Thanks to Jerry Coyne’s blog, I ran across an article today by Neil deGrasse Tyson called “The Perimeter of Ignorance.” In case you don’t know who he is, Dr Tyson runs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. And if you watch the PBS show NOVA, you’ve probably seen him as well.
Anyway, this 2005 article talks about the problems with trying to introduce Intelligent Design into classrooms. It also illustrates how “god of the gaps” thinking has failed throughout history. It’s a great article, and I highly recommend it.
Finding Truth 
So, does intelligent design have a place in modern cosmology? Is it a part of evolutionary theory?
wayne
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I guess it could fit within them. It’s definitely possible that ID is true… but I think Tyson makes a good case about why it can have negative impacts on furthering science. If we say that God is the ultimate cause of the things we don’t understand, there’s less reason to explore how life could have arisen on its own (a search that could bring many medical/chemical breakthroughs), or to explore what might have caused the Big Bang.
Plus, if we use the things we don’t yet understand as our proofs of God’s existence, what happens if we gain an understanding of those things?
Thanks for the comment!
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