After half a dozen requests for interviews, several responses of unavailability and one outright rude refusal, I received a fairly interesting open-ended response from Professor Steve Hays from Classics and World Religions who had my e-mail forwarded to him by biology professor Scott Moody.
Professor Moody and I will continue to be in communication through e-mail and interviewing, and I hope to give his more developed answers the word-count he deserves in next quarter's column. Professor Hays gave some interesting answers worth sharing and commenting on. I wish I could print everything, but space just doesn't permit.
1. Design Detection: If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how could we tell?
As a non-scientist
it seems to me that everyone would grant the *possibility* that an undetectable and untestable intelligent force is directing the universe.
To identify the reality of a designer, I think either the designer or the input of the design (as some sort of matter-energy) would need to be detected and verified as indeed causal of the 'design.' So, if someone with a hidden camera were to film God shaping an organism, well ... that would be a start.
But the scientist's job must always be to explain mechanisms: things that affect other things. The scientific method specifically excludes the investigation of undetectable untestable causes: non-things that affect things.
2. Looking for Design in Biology: Should biologists be encouraged to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?
Biologists should probably be encouraged to make all kinds of intuitional and random observations. Some observations of this sort probably result in great scientific breakthroughs. At the end of the day though
science requires scientists to restrict their *scientific* procedures and judgments to matters that are observable
testable
etc ... Adherents of intelligent design do not believe that God is either of those things.
3. The Rules of Science: Who determines the rules of science? Are these rules written in stone? Is it mandatory that scientific explanations only appeal to matter and energy operating by unbroken natural laws (a principle known as methodological naturalism)?
This question reveals precisely why biologists respond so forcefully to the intelligent design argument: It seeks to change the very definition of science. Or to be a bit more polemic
it seeks to destroy science by dissolving it back into the primeval ooze of undiscriminated human intellectual effort (science
theology
myth
poetry
philosophy).
I don't know about the specific 'rules' of science, but are the principles, goals, and broad methods of science 'written in stone'? Hell, yes. That's why the word 'science' means something, from which it emerged as a distinct mode of thought centuries ago.
4. Biology's Information Problem: How do we account for the complex information-rich patterns in biological systems? What is the source of that information?
ID argues that such information has an intelligent source. The ID position does not allow for the 'source of that information' to be a source of the sort that can be observed and tested. Instead, ID proponents know full well that the observation of evidence of intelligence that they call for can never be expected to lead to a scientifically testable source because they themselves do not believe that God is scientifically testable.
Leah Hitchens is a senior studying journalism and columnist for The Post. If you would like to receive the full e-mail correspondence between her and Dr. Hays
