To support this claim, many naturalists have pointed to the words of Sir Isaac Newton, who claimed that the Christian God was responsible for the pattern of the planets. Newton writes, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”[1] Of course, no one currently claims that the rotation of the planets is proof of a Cosmic Designer, because science has explained this naturalistic process thoroughly.
RESPONSE: It is true that theists have claimed that God was responsible for “miraculous” acts of nature, when he wasn’t. For instance, the evolution of the eye or the wing has been explained by Darwinism to a satisfactory degree.[2] For this reason, theists should be careful in claiming that God certainly intervened into the natural order to create. However, this objection shouldn’t eliminate the concept of design altogether.
While some theistic explanations have been historically wrong, this does not mean that all theistic explanations are currently wrong. For instance, try applying this objection to other fields of study. If a weather forecaster is sometimes wrong, does this mean that he will always be wrong? If a physician sometimes misdiagnoses her patient, does this mean that she will always misdiagnose her patient? Even though some theistic explanations have been wrong in the past, this doesn’t prove that all of them will be wrong in the future.
Moreover, this accusation cuts both ways. Historically, naturalistic science has been wrong in the past on a number of its predictions. But, consider if someone said, “Some scientists have been wrong in the past about scientific theories; therefore, all scientists are wrong about all scientific knowledge.” Obviously, this would be absurd, but this is exactly the same argument raised against theistic explanations. When a naturalist derisively argues that our current evidence for theism could hypothetically be disproven in the future, we could easily point out that all current scientific theories could hypothetically be disproven in the future.
[1] Isaac Newton (Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Andrew Motte, trans.), Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 273. Originally published in 1789. Cited in Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design. New York: Times, 2006. 50.
[2] See Michael Shermer’s comments in Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design. New York: Times, 2006. 17.