Reason Vs. Faith *

A Response by Steven Macks

(With further interaction with Tom Lawson attached.)

The ring is clean, the confetti ready to fly. The masses have arrived to cheer for their favorite. There will be no other match to warm things up; the headlining fight will be all. The bill has Reason stacked in the champion corner, and Faith as the humble challenger. With all of the beer and nachos sold and non-refundable, the packed crowd should be awfully disappointed. The match has been called. Reason has no beef with Faith, as it would have it, and Faith is not in conflict with Reason. As the crowd slowly makes its way down the aisles and out the door, the two contenders shake each other’s hand.

The rationalist (or materialist, or naturalist, or even atheist) would like you to believe that faith is superstition. They want to tell you that they have no faith. Unfortunately for them, they have no idea what the word means. They treat it as a pastor’s word. Any word out of the mouth of a theologian is hardly believable in the rationalist’s mind, scarcely anything to give serious thought to. Even the simple utterance of the word leaves them envisioning the miraculous resurrection of Lazarus, or maybe something even less imaginable to them.

The rationalist has gotten the wrong idea. Believing that Jesus raised Lazarus from death does require faith, but not all faith is this extreme. This is faith in the Bible, not faith in general. Faith is believing in something, having confidence, even in the times when you cannot prove the thought right. If I tell my nephew to stay out of the candy I left on the kitchen table, I have faith that he will do so. In the immediacy of that moment, however, I cannot prove it. I’d like to think that the power of my authority would be good enough to warrant proof, but anyone who’s been around kids for some amount of time will know that just isn’t true!

The naturalist says he has no faith. What he means is that he doesn’t have the Christian faith. There are two mistakes with his statement: (1) faith has another meaning and (2) he has an equivalent faith in materialism.

Faith isn’t something to be afraid of. We all need it to get started in something. I have strong reason to believe that this computer will save the information I put onto this page, but I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had the faith to give it a try the first few times I wanted to write something.

The materialist is trying to blind us to what faith in anything might imply. They have a knee-jerk reaction to faith because if they have faith in any concept, they might as well just have faith in an Almighty God. This, however, is unacceptable to them. So they gloss over the issue and set up a mock boxing match between faith and reason. However, Phillip Johnson was right in that "Faith … isn’t something opposed to reason."

But enough of my ramblings. Time to get to the meat of the issue:

Intelligent design, in my estimation, traces its roots in the philosophical and logical realm to William Paley, who formulated the now famous (and abused) watchmaker analogy. Although Socrates and Diogenes also offered similar theorems, they were incomplete and had error in their reasoning. Although it is dismissed as old-fashioned and unscientific, Paley provided the framework for Intelligent Design theorists such as Behe and Dempski to get started.

Since this essay is an initiation to debate, I’ll spell out my specific disagreements and go from there. Tom Lawson’s words will be italicized and in quotations, and my comments will follow.

The materialist doesn’t like this idea, and he typically starts out by classifying those who believe in Intelligent Design theory. The first thought that naturally came to mind after reading this was "Actually, all old-earth creationists believe in an intelligent designer. That’s what makes them creationists, after all." There’s not much to be gained with this classification, so I’ll leave it be.

This is where the materialist and the creationist disagree. To the creationist, everything has been designed, so the whole thesis is fundamentally flawed. Not so to the materialist. This is a crucial point: misunderstandings can stem from the most basic of ‘biased’ sentences. I’ll do my part to avoid such generalizations from my own biased perspective, to save energy and problems.

Likewise, the naturalist sees evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution in the normal operation of natural law and would have a minute-made explanation for a violation of natural law. This demonstrates the congruity in structure that religious beliefs and naturalism actually have.

I love it when materialists use designed experiments, with intelligently thought through components to try to ‘prove’ neo-Darwinism. They don’t see the difference between an unguided, natural process, and intelligently thought through experiments with intended results.

When referring to a designed computer experiment in Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe says "The analogy is offered in lieu of actual evidence." (220). The question here that needs to be asked is "Does this represent actual evolution?" I think that it does not. First of all, we are dealing with computers as opposed to organisms, two non-parallel worlds (If we were to allow a similar conclusion drawn on the development of computers, the word design would be ringing in everyone’s ears).

To see the more subtle reason that computer ‘evolution’ does not really show actual evolution, we have to understand how this program is said to work. Random strings of binary code were introduced to ‘test tones’. The strings of code that responded with a steady output regardless of the tone it heard were said to be most fit. The strings that didn’t do this were deleted, and the ‘survivors’ were then copied (metaphorical reproduction.) Some of the copies were allowed to ‘mutate’ – they were given random changes to their binary structure. It took approximately 4100 ‘generations’ for the program to be able to distinguish between two tones (or the modulations between the words ‘stop’ and ‘go’).

Essentially, this is a rehash of Dawkin’s "ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" program, cleverly disguised. The binary sequence goal was not specified at the beginning, but a computer programmer, given some time, could tell you what binary program would best be able to distinguish between the two tones. So, although not fully specified, the binary string could have been known (and used for comparison) before the experiment was started.

Let’s not forget that this experiment had a goal: to see if random changes and selection could produce a program that could distinguish between two tones. Evolution is said to be ‘mindless and goal less’ by the NAS, yet another reason that this experiment fails to represent actual evolution.

But, wait a second, someone might cry, the "ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" program and this one have a slight difference. Where the Weasel program would hold the letters that stopped in the correct place, this would only select the one that best distinguished audio tones. That’s a reasonable complaint, but it doesn’t get it off the hook. The experiment is designed to select the binary string that has the most code correct at any given time. Also, you don’t lose the parent string when ‘reproduction’ occurs, it is merely set aside until it is obsolete.

If we take an honest look at this experiment, it does not represent an unguided, natural process with no goal. It has a specific goal, it is guided in the laboratory, and is conducted using designed components. This could scarcely be further from ‘real evolution’ and still pass for it.

Young-earth creationists aren’t the only ones who think so. Many trustworthy naturalistic sources agree! Of the more famous naturalists who have voiced this criticism is the frequently quoted Stephen Jay Gould. "The crucial phrase of natural selection means no more than "the survival of those who survive." – a vacuous tautology." (Gould, 1979, p. 40). This is how natural selection is often formulated. When it is formulated another way, the definition is soon switched back to the tautological definition.

And we finally come to the major shift of the creation/evolution debate. Read this last sentence carefully. Since we cannot provide good reason why macroevolution isn’t just microevolution acted out over a long period of time, it must be true. I’m sorry, Mr. Lawson, but the burden of proof lies on you. Your only evidences are examples of microevolution, yet you conclude macroevolution, and demand that we disprove the notion. That’s not science, but instead it’s a logical trick and word games.

Besides, I cannot give a good reason why Lee Harvey Oswald isn’t the gunman in JFK assassination, but that doesn’t prove that he did it! (That’s just an example, by the way… it says nothing about my views on who killed JFK.) Think about it. It’s not up to creationists to disprove a statement of authority, but to the materialist to support that statement.

In the "three examples of poor design," I don’t see any poor design. I certainly don’t see a problem with the testes argument. And as far as horses and dogs go, it might just be that the Intelligent Designer was providing both variety and organisms that defied naturalistic explanations(is it any wonder that we don’t hear about how the heat control in dogs and horses arose from the same evolutionary ancestor?). The absent enzyme argument is interesting, but not compelling. Besides, perfection isn’t the only thing that indicates design. For example, an 8088 computer is by no means a perfect machine, yet it is 100% designed.

Also, imperfections allow the world to work without being governed in every aspect by an Intelligent Designer. If each organism had a 100% survival rate (it could reproduce, predate, escape predators…survive in every way we can imagine) then all organisms would fail. Let me elaborate on this idea a little bit more.

Since all organisms are 100% affective in surviving, that means that a lion is 100% effective as a hunter. That also means that an antelope is 100% effective at evading capture and its certain death. So which will it be? Who will win? The lion or the antelope? Do you see the problem here? This example leads into other problems, certainly, in survival and the all around job of being a part of God’s creation.

I am admittedly reluctant to enter into the discussion of "the Fall", but it is assuredly an important thing to consider. In the original creation, a 100% perfect lion and a 100% perfect antelope would survive perfectly together. However, after the Fall, predation began and organisms became less than perfect, which allows survival as we see it today.

The idea that a Supernatural being cannot create natural law is a mistaken one. It has long been said that the effect cannot be greater than the cause. Therefore, the Designer can easily create natural law. The alleged problem here comes in the semantics. But maybe I can clear it up a little bit. I am human, but I can create something that is not human, even mechanical. I could build an engine from parts. Does this seem contradictory to you, that a human can create mechanical?

Last time I checked, creation scientists only used supernatural intervention for two events in their arguments (many more in their theology): The creation week and the flood. Everything else in creation science sticks to natural explanations. Does this mean that we fit within the boundaries of what the materialist considers sound, productive science?

There are many ways I could go from here, and I shall choose the easiest one: to stop right now and await a reply. Anything not covered I feel is simply unimportant or inconsequential.

Best wishes to all, and enjoy the ensuing debate.

Steven "Madd" Macks