What I don't know only makes me ignorant

I've spent quite a lot of time going over the intelligent design/creationism/evolution debate in my blog, but I have to admit I've mostly focused on why the "alternatives" to evolution are scientifically laughable rather than on the philosophical ramifications of the anti-evolution movement. In most debates I've seen, creationists (of one stripe or another) and evolutionary scientists throw data, figures, and examples back and forth at each other without addressing what I feel is a fundamental point in this entire debate; what happens when we come to the edge of our understanding, look into the void, and say "I don't know, so God must have done it"?

There are many things we don't know, and probably many things we will never know. Given all the wonderful things happening constantly on this planet, from biochemical reactions that allow plants to photosynthesize to the details of plate tectonics to the evolution of life on the planet, there is so much to discover and research that it seems impossible that we will ever have all the answers. That, however, should not keep us from questing to find out as much as we can about the world we live in. Such is the nature of inquiry and science, to keep asking questions and figuring out how things work. What worries me about intelligent design and creationism is that it puts a road block in the intellectual process, saying that some things are essentially off-limits. The scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently had this to say about the effects of chalking up nature to supernatural powers in Natural History magazine in his article "The perimeter of ignorance";

"Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes. We know when and where they start. We know what drives them. We know what mitigates their destructive power. And anyone who has studied global warming can tell you what makes them worse. The only people who still call hurricanes "acts of God" are the people who write insurance forms."

Beyond the "black boxes" and "icons of evolution" intelligent design (as well as creationism) has touted for so long, there is an air of intellectual poverty. If we can't figure out how something happened at this point of our scientific journey, then it must be chalked up to God. What a cold and meaningless place the world becomes when we speak honestly and say "I don't know" when answers do not exist. No, instead there must always be an answer, and God is the answer to everything. So goes the thought process, at least. From my own perspective, through my faith I do believe God is behind everything, but as I've said before, that's not science. There is so much to learn and discover, and it is a shame to simply put red tape around things like evolution and declare them off limits (or worse, irrelevant). For a very long time, people believed the world was flat, that the center of the universe was the earth, that the sun was pulled across the sky by a god, that natural disasters are physical embodiments of a god's wrath (and indeed, some people still believe these things), but through scientific discovery those supernatural assertions began to crumble and fall. We know better now and no longer need to make up stories to explain seemingly miraculous events or phenomena. Do we have all the answers? Surely not, but I get scared when someone tells me that something is off limits to knowledge or I should just be content in knowing it's God's handiwork. Maybe that sort of reasoning works for others, but not me. You might as well ask me to remove half of my brain so all those pesky thoughts and questions stop cropping up in my mind.

As time goes on, facts will continue to be accumulated, hypotheses will be confirmed and refuted, theories altered or replaced, and what holds true today may not hold true next year (or even tomorrow), but I hope that there will always be individuals who want to discover all they can about the natural world. It is not wrong to look at the world and say it is the handiwork of a creator, but I worry that many people believe that there is nothing more outside that faith. There does not need to be this climate of fear that if you don't take ever word of a particular book as historical truth you're stoking the flames of Hell for yourself. Science leaves the choice of faith open to all those who endevour to find out more about anything and everything, but all-too-often faith makes the demand that some "fruits" still remain forbidden. Surely, some will remain content to live in an intellectual Eden, believing that there is no other truth than the one they keep locked up there, but I would rather move out into the wilderness and discover what the earth has to teach me. That, to me, is the most wonderful pursuit I can dream of.

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