Brave Humans

Continuing the series of science posts, last time I described how intelligent design leads us to the conclusion that we are nothing more than meat robots. However I failed to mention that what intelligent design advocates really believe is that we are meat robots with souls.

Although intelligent design advocates claim to be doing real science, the real purpose of intelligent design is to counter what is seen as materialist (i.e. atheistic) science. It was developed as part of a Wedge Strategy initiated by the conservative Christian think tank known as the Discovery Institute. The purpose of the wedge strategy is to cast science, particularly evolutionary science, as an anti-Christian dogma propagated by followers of the “religion” of atheism. It is the Discovery Institute which came up with the brilliant “teach the controversy” strategy.

In order to work as a political strategy, intelligent design must be careful to always appear neutral on the issue of the what the intelligent designer actually is. This is why the “intelligence” of intelligent design is always kept intentionally vague. We could have been manufactured by aliens from Zeta Reticuli for all anyone knows. But of course if we were created by space aliens, who created the space aliens? They couldn’t have just evolved naturally, because ID states very clearly that evolution doesn’t work. The only way out of this is to place the intelligence outside the realm of the physical universe. It must therefore be a supernatural intelligence. This supernatural intelligence must also be capable of interacting with the physical universe in order to build and assemble all the “irreducibly complex” creatures we see around us.

The intelligence of intelligent design has to be God.

Of course, advocates of intelligent design can’t call their designer God. If they did, ID would be revealed as religious faith, and it would never have a chance at being taught in public schools. So instead, ID proponents focus their energy on casting doubt on evolution, hoping that the public will view evolution as a tenuous model with no real basis in factual observation. Unfortunately their strategy is working.

Viewed honestly, intelligent design is simply creationism molded to fit the facts. Creationism spread across millions of years rather than in six days. Like intelligent design, creationism also holds that we were manufactured. The book of Genesis tells us “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Our bodies are meat manufactured from dust, but we are the breath of God. We are the ghost in the machine.

The concept of the human soul evokes a certain poetry and beauty. It speaks to us on an emotional level. From a scientific perfective, however, the soul is deeply problematic. Perhaps the biggest difficulty is the fact that a soul is considered to be entirely non-physical. It can’t be seen, heard, smelled, measured, or detected in any way. Yet despite its incorporeal nature, the soul somehow acts as the invisible puppeteer. It is the man behind the curtain, pushing the buttons and pulling the levers of the great and powerful Oz.

Viewed scientifically, the soul is an invisible, non-physical entity that does, well…nothing. Because not only is the soul not seen, what we can observe of the modern brain indicates there is no central control mechanism. The brain is an integrated system of neurons and synapses which as a whole drives our actions.

There is a good analogy to be made between creationism vs. evolution and the soul (or mind-body dualism) and neuroscience. Before the development of evolutionary biology, the cause of life’s diversity was anyone’s guess. It was perfectly reasonable to presume that there was some creative act, since that explained things as well as anything else. But once the evidence for evolutionary science was in place, even asserting the gradual creationism of intelligent design is in disagreement with the facts. The same is true with neuroscience. When the mechanism of the brain was poorly understood, dualism and the soul worked as well as any other idea. But we now understand the mechanism of thought. We can scan the brain as it thinks and reacts. We have a solid understanding of how the brain reacts under the influence of drugs. We can even induce hallucinatory experiences via magnetic fields. The idea of a soul which controls our actions is as superfluous as the idea that we were built by space aliens.

This is not an idea that makes people comfortable. It is probably even more discomforting than the concept of evolution. It is one thing to say you are cousins to monkeys. It is quite another to say you have no soul.

It is interesting to note that while groups such as the Discovery Institute are vocal in their opposition to evolution, they are silent on neuroscience. Each directly challenges traditional Biblical interpretations, but neuroscience is more esoteric, and so remains unopposed. No one argues that we should teach the controversy in a psychology course.

But if neuroscience is true, where does this leave us? Having learned through evolution that we are not machines, it seems we are forced to accept that we are only meat. Grown meat, with a deep connection to the meat around us, but lacking a soul.

It seems we are again faced with the choice. Science and a brutal acceptance of the facts, or faith held in contradiction to what science clearly shows us.

Except things aren’t quite as clear as they seem. Just as evolution shows us that we are not machines, neuroscience has a story to tell as well. But I’ll leave that for next time.

Be Brave. Be Human. Think.