The latest issue of the on-line journal Anti-Matters published by the Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education in Pondicherry, India, includes reviews of Wells and Dembski’s “The Design of Life” and Mike Gene’s “The Design Matrix”, as well as my article “Is God Really Good?”. How is this question relevant to ID? The article makes the connection at the beginning:
In debates over the theory of intelligent design, the “problem of evil” is frequently brought up by opponents of design: if we are the products of intelligent design, why is there so much evil and misery in the world? From a purely logical, or scientific, perspective, this problem is easy to deal with: Nature offers evidence of design–the question of what the designer is like is a separate, more philosophical, issue. But for most of us humans, this is a very unsatisfactory response.
In articles on my web page I have outlined the evidence for the belief that living things are designed, and not entirely the result of unintelligent forces such as natural selection of random mutations. This evidence is so overwhelming that I am convinced that opposition to the theory of intelligent design is not primarily due to any shortage of evidence for design in Nature, but to the fact that it is sometimes so hard to see evidence that our Designer cares about us, and many people prefer not to believe in God at all than to believe in a God who doesn’t care.
Michael Behe deals with this problem very briefly in “The Edge of Evolution,” by basically saying (my words, not his), the malaria parasite was designed also, deal with it. This is probably an appropriate answer for a scientific book such as his, but as I stated above, not a very satisfactory response for most of us humans (though of course I strongly recommend the book otherwise).
This issue of Anti-Matters also includes an article “A Response to Granville Sewell: Is God Really Good?”, by Karen Litfin of the University of Washington. Her response is respectful of my opinions, but she begins “Professor Sewell grapples admirably with a question that surely has vexed every thoughtful theist. His answers, however, are not completely satisfactory…” I will certainly agree that they are not completely satisfactory, even to me.
I realize a lot of my posts lately are promoting my own writings. I apologize for that and will try to resist this temptation in the future. Nevertheless….I have done it again, sorry.