DRAFT
OF A CHAPTER
Charles
P. Poole, Jr.
CONTENTS
1.
Introduction
2.
Genesis Account of Creation
3.
Intelligent Design
4.
Political Intelligent Design
5.
Providential Design or Valid Intelligent Design
1. INTRODUCTION
For
many decades some fundamentalist Christians, motivated by a desire to accept
everything in the scriptures as literal statements of truth, have insisted on
interpreting the story of Creation in the first chapter of the first book of
the bible as literally true. They claim
that the world as it exists today was created by God in six days. As a corollary they assert that scientists
are wrong; there
is no such thing as biological evolution, and the age of the world is less than
6000 years. They would like the Genesis
story of creation to be taught alongside that of Evolution as one of the two
possible explanations of the facts and data in the world of biology. They label their viewpoint as Intelligent
Design (ID), so it is not convenient to for scientists who are Christians to
use this term with its root meaning. To the present generation supporting Intelligent Design means
accepting as reality the six day long Genesis account of creation. We propose to adopt the phrase Providential
Design as a way to express the belief that the universe was indeed created in
accordance with the design of God, but that this design was implemented along
the lines of the scientific account over a period many billions of years in
duration.
2. GENESIS ACCOUNT OF
CREATION
Before
proceeding, perhaps something should be said about the Hexaemeron,
the six day Genesis narrative. In the
following table we list what was created on each day from Genesis, together
with corresponding features from the scientific account. Since the first four eras of the Big Bang chronology
only lasted a total of 3 or 4 minutes they will not be taken into account here. To obtain a harmonization the events of the
fourth day of Genesis have been moved to second place:
Table. Comparison of
Genesis and scientific accounts of creation
|
Day |
Genesis Account |
Scientific Account |
|
1 |
Light |
5th and 6th Big Bang Eras lasting a million years. Radiation such as light is dominant. |
|
4 |
Stars |
7th (final) Big Bang Era lasting over 10 billion years. Galaxies full of stars form. |
|
2 |
Dome in sky to separate waters |
Precambrian Era 4 to 0.6 billion years BC. Earth
with land and oceans forms. Elementary life appears. |
|
3 |
Water
in single basin, dry land, i.e. oceans
and continents, vegetation, plants and
trees. |
Paleozoic Era 570 to 245 million years BC. Plants,
forests, fish, amphibians, and reptiles appear. |
|
5 |
Sea creatures, fish, birds. |
Mesozoic Era 245 to 66 million years BC. Forests
and plants continue, dinosaurs, birds, mammals appear. |
|
6 |
Living creatures, creeping things cattle and wild animals, lastly man. |
Cenozoic Era 66 million BC to present. Modern plants, primates,
grazing mammals, most recently man. |
|
7 |
The Lord rested. |
We the people enjoy creation. |
What
is most important is that the Genesis account describes a creation in six
stages starting with inanimate matter, proceeding through plants, sea
creatures and birds, and ending with mammals, and finally man, while modern
scientific accounts have many stages, also beginning with inanimate matter,
proceeding through plants, sea creatures and birds, ending with mammals, and
finally man. Genesis is certainly not
scientifically correct in details of the order in which many features were
created, and much of the apparent agreement between the two scenarios could
indeed be coincidental. However when the
fourth day of the Genesis story is moved to second place then the overall similarities of the
two accounts become as striking than their discrepancies, as is clear
from the table above.
The
view that the world was created in six days of 24 hour duration was held by some but not by all
believers in the early Church. During
the first centuries some theologians from the West favored literal
interpretations of the days of creation, while others from the East such as Origen (185-254), Clement of Alexandria, and other Alexandrians,
accepted allegorical type interpretations.
St Augustine (354-430) in particular, the greatest of the Western
fathers, did not accept the six days as
periods of time 24 hours in length, but preferred to postulate a more gradual
process of natural development.
3. INTELLIGENT DESIGN
The
Creationists did not have much success promulgating their creation scenario
involving six successive twenty-four hour days as a scientific theory, so
twenty years ago they adopted a new approach called the theory of Intelligent
Design. They claim that the theory of
Darwinian evolution lacks scientific proof because of the absence in the fossil
record of the
postulated intermediate forms of life that would have existed if
many particular individual species had undergone gradual transformations to new
species. There are far, far too many
missing links! They further assert that
throughout history there have been many “rapid bursts of speciation” in which
new fully formed species appear which maintain their identity until they
disappear. A given species can undergo
minor changes during adaptation to an environment, but these do not alter the
nature of the species. Finally they propose
that each species forms in conformity to the design of God. The new Creationists maintain that the
Intelligent Design theory provides a more satisfactory explanation of the fossil record and
other facts of biology than does the theory of Darwinian evolution. They wish to have their theory taught in
biology courses as an alternate scientific explanation for the origin and
development of life forms.
Creationists
are discouraged because almost no members of the professional scientific
community have accepted their views, and almost none are even willing to label
Intelligent Design as an incorrect scientific theory. From the perspective of the this
community creationism is not scientific at all, but rather it is an attempt to
promulgate a religious viewpoint under the pretense that it is valid
science. I agree with this
judgment.
4. POLITICAL INTELLIGENT DESIGN
In a
recent book Defeating Darwinism by
Opening Minds (InterVarsity Press, 1997) Philip
E. Johnson states that “we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the
domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind.” I strongly support this overall point of
view, but strongly oppose what Johnson calls his ‘wedge strategy’ for
implementing it. The ‘Wedge’ movement is
anxious to rally public opinion to withdraw support for the teaching of
evolution in our educational institutions, and to mandate the teaching of
Intelligent Design theory. As a more
practical aim the movement seeks equal time and space in biological curricula
and books for the presentation of what they call the two main competing
theories of science, namely Darwinism and Intelligent Design, with the
rationale of providing students with balanced and impartial instruction in
biology. In
other words, the motivation behind the Intelligent Design lobby seems to be an
attempt to force our educational institutions to teach a Fundamentalist
Christian viewpoint of Creation under the pretext that it is a valid theory of
science. In my opinion it is not a valid
theory of science. The campaign to
force the acceptance of this theory in biological curricula can have a
deleterious effect on the teaching of biology, and can arouse anti-Christian
sentiment among students, parents and teachers who do not accept the
Intelligent Design hypotheses.
The
‘Wedge’ movement should recognize that the major threat to our educational
institutions is not the teaching of evolution, but rather the present day
trends and organized campaigns to remove anything pertaining to God from these
institutions. It is a paradox, as well
as a hypocrisy, that in many public institutions all
diversities are accepted or encouraged except prayer and the scriptures. Campaigns for injecting the so called
‘scientific’ theory of Intelligent Design into educational curricula are not
likely to provide support for the present great need of maintaining the right
to freedom for religious expression in our schools. Maintaining this freedom is of fundamental
importance for the survival of our nation as a major moral influence in the world,
whereas the acceptance of Creationism as a valid theory of science by our
educational institutions could seriously undermine our credibility as a
nation.
5. PROVIDENTIAL DESIGN
(OR VALID INTELLIGENT DESIGN)
The
belief is quite widespread that God made the world. It is in the Genesis account discussed above,
it is in the Christian Creeds, it is in the Qur’an,
and it is in the Holy Books of other religions.
Implicit in these beliefs is the fact that God is intelligent, that God had a purpose
in creating the world, that God had a design in mind when He created. Therefore it would seem logical for a
Christian who is a scientist to believe that the world was created in
accordance with an intelligent or providential design. The question then arises “How can we uncover
the nature of this design, or at least fathom to some extent its significance
for us?”. To
accomplish this it is necessary to gather together the information that we can
find about the scientific accounts of the development of the universe, as well
as all the pertinent information contained in our scriptures and religious
traditions, and try to synthesize or harmonize the two in a comprehensive world
view that takes into account both perspectives.
We will attempt to accomplish this in the
Weltanschauung chapter which has a link on the sidebar. In working toward this
end we must not compromise either our religious beliefs or our scientific
convictions since truth is truth, and it must not be compromised.
Since the phrase Intelligent Design is now so closely associated with a Creationist philosophy it is best for scientists who support a valid form of ID to adopt a different name for their viewpoint. I propose Providential Design as a good candidate for this choice.
6. THEISTIC EVOLUTION OR BIOLOGOS