinian or natural selection can explain much of what is seen in biological systems. Where Behe draws the line, and the wrath of his most vocal opponents, is in his skepticism toward a Darwinian origin for the complex interactions between the most fundamental building blocks of life.

An important distinction is that intelligent-design theory does not require that God is the designer of irreducibly complex entities. It simply posits that some biological processes cannot be explained by chance alone, but give evidence of design that is intelligent. The nature of the design agent — the “who's behind it all?” part of the investigation — is not addressed by the theory. Rather, intelligent design is an attempt to identify the point beyond which Darwinian explanations are no longer possible.

Regarding the mystery of how irreducibly complex systems originated, a critic of intelligent design would point to the great gains of knowledge made in the past, and confidently assert that the remaining mystery will fall to a Darwinian explanation at some point in the future.

Science can and should ask how — but what business does it have asking why?

Intelligent-design theory would counter that a complete resolution of the question is unattainable, however close one can get, and however great the strides of the past have been.

Scientists from both sides must adopt a practical materialism in order to proceed along scientific lines. There is no use in undertaking an experimental study of a phenomenon unless there is a reason to expect a natural explanation. Indeed, this is both the limit and the great strength of science, and why it has been so successful in explaining nature: It methodologically refuses, and rightly so, to allow for the action of any agent outside of material causes. If scientists tell you they have found evidence for angels, they are mistaken — and no friends of religion.

This attitude of practical materialism is carefully guarded, as it should be: Every pseudo-scientist from the amazing-discovery nutrition “expert” to the gadget-happy ghost-chaser tries to cash in on science's credibility. Thus the insistence of a materialist explanation for every aspect of biology.

The most common mistake made by critics of intelligent design is presuming that proponents of the theory are trying to gin up a “God-of-the-gaps” biology, or trying to connect the dots between Genesis and what science has discovered. Thus, most critics of intelligent design have been content to label the theory a new form of creationism and dismiss it.

They are mistaken. Intelligent design is not focused on a “biology of the Bible,” but on identifying the practical limits of biology — asking what can and cannot be understood under the current Darwinian paradigm. The theory does not detract from the predictive and constructive components of Darwinism so much as insist on the insufficiency of Darwinism to entirely explain the complexity of creation.

Stuff for the Studying

Where does all this leave us as Catholics? It is tempting to want to link our lot with the intelligent-design school, but this would be a mistake. Intelligent design must ultimately succeed or fail on scientific terms — that is, on its ability to make testable predictions based on its hypotheses, and on the veracity of those predictions. As Catholics, we may take personal solace in the apparent mounting evidence for intelligent design in the natural world, but this is not the basis of our faith.

Here's how Etienne Gilson put it in 1952: “Religious wisdom tells us that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, but it does not pretend to give us any scientific account of the progressive formulation of the world. … Science deals with nature qua nature, religious wisdom deals with nature qua work of God.”

Scientific evidence that supports chance against intelligent design does not compromise faith. W.R. Thompson, one of the fathers of modern population biology, said, in 1937, “The fact that a process is apprehended by us as fortuitous simply means that we cannot detect, by the methods available to science, any nature preordained to its effect.” And, as Cardinal Newman pointed out, a phenomenon that appears accidental is “accidental to us, not to God.”

What we do know as Catholics is that natural reason can come to a realization that there is a God: “The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason” (Catechism, No. 286). This need not be through scientific reasoning; it can be ascertained through the application of philosophical logic. In fact, it is difficult to see how scientific reasoning can possibly satisfy the above assertion, given science's materialist limits.

We know that God is the first cause of existence. “With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end” (Catechism, No. 301). Existence itself comes from God, without which science is impossible — stuff has to be there for science to study it.

Can intelligent design and the concept of irreducible complexity in molecular systems survive scientific scrutiny? That remains to be seen. Perhaps more fascinating — and more encouraging — is the theory's attraction to many students across North America. Surely their keen interest owes as much to the theory's potential support for their lives having purpose and meaning as it does to the theory's scientific merits.

Science, they intuitively discern, can ask how — how does a thing function, come to be, or respond to changing conditions? But it's fundamentally unqualified to even ask the more pressing question: Why? That's an important distinction to bear in mind as educational institutions battle it out over what to do with the intelligent-design theory.

David Beresford, a biologist, writes from Lakefield, Ontario.