"Evolution Refutes Intelligent Design"

Der Spiegel's got a very provocative interview with Daniel Dennett, the Tufts U. philosopher and hardcore advocate for evolution.

It is recommended reading for anyone who believes in God. It's easy reading for non-believers, but if you believe, you'll find it challenging ... and for me, reaffirming of my faith.

Here's a couple of the more provocative excerpts:

SPIEGEL: You don't think it's possible to leave life to the biologists, but let religion take care of the soul?

Dennett: That's what Pope John Paul II was demanding when he issued his oft quoted cyclical in which he said that evolution was a fact, but he went right on to say: except of on the matter of the human soul. That might make some content, but it is just false. It would be just as false to say: Our bodies are made up of biological material, except, of course, the pancreas. The brain is no more wonder tissue than the lungs or the liver. It's just a tissue.

To say a soul is no different from a brain or pancreas shows a massive spiritual ineptitude. The Dennetts of the world think so pragmatically that if something can't be found through science, it simply must not exist -- and they laugh off those of us who are willing to accept the reality of the unmeasurable, the mysterious.

But Dennet is nothing if not confident of his position, so confident, in fact, that he even knows where God is -- or more exactly, isn't:

SPIEGEL: Another idea of Darwin's was that God is dead. Is that also a logical conclusion reached by Darwinism?

Dennett: It is very clear a consequence. The argument for design, I think, has always been the best argument for the existence of God and when Darwin comes along he pulls the rug out from under that.

SPIEGEL: Evolution, in other words, leaves no room for God?

Dennett: One has to understand that God's role has been diminished over the eons. First we had God, as you said, making Adam and making every creature with his hands, plucking the rib from Adam and making Eve from that rib. Then we trade that God in for the God who sets evolution in motion. And then you say you don't even need that God -- the law giver -- because if we take these ideas from cosmology seriously then there are other places and other laws and life evolves where it can. So now we no longer have God the law finder or the law giver, but just God the master of ceremonies. When God is the master of ceremonies and doesn't actually play any role any more in the universe, he's sort of diminished and no longer intervenes in any way.

How exactly does Dennett know that God no longer intervenes, that he is simply a master of ceremonies? What scientific evidence would God -- who seems to relish his mysteriousness -- leave behind?

Evolutionists like Dennett are arrogant to a fault; because they have no room for God in their cosmology, they can find no place for him in the universe. Still, his provocations, including a section late in the interview when the evolution of religion is discussed, make this an interesting read.