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POSTSCRIPT: REPLY TO MUSTAFA AKYOL

Much of what Mustafa Akyol says is plausible. If you are concerned about postmodern pop culture, if you identify with a conservative version of an Abrahamic religion, and if you think materialist tendencies within modern science have socially pernicious consequences, you will probably find much that is attractive about the intelligent design movement.

Nevertheless, I do have some criticism to offer. Akyol exaggerates the ties between vulgar pop-culture materialism and intellectual materialism. Modern social conditions enable both kinds of materialism, in the sense that modernity allows many things that conservative monotheisms like to condemn. Otherwise, the connection does not run too deep. I doubt that the naturalistic views of many scientists and philosophers have any profound effect on postmodern consumer culture.

I also think Akyol is being careless when he refers to modern science in the context of much older philosophical disputes. Evolution is not the only example—he uses the big bang as evidence that medieval orthodox Muslim theologians were correct in their objections to those philosophers in the Greek tradition who thought the world must be eternal. (These philosophers, by the way, were not materialists.) But that ancient debate is moot, because modern physics forces us to work with very different conceptions of time and causality. I agree that science has an important role in debates over religious claims, since our views of how the world works are often at stake. But inserting half-understood ideas from biology or physical cosmology into a popular debate is unlikely to produce much that is worthwhile.

All this, however, might be nitpicking on my part. I accept that Darwinian evolution has to be problematic for orthodox, conservative Abrahamic believers. Akyol highlights some of these problems, and he does a good job establishing the motivation for a devout Muslim to favor intelligent design. I am willing to accept that intelligent design could be a good tool for cultural defense, that it could help counter any materialist influence due to naturalism among scientists, even, perhaps, that it might ease some Muslims toward less conflicted attitudes about modernity. But motivation only goes so far; some of us still wonder if the promise of intelligent design is backed up by any intellectual substance.

And it is there, in the realm of actual science, that intelligent design is at its weakest. Indeed, it is disastrously weak. Intelligent design has had its fair share of attention from the scientific community, and the consensus is that it has not been able to demonstrate any scientific worth. Intelligent design gives every sign of being an ideological success but a scientific failure. I think Akyol is overly impressed with the US-based intelligent design movement. Intellectuals associated with the Discovery Institute may attract some attention, but this is not due to their scientific prowess. According to the judgment of the mainstream scientific community, intelligent design proponents do not offer any prospect of genuine scientific achievement. There is more to this than disagreement—after all, disagreement, even very strong disagreement, is common within science. At present, the mainstream scientific view of the Discovery Institute intellectuals is that they have become propagandists. Even honest disagreement has become difficult.

So along with its promise, intelligent design also raises some disturbing questions—especially for devout Muslims who appreciate the motivations behind intelligent design but who also want to be intellectually serious. Scientific consensus is never infallible, but neither can it be brushed aside lightly. Are Muslim sympathizers with intelligent design going to produce real science, or are they going to adopt conspiracy theories about how scientists are blinded by materialist prejudice? Will they acknowledge that even on the most optimistic assessment, intelligent design has a very long way to go to become a respectable rival to Darwinian evolution? Or will they join the Discovery Institute intellectuals in accusing mainstream science of foul play? What, indeed, do devout Muslims propose to do when scientists adopt theories that seem theologically objectionable? Biological evolution, after all, is not the only point of friction between science and supernatural beliefs.

The importance of such questions goes well beyond a dispute over creation and evolution. Except for the most unworldly of believers, the religious attractions of an idea are not all that matters. For practical reasons, modern Muslims want to be able to join in scientific and technological innovation. And so far, it appears that intelligent design can only be an obstacle. Darwinian evolution enjoys a particularly robust scientific consensus, and rejecting evolution is not possible without also discarding vast swaths of natural scientific knowledge. So standing against evolution is to pick a significant quarrel with modern science. In a world where Muslims always find themselves playing catch-up with the scientifically and technologically advanced West, this can hardly be without consequence.