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Pat Robertson vs. the PopeIs the intelligent designer loving or vindictive?

By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 7:53 AM ET
Talk to the designer Click image to expand.

The intelligent design movement has a new problem. The designer, it seems, is unpredictable.

Last Tuesday, voters in Dover, Pa., ousted advocates of intelligent design from their school board. Since then, two religious leaders who purport to know the designer have come forward, ostensibly on his behalf.

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI chided people who, "fooled by atheism, believe and try to demonstrate that it's scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order." The pope recalled that in the Bible, "The Lord awakens the reason that sleeps and tells us: In the beginning, there was the creative word. In the beginning, the creative word—this word that created everything and created this intelligent project that is the cosmos—is also love."

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson warned residents of Dover, "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help, because he might not be there." Later, Robertson issued a statement explaining that "our spiritual actions have consequences. ... God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever."

Which is it? Does the designer operate by love or punishment?

A core principle of modern science is that theories have to make predictions. A belief that doesn't make testable predictions isn't a theory and can't be taught in science classes.

Proponents of ID claim that complex systems found in nature—the cell, the bacterial flagellum, the immune system—are evidence of "intelligent activity" by a designer. But what kind of intelligence? Is the designer brutal or loving, jealous or forgiving? Look at the ancient crocodilelike predator we just dug up. Its mouth is a perfect killing machine. Does the same intelligence that designed us design our murderers?

Is the designer love, as the pope suggests? Or does the designer turn on you if you stick a finger in his eye? Robertson says our spiritual actions have consequences, but he can't tell us whether problems will arise in Dover as a result of the school board ouster: "I'm not saying they will," he shrugs. Nor can he tell us what the designer will do if such problems arise: "He might not be there," says the televangelist. And even if Robertson eventually figures out what he thinks, how can we decide which version of the designer—Robertson's or the pope's—to teach in biology class?

"If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them," Robertson joked the other day. Since the immediate problem in Dover is figuring out which theories are scientific, that's not bad advice. At least Darwin is predictable.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Photograph of the pope by Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I doubt very much that God can be voted out of Dover. . . but if Pat Robertson realy thinks he can, it explains a great deal about his politics.

If there really is an intelligent designer, then the Designer's ethics are either nonexistent or so far beyond our own as to be invisible to us.

Cruel diseases, parasites, insects whose young devour their living hosts, but leave the nerve tissue and heart intact, so as to keep them alive until the bitter, agonizing last. . .

. . .and then we have parrots. Parrots and Platypi and dolphins. Silly, happy, good-natured creatures that one would never expect to come off the same Designer's drawing-boards.

The Designer is either far too complex to be judged by us, or else he's just too wrapped up in telling a good story to worry about the moral "message" that his work might be conveying.

Or both. Perhaps a good story really is the highest morality. Tens of thousands of people died to make the Iliad. . . perhaps many tens of of thousands, if you count the sack of Troy.

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here)


Why does Saletan assume that love and punishment are mutually exclusive?

--KevClark

(To reply, click here)

(11/14)

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