FAITH IN REASON

"Intelligent Design" is an explanation of life's origins that seeks to leave room for a Designer, AKA God. "ID," as it is called, is at the front lines of our continuing debate over evolution and science education, still going strong 150 years after Charles Darwin published "Origin of the Species."

Thanks to the University of St. Thomas School of Law, we understand the battle a little bit better.

At a symposium at the Minneapolis law school on Tuesday, we heard Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute argue he wants "to see 'ID' advanced as a scientific proposition.'' But he argued that public schools should "teach the controversy'' over evolution. He said many states, including Minnesota, have incorporated this critical approach into their state science standards.

He said: "We're not trying to ban evolution. We're not even asking that 'ID' be taught, even though we do think it's science.'' He followed that with a power-point demonstration in the college's moot courtroom that questions whether the correct metaphor for man's descent is a "tree of life'' with a universal ancestor or an "orchard" suggesting multiple sources.

He raced through how African monkeys could have ended up in the Americas — an unlikely event that, he said, gives credence to the "orchard model" of multiple lines of descent.

Luskin was followed by Peter Hess, a theologian, author of "Catholicism and Science" and a defender of teaching evolution in schools. He said Intelligent Design is "not science'' but is "poor theology.'' He said it presents God as a "mere designer, and not a very good one at that,'' responsible for "eons of suffering" such as genetic diseases and praying mantises that mix courtship with cannibalism.

He said intelligent design arose from the Protestant evangelical movement, and that mainline churches do not see evolution as conflicting with their beliefs. He said the alternative to seeing God as a meddling "designer" is to see "God remaining hidden, indecipherable, behind the veil of nature.''

Hess said "theistic evolutionists" like himself are comfortable with an "unimaginably vast, dynamic, ancient, evolving universe." He added: "If we accept the idea of creation at all, why can't we accept the autonomy ... of what has been created?"

St. Thomas is a Catholic law school whose mission is "integrating faith and reason in the search for truth....'' We appreciate a setting in which faith and science can be discussed with respect and passion.