Why Human Beings Need Intelligent Design

Thomas Berry

Sermon

I’ve been thinking about the community of Dover Pennsylvania this past week, and wondering how they will recover from the emotional upheaval associated with the court battle over teaching what’s called Intelligent Design in high school science classes. Some expect that this issue will finally be decided by the Supreme Court and I find this a troubling prospect given the anticipated changes for the court’s future membership.¹

I hope that all of you are aware that there are candidates running for seats on the Montgomery County school board who favor intelligent design, and one who wants to throw Darwin out of the classroom altogether. I would not and am not telling you how to cast your vote in this election. But I will speak to the idea of teaching this take on the creation of the universe and all that exists.

Although I’m not a parent of school-age children, I’m not a disinterested observer. ID as it’s commonly referred to, may be coming to the school your child attends, and that possibility alarms me.

I want to take a few minutes to talk about the difference between what is commonly called “creationism” and ID. Creationists take the Biblical account of creation literally — or at least the part that portrays God’s creation of the universe, the world, and its inhabitants in six days. In their conceptual framework, the Earth is 6000 years old. They claim that there was a time when humans and dinosaurs co-existed, and there is a park in Glen Rose, Texas where footprint of a dinosaur and something that resembles the footprint of a human being are side by side in the rock. That’s their fossil record.

They say that God’s hand is evident throughout creation. They see the beauty of the Earth, they take note of how well certain plants, insects, and other animals seem to work together, with human beings at the top of the ladder: and the cause of all of this is obvious to them. It all works so well and is so beautiful because God created it all. That’s Creationism.

I find at least two schools of thought among those who believe in ID. There are some, like Michael Behe, who accept the theory of the Big Bang and agree that the earth is far older than the Creationists claim it is. Other ID supporters even accept many aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution. But they too see the hand of God in the physics of the Big Bang and also what they refer to as the “irreducible complexity” found in many life forms.

As scientists have envisioned the Big Bang and all that happened in the first few seconds of that cosmic event, those who believe in ID note that some very fortuitous “coincidences” took place, coincidences that allowed for the creation of life on our planet.

In the first billion, billion, billion, billionth of the first second of the Big Bang, there were just the right number of protons (a billion and one) to anti- protons (one billion)² and a similar ratio of electrons to positrons. This allowed the creation of matter so that Universe and all that it contains could be formed over time. Proponents of ID argue that these (and other) such events and combinations of elements, temperatures, and physical forces were not random or accidental. Some sort of divine intelligence (ID advocates don’t always refer to God) must have been involved.

While some ID believers accept the basic concepts of evolution, others note that there are many gaps or unlikely outcomes in the development of various life forms that seem to be are too complex to be the result of what author and theologian Michael Dowd calls a “chance, meaningless, mechanistic, purposeless, directionless, Godless process” like evolution. They point to the flagellum found on some bacteria and they eyes of insects and human beings as “irreducibly complex.” Some who promote ID simply claim that it’s beyond reason or even imagination to come up with a process by which these features could have developed despite findings and scientifically based theories that show otherwise. (If you are interested in a scientific response to the idea of irreducible complexity look at a website by Dr. Kenneth Miller of Brown University where you will find an excellent article on this topic.³)

Both Creationists and those who believe in ID believe that evolution has a purpose. Even those who accept the basics of evolution, talk about direction and progress — despite Darwin’s efforts to avoid language that implied intent. Darwin regretted his use of the word “selection” for that very reason. (Remember, he called his book “The Descent of Man.” I suspect that if he were to publish his work today, it would be titled “The Ascent of Man”)

Darwin also avoided using the concept of God to bolster his theory or to explain the unexplainable. Even though this was an accepted practice in his day, he was not willing to fall back on the power of God to make his theories more acceptable or to fill in the inevitable blanks — things that he could not explain but which seemed to be true. Maybe he thought it was intellectually dishonest or an argument from ignorance.

Modern Creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design seem to have no such compunctions. This isn’t a surprise in the face of polls that show a steady 45% of Americans believe in the Biblical account of creation. Then there are those who have trouble with a scientific theory that isn’t neat and tidy. They don’t understand that the unanswered questions are not necessarily an indication that the theory is wrong — it may be that further exploration will reveal the answer without any fundamental change in the theory. It’s easier — neater, perhaps — to fill those gaps with the power and agency of God.

But God’s place in creation does more than plug up the holes in science-based theories of creation. It also gives a sense of meaning to human life that evolution can’t and doesn’t attempt to offer. Evolution, with it’s long time line of one life form after another, is about as inspiring as the chapters of genealogies in the Jewish scriptures — so-and-so begat so-and-so who begat so-and-so for generation after generation. Most of the names have no meaning and no direct association with the story. We come away from these long lists of begats thinking “So what?”.

But for most of us, human existence is not just a matter of “So what?” We human beings like — perhaps even need — to think that we’re alive and on this planet for a reason.⁴ The idea that we are here because of a number of random events through millions of years is neither flattering nor uplifting to most of us. Nor is it likely to help many of us through the tough times of life. We crave a better — a more hopeful — story of the creation of life.

By way of example, let me share with you two “stories” about the origin and meaning of life. One is from the Rev. Ron Carlson, a popular author and lecturer and then, because I know you won’t find Rev. Carlson’s very Christian alternative appealing, I’ll offer a counter story created by Michael Dowd who has become very popular in UU circles with his work on what he calls the “The Great Story” of evolution.

From Rev. Carlson:

You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system... in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.⁵

From Michael Dowd:

None of us asked to be alive at this moment in Earth's history. We did not choose to be born at this juncture in the Story. We were chosen. Each of us has been chosen by Life to be alive and to participate in the most significant geological and biological transformation in 65 million years. This is a fact! Can you feel the sense of personal destiny, or a sense of mission or purpose, that such an awareness awakens within you? . . . Love and Truth must be our guiding realities. As we love Life with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, we will quite naturally love our human and non-human neighbor, and our planet, as our self. That is the true state of affairs. Living the values of the Ecozoic [era] requires being lovingly truthful and gently honest with ourselves and with each other. It means being real and open with the Life that is our Source, Body, and Destiny.⁶

This is the same Michael Dowd who described evolution as chance, meaningless and Godless. I’d propose that while evolution is a sound and important scientific theory, most of us don’t live by scientific theory alone. The Rev. Dr Donald Harrington, former minister of the Community Church in New York City (one of our larger congregations), once noted that a benefit of the theory of evolution was that it demythologized the Biblical account of creation and the God who spoke everything into being. This was important and good, because it gave us an account of creation and the forces involved that we could believe in wholeheartedly. But, says Harrington, this account lacked the emotion-laden prose and concepts which provided an important tie to our past. He felt that it was important to re-mythologize the story of creation, not in the sense of altering the facts, but in the sense of allowing human beings a way to give expression to our common experiences of awe and wonder; or of being disconnected with creation because we have become to focused on our individual humanity and failed to recognize our proper place in what he called “The Great Living System.” He advocated art, music, and metaphor — along with other expressions of experience and emotion — as ways to come to a different sort of truth about the natural world and our connections to all living things. Science, and the way of knowledge that it relies on, can be enriched and deepened when we acknowledge that other kinds of knowing through other kinds of stories that speak to meaning and ultimacy are also important.

In the words of author and cell-biologist Ursula Goodenough:

Humans need stories — grand, compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story. . . . Moreover, responses to this story — what we are calling religious naturalism can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then after that, we need other stories as well, human–centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions. This mythos comes to us, often in experiences called revelation, from the sages and the artists of past and present times.

I am firmly opposed to teaching anything resembling Creationism or Intelligent Design in a science classroom. But I also reject the view that the quest for meaning through religious expression is foolish or a delusion. Just as we take heart in calls for religion to accept the teachings of science, I hope that we will encourage the scientific community to understand the importance of the human spirit and imagination and its place in expressing the deepest longings for meaning, for connection, for a sense of purpose of life in the face of inevitable death.

There are those who say that this need for story and meaning is hard-wired into our brains and that we create our stories and our gods because we cannot live without them. This may be so, but I don’t see this as a flaw in our human nature; not when I consider the outpouring of expression through art, music, dance, literature, and expression of generosity and compassion that have meant so much in my life—and perhaps in yours as well. You and I may not “need” Intelligent Design,” but we do need a strong sense of meaning, purpose and connection to the Great Stream of Life. Let us look for such rich stories and tell them to our children, to each other, and to those who are longing for the healing balm of words that bring hope to our brief lives.

May it be so!

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