Design Errors and Cross Purposes: Thoughts on Creationism, Intelligent Design and How Scientists Have Responded

Abstract

The ‘Creationism’ controversy has become a largely ritualised exchange between the two camps, both of which implicitly accept that the issue is one of empirical facts. This paper argues that this is a fundamentally mistaken assumption and raises a number of other arguments rarely raised by anti-Creationists which are actually more subversive of their opponents' position. These pertain to the concept of ‘complexity’, the nature of the ‘puzzle’ which Creationism seeks to ‘explain’, the nature of religious texts and the historical social and psychological roots of modern Creationism. Some observations are then offered on the psychological nature of the controversy itself. The scientific anti-Creationist camp's responses to Creationism are inadequate because they too have largely failed to understand these points. Finally the potential relevance of the logos versus mythos distinction as deployed by Karen Armstrong to the controversy is briefly outlined.