Intelligent Design?

The arguments between those who espouse evolution and those who defend fundamental creationism rage on. The more rationale I read, the less I understand the original question.

Recently there have been rumblings in the secular camp. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor, has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe and that a super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.

So, what is the big deal?

Perhaps it comes to this: creationists believe that the “earth is only 6,000 years old and was made in six days” because if (they think) they believe otherwise, the book of Genesis kicks off the Bible as a lie and negates everything else. So, in spite of overwhelming evidence that even the smallest amount of common sense would accept, with or without the aid of modern science, fundamentalists must cling to the six-day theory or risk having to defend the Bible as a complete myth.

I am not a scientist. I’m not educated in biology or geology. I wasn’t a particularly stellar student in those subjects either. But even I can see how long it takes to make a baby from inception to birth, how long it takes for an acorn to spring forth and become a mighty oak. I also know that an oak tree must reach the age of fifty years old before it produces its first crop of acorns.

I’ve heard it argued that earth time was different in the beginning. I’ve heard it argued that natural selection shaped the animals of the past and present, and it will shape the animals of the future. Neither of these conjectures is too hard to understand. Afterall, earth and climate changes are taking place before our eyes. Dinosaurs did exist once, now they don’t.

That brings me to my own homemade conclusion. For me it bridges the gulf between staunch evolutionists and fundamental creationists. I base my concept on one word in Genesis.

replenish \Re*plen"ish\ 1. To fill again after having been diminished or emptied; to stock anew; hence, to fill completely; to cause to abound.

And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and REPLENISH the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1:28

The Sovereign God whom I worship could have made the earth in six twenty-four hour periods, He’s that good. But everything I know to be true about the process of life, which He also invented, supports that this all powerful, omnipotent and eternally wise Master prefers to use the slow process for His own reasons or because it is practically impossible to improve on. So, I believe it took eons for the earth to get to where it is now. It also speaks to the concept that God is either patient beyond our reasoning or we simply cannot grasp that counting time is limited to a function of the flesh, not the spirit world.

This is where the word “replenish” comes in. What if God, who owns and is not bound by man’s time, built the earth and the heavens, using His marvelous process, (the slow one) and when He decided to make a new creature, man, in His image, with body, soul and spirit, He knew that some of the larger creatures would have to go in order for mankind to survive? Bam! Earth collides with an asteroid or some other cataclysmic event occurs and the earth begins a new process. Once this is accomplished, God makes man and instructs him to “replenish the earth.” It took a long time for this to happen, long by our measurements. Many strange creatures came and went, including, perhaps those erroneously attributed with being modern man’s (man made in God's image) ancestors.

What confounds many scientists is that evolution, as we can track it in the modern world, is somewhat capricious but it doesn’t really create new species even in dozens of morphs. I’m referring to the most obvious and easiest evolution for us to witness – viruses. Ecoli, as it evolves, is still a variation of Ecoli.

The pesky truth is, evolution is indeed a theory, not unlike the one that proposed the earth was flat or the sun revolved around the earth. Those hypotheses, readily accepted, were held dear by the finest minds in the scholarly realm for quite some time until newer information came along and kicked them to the curb. That’s the problem with theory, even religious theory; it’s just conjecture and therefore vulnerable to being replaced down the road. I've noticed that science never seems to apologize for these kinds of mistakes either. Science says, "Believe this, don't challenge it and when it becomes out-dated material, we'll let you know what new thing to believe. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

The most recent catch-phrase, “intelligent design” is the compromise that some scientists have begun to consider. Even the most outspoken atheists among them have acquiesced to the hand of some Supreme Being involved in at least the initial process. This allows for a certain amount of omnipotent launching that helps them explain those annoying details which evolution cannot. But, of course, this theory, while admitting the existence of a Creator, also simultaneously dismisses this supreme intelligence as being still involved in our lives. This is often founded in the assumption that a loving Father/God would not allow suffering, therefore, given the amount of angst in the human condition, there cannot be anyone at all in charge. Therefore, we’re on our own, left to deal, in the best way we can, with capricious, random acts of nature and mayhem armed with only our highly evolved intellect. In effect, the postulation says, we have defined what is good and evil and a good God would think like we do and therefore must no longer exist or be interested in us.

My internal understanding and acceptance of the existence of a Sovereign God, who designed and created the universe and everything in it, cannot, therefore, find its baseline in the rationale of men, but rather in my personal daily experience and witness to His supernatural involvement in my life. Underneath it all is the abiding faith that God knows exactly how it all comes together and one day I’m going to revel in listening to the truth of it all, whatever that might be. I imagine it will take eons to hear. It's probably nothing like we have imagined. In the meantime, all of the arguments in the world for and against each side are somewhat moot to me.

Though I don’t believe one can hedge his/her bets by believing in God as a fallback position, I do love the bumper sticker that proclaims, “Those who do not believe in God had better be right.”