Proposition Fifteen of Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One asserts that the current debates about Intelligent Design and fundamentally about purpose. Walton points out early on that there is no necessary contradiction between something being viewed as an “act of God” and yet also being subject to scientific investigation, since “Everything that exists and everything that happens is, in Christian thinking, ultimately an act of God” (p.126). It is not clear, however, whether at this point he is backtracking from his earlier rejection of a view of God “micromanaging” all that occurs (p.119).
Be that as it may, his main point in this short chapter is an important one: Intelligent Design “does not contribute to the advance of scientific understanding because it does not offer an alternative that is scientifically testable and falsifiable” (p.127). Walton is critical both of ID’s “God of the gaps” approach (which attributes to God only those things that currently seem inexplicable, leading to a shrinking role for God as scientific understanding progresses) and also of Neo-Darwinism (for assuming that there must be a natural explanation even if one hasn’t been found). In the end, however, Walton seems to realize that something like methodological naturalism is integral to the scientific method, and that it would be inappropriate for scientists to ever simply declare their work of searching for scientific explanations to be over (p.130).
It may be that some or even all explorations of science may lead beyond their own scientific domain into metaphysics, and that the two cannot always (or perhaps ever) be completely separated. But ultimately what matters from Walton’s perspective is the affirmation that God created. Whether this was done instantaneously or through the use of long-term, complex processes should not matter from a Christian perspective, as far as Walton is concerned (p.131).
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