Faith & Science
Intelligent Design
So Is Intelligent Design Easy to Grasp, or Not?
Responding to my comment that the science behind ID isn’t easy, our friend and ENV contributor Granville Sewell, mathematician at the University of Texas, El Paso, writes:
I have to disagree with your statement, just posted at ENV, that a major obstacle we face is that the science behind ID isn’t simple. I think it is very simple.
The obstacle is, most scientists refuse to believe that the issue is that simple, they aren’t impressed by an argument that doesn’t require more knowledge of modern science. But most laymen understand that the issue is this simple, and it always has been.
I commend to you Dr. Sewell’s video, above, which is certainly interesting and accessible.
Perhaps the problem is with me, then. But I’ve found that, as with my study in other fields, the more I learn the more I realize there’s an elusive big picture that I’m not grasping.
I remain committed to the belief that anything can be explained to anyone, given sufficient art, skill and sympathy for the listener. (The further Editor’s Rule to which I hold fast is that anything can be said at any length.)
Yet some things are simple while others really aren’t. Science aside, I’ll give you an illustration from another area. When I look back and think about my first book, The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy, while in some ways it remains my favorite, I see that it’s also very much a young person’s book, that reflects a simple and now in some ways dissatisfactory understanding of its subject.
Maybe it’s a mark of maturer understanding to recognize such a thing. Or maybe not!