A Design That's Anti-Faith

Jones traces the way that intelligent design grew directly out of an explicitly religious "creation science" movement and finds that "ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations." He adds, "Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community."

The judge notes that nothing in Darwin forecloses religious belief. Intelligent design, on the contrary, seems to me to be anti-faith.

One of the best definitions of Christian faith is attributed to St. Paul, who called it "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." At every Mass, Roman Catholics around the world "proclaim the mystery of faith." There is no need to have faith in something that can be touched, measured, quantified, predicted; no need for faith in something that can be seen if only we build a big enough telescope or a sensitive enough electron

microscope.

What would be the posture of a believer toward a God who could be seen? It might be adoration, I suppose, or obeisance, but it wouldn't be faith as believers since St. Paul have understood it. Faith requires mystery. Faith requires a leap.

Someday, perhaps, legitimate evidence of intelligent design will be found and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals -- papers that don't just cast doubt on Darwin but offer some tangible evidence of a designer. I doubt it, though. Science and faith are two separate paths to knowledge, and neither is meant to depend on the other.

It seems to me that it's wrong to use faith as a means to a scientific end. Doesn't faith have to be the end in itself?

eugenerobinson@washpost.com