Double-crossing the Cross?: The Intel on Intelligent Design

By Mike L Anderson

Is intelligent design a stupendous scientific discovery with significant theological implications? Or is it pseudo-theology, pseudo-science and a passing fad? Read on. Intelligent design will be evaluated biblically, scientifically, and especially on the basis of the cross because the cross is central to properly understanding the Creator.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike L Anderson
• Release date: Nov 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370472581

Mike L Anderson

Mike L Anderson, PhD (Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology). Mike develops educational resources and software and plays Starcraft.

Book preview

"It takes an unusual person to write an unusual book. Double-crossing the Cross is indeed such a book in that it passionately upholds a belief in God and His sovereignty while accepting the power and beauty of science – in particular, evolutionary biology. And Mike Anderson is, likewise, an unusual person, with training in evolutionary biology, philosophy of science and theology, and a life-long and passionate concern for communicating that science and theology are complementary with different goals. It was Billy Graham who said: I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption.

Both science and redemption are features of Double-crossing the Cross, which is a rewarding panoply of insights spanning from ancient Greek philosophy to modern evidence. Its central focus is a critique of ‘intelligent design’ on both biblical and scientific grounds.

Mike brings to the reader a richness of critical thought, sprinkled with allegorical allusions that bring things to life. Quiet and humble in manner, Mike has wonderful clarity of thought, communicated with gentleness, brevity and wit.

I have long been an admirer of Mike Anderson’s earlier books, but became more intimately exposed to his thoughts when I had the privilege of working with him and a team of theologians, clergy and scientists in what came to be called the ‘Waterberg Dialogues’, spearheaded by Philip Calcott and under the auspices of African Enterprise and Michael Cassidy. These involved a series of workshops that brought together people to explore how science (and evolution in particular) can be reconciled with Christianity. It was a humbling education, for it was undertaken in a spirit of reverence and open-mindedness, and all of us emerged with new insights and a fresh appreciation that both reinforced our faith and stretched our scientific and Biblical knowledge. Mike was a central player in presenting his views on the centrality of the Cross, and his concerns that intelligent design has too narrow a view to capture the essence of Christ and the Cross. While tackling the weaknesses of intelligent design, Mike is also fearless in upholding his belief in an all-powerful God.

Enjoy the book: you will find it both intellectually rewarding, and a balm for the soul."

George Branch, Emeritus Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town

... the argument is very cogent. I hope it is widely read.

Revd Dr Ernest C. Lucas (Vice-Principal Emeritus, Bristol Baptist College, Honorary Research Fellow in Theology and Religion, University of Bristol. Author of Can we believe Genesis today? The Bible and the questions of science, Exploring the Old Testament, Science and the New Age Challenge.)

Mike Anderson doesn't ignore the scientific problems with the intelligent design program here, but his focus is on theology. Starting with the basic belief that God makes himself known to us in the event of the cross, he makes the case that supposed evidence for design in nature cannot help lead to that belief and may in fact get in its way. The bloodied God Incarnate, he reminds us, was not some dispassionate intelligence.

Revd Dr George Murphy (pastor, theoretical physicist and adjunct faculty member at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus. Author of The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross.

Double-crossing the Cross?

The intel on intelligent design

Mike L Anderson

Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Mike L Anderson

Revised, 2023

ISBN 9781370472581

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non- commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. This ebook is freeware and may not be sold.

Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the Bible are taken from Holy Bible: New International Version, Copyright © 1978 by the International Bible Society, New York.

To conserve trees, please try to avoid printing this document.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all my prayer and financial supporters.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to God for my pastors Revd Colin Bishop, Bishop Frank Retief, Revd Ross Anderson and Revd Brian Anderson for their Christ-centred preaching. The very helpful comments, criticisms and encouragement of fellow presenters the Revd Dr Ernest Lucas, Prof George Branch, Dr Phil Calcott and Dr Mike Jarvis and the are greatly appreciated. Lastly, I want to say a big thank-you to Dr Andrew Potts for our asymmetric friendship. He introduced me to spiritual depth, classical guitar and P.G. Wodehouse. I introduced him to stout.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Creation according to the cross

Intelligent design according to the cross

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except …

The power and it intelligent

Science according to the cross

Scientism according to the cross

Religious scientism according to the cross

The intelligent designer according to the cross

The intelligent designer is naturalised

The intelligent designer is scientifically obsolete

The intelligent designer is an intermittently active demigod

Intelligent design according to the Bible

Intelligent design according to the school of hard knocks

Evolution according to the cross

Evolution according to science

The genesis of a geeky god

Aristotle's Unmoved Mover

Thomas Aquinas's First Cause

Newton's Periodic Interferer

Paley's Anatomical Artificer

The Secondary Culprit

The Molecular Meddler

The Information Injector

The intel on intelligent design

About Mike L Anderson

Other titles by Mike L Anderson

Notes

Introduction

At the turn of the millennium a discovery was made that must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science and rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin.¹ Or so it was claimed. That discovery is intelligent design. According to proponents, their fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information rich structures of biology and these causes are empirically detectable.² Professor of law Philip Johnson, who is regarded as the prime mover of the intelligent design movement, says, I am not speaking of a God who is known only by faith and is invisible to reason, or who acted undetectably behind some naturalistic evolutionary process that was to all appearances mindless and purposeless. That kind of talk is about the human imagination, not the reality of God. I speak of a God who acted openly and who left his fingerprints all over the evidence.³

The discovery is potentially very significant because it seems to provide empirical evidence of a Creator. Is intelligent design a stupendous scientific discovery with significant theological implications? Or is it pseudo-theology, pseudo-science and a passing fad? Read on. This book undertakes to evaluate intelligent design both biblically and scientifically. It is a companion to my The Creator on the Cross: Science in the light of Christ and him crucified. That book provides the biblical underpinning to this one and is best read first. This one provides the application to intelligent design. Both come out of presentations given at the Science and Biblical Faith Christian leadership summit in April and May of 2015 and hosted by Africa Enterprise. While intelligent design will be critiqued biblically and scientifically, the focus here will be a specific critique on the basis of the cross as the heart of the gospel message. The cross is central to properly understanding the Creator because the cross is so central to Christian theology. This has to be stressed because as theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg says, It is a commonplace that Christian theology is concerned with that kind of knowledge about God that is obtained through Jesus Christ. But it is not a commonplace that the cross of Jesus is the criterion for the authenticity of such knowledge.⁴ From a Christian point of view we cannot understand the Creator outside of an understanding of the cross.

One of the most important biblical doctrines is that God is Creator. However, because the Bible also teaches that God is unfathomable (Isaiah 55:8-9), understanding him as Creator from looking at the world has its pitfalls and many, as we will see later, fall into them. Our concept of God as Creator needs to be informed by his clearest revelation of himself. But where is that clearest