Harrumph. Intelligent Design is not creationism. In point of fact, since "I.D." rejects the literal Genesis-as-science account, accepts an "old earth," the process of natural selection, and many other elements of evolutionary theory, it is itself an evolutionary theory. As JP the G pointed out, at this point there are many variations on evolution. The only thing ID does is ask a question: can an infinitely complex mechanism occur by chance? It's a rational question, and no less (or more) subject to rational testing and experimentation than the assumption that everything does occur by chance.
The problem for both sides is that there are limits to what we can test in this regard. At some point, both the ID & JC (Just Chance) sides are reduced to the point of that famous New Yorker cartoon where, in the middle of two sides of an enormously complicated chemical equation is written "and then a miracle occurs." What we're really talking about in the two views (putting certain disputed questions --like whether the archeoraptor fossil is a fraud-- for the moment aside) is not hard science versus religion, but duelling philosophical underpinnings to existing and ongoing science: do we teach our kids only the materialist take on evolution, or do we also offer them the rational (not theological) critique of that view?
As so often happens, ID is probably hurt more than helped by some of its most vocal non-scientist advocates (I'm sure Pat Robertson's calling fire and brimstone down on the people of Dover didn't help the cause). But even as I acknowledge that, I have to address the arrogant assumption on the part of the MSM and people like Ralph Neas that somehow it took "Modern Man," freed from the dark powers of the Church, to notice that Genesis 1 cannot be a literal, scientific account of how the world came to be.
Orthodox Christianity has a simple response: Duh. Read the Talmudic fathers on the subject. Read St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine (4th century), who were already teaching (having presumably learned it from the Jewish Fathers) in homilies that the Genesis account --while true and inspired by God-- is didactic and theological, not scientific in nature. The non-literal nature of the text is in fact the point.
For example, Chrysostom taught that the sun and the moon are said to be created days after the establishment of night and day as a way of teaching that the sun was not itself a god but a work of God. The very word rendered in English as "day" for the seven days signifies in Hebrew "a period of time." So even taking a perfectly literal view, we none of us know from Genesis precisely how long God took to create the world. The arrogance and ignorance of people who honestly think they're the first in history to notice there are some things in Genesis that are difficult to reconcile. . . Well, harrumph again.
JPG's address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 --praised or condemned in various circles for his "acceptance of evolution" --was actually something else: it was a reminder about the scope and limits of the respective disciplines of science, philosophy and theology. "Science" likes to tell theology (and the secular culture loves to listen in): "Butt out of stuff you don't know about." The Pope said in essence, fair enough --we never have to fear the result of scientific inquiry, because God himself is truth and will not contradict himself. But, he continued, "Science, by the same token you need to butt out of stuff you can't know anything about. . . .don't pretend you can prove in a lab or a fossil record that God and the soul don't exist. And don't get to thinking that your postulations aren't subject to inquiry and refinement."
A theory is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory's validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.
Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, an on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and beyond it, of theology.
The judge in Pennsylvania has ruled not that Genesis shouldn't be taught, but that in the public schools in his jurisdiction, materialism is the only philosophy permitted to be taught. So much for free scientific inquiry.
