A Random Walk with Dr. Potomac

Yes, it has been too long. Too bad. Dr. Potomac has something to say today.

He is much vexed by the Intelligent Design controversy. As a Christian committed to the truth of the biblical narrative, he believes in a human anthropology rooted in the uncaused cause of God's creative action. As a political professional he has deep misgivings about the way the ID debate is playing out. Unless there's a quick change in tactics that incorporates both science and the humanities, all may well be lost for another century.

Forget about Richard Dawkins. The real problem for the ID movement is that the conservative intelligentsia is out in force against ID. George Will, Charles Krauthammer and, most recently, James Q. Wilson, have all published briefs, and fairly compelling ones at that, against ID in the biology classroom. Unless ID advocates have decided to "go it alone" against the universities, the New York Times and their own friends in media, something has to change.

Now, Dr. Potomac freely acknowledges that many of our conservative intellectuals have gaps in their reasoning concerning ID. Wilson's piece, for instance, argues that the "blind spot" embedded in the human eye is evidence against a creator -- for what all knowing God, he says, would permit such a deficiency? Dr. Potomac responds with, "Why stop there? What about cancer, hurricanes and earthquakes?" Wilson's statment seems to be not much more than a redraft of, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Which brings Dr. Potomac to his point. Our ID folks are earnest but weak and are locked in a cage-match with Science, by far the strongest force in Western thought. In such a fight, they will eventually be carried from the arena unconscious. To mix metaphors, in the science courtroom all the evidence is on their side, they have hand-picked the jury and the judge dines daily with prosecutor and the foreman. The process is rigged. It is a fight worth having -- if for no other purpose than to drive the Darwinist priesthood into frenzy -- but no one should be under the illusion that it can be won.

Creationists (and what a fine bit of work has been done to render that word an unspeakable embarassment!) are strongest (or at least should be)in the humanities. Despite a couple centuries of assault, denigration and obituary notices, God is, as always, cheerfully persistent about His own existance. The human heart remains tuned to eternity, and ultimate questions continue to wake us in the middle of dark nights. The moral imagination is alive and well; indeed it is both immeasurable and unquenchable. When one reads the work of Darwinists as they grapple with the uncomfortable questions of existance that arise from the imagination (the "God gene", altruism as a genetically selected behavior, ethics in general) they sound rather out of their depth, in the same way that ID advocates sound in a biology classroom. There's a weakness there, a blind-spot, as it were, in evolutionary biology. We ought to be making the most of it.

Dr. Potomac read the other day that a Kansas University professor, who regards himself as a scourge of the ID movement, proposed making a science class on ID part of the university's offerings on mythology. This gesture of contempt ought to be considered an invitation and opportunity to rethink the strategy.