Offending God with our Intelligent Designs

"Why not try Intelligent Design? What are the scientists afraid of? Can't their theories stand up to the controversy?"

Those questions are being asked at school board hearings all over the country, by the very tiny minority of people who really think it is worth the trouble to bother. (Let's be honest: the majority of American citizens really are not expending energy on either side of this debate.) These questions can be answered with a bit of common sense. Never mind what the scientists are or are not afraid of. There is a plain and simple answer which has nothing to do with science:

Intelligent Design is an utterly blasphemous doctrine. It is an insult to God, and to every monotheistic faith on the face of the earth!

It is particularly demeaning to the Christian faith. We are assured by Paul that it is through Jesus Christ that all the worlds were made. But "intelligent design" obscures this fundamental truth. Unlike their sinister cousins (who espouse that hideous hybrid "creation science") the ID advocates are coy about the name of the designer. And that is a problem. Just who IS this intelligent designer? Are they talking about the intergalactic computer AC, from an Isaac Asimov story? The last line of the story is "Then AC said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light!" Are we going to write textbooks about how this computer set off the Big Bang? I don't think so.

Let's be straight about this. To those who know there is a Creator, that Creator has a name. It is not "the intelligent designer." It is a name so holy that it was hidden in the letters JHWH, pronounced in various ways. It can be indirectly referred to as Adonai, meaning "my Lord," or simply as The God, or to Trinitarians the name of Jesus may be invoked. To traditional Lakota is it Wakan Tanka. In some traditional west African languages it is Chukwa; Chukwa is supreme even to those who pray to intercessors carved in wood. No language or religion in the world adores a skilled watchmaker in a cosmic laboratory with all the latest equipment. That is an occasional theme in science fiction. It is not good science. It is not the fruit of faith.

There are many very improbable measurements in the scientific record. These do suggest that our existence in this universe is not a mere accident. These facts should be taught, routinely, but only the facts. For one example, if the strong nuclear force were about 5% weaker than it is, the isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium would be impossible. That would make a series of other thermonuclear fusions impossible, which would mean no oxygen or carbon would ever have been made. Life as we know it would be impossible. But if this same force were 2% stronger than it actually is, stellar cores would blow up before any oxygen or carbon were made. Besides, only a very special resonance between helium, beryllium and carbon atoms, accounts for the amount of carbon in the universe. However, if the same resonance existed between carbon, helium and oxygen, so much carbon would have been transformed into oxygen that life would still be impossible.

Fortunately for us, all these forces and resonances are set just right. Why are they set just right? As a matter of science, we don't know. Fred Hoyle, a highly skilled astronomer and a convinced atheist, remarked that "a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics." And don't be hard on Hoyle for doubting that God is; without Hoyle's years of research, we wouldn't know these facts about the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the resonance between certain elements in the cores of stars. Believers owe a great debt to Hoyle. But what believers have, that science cannot provide, is a revelation of truths beyond the scope of science.

Let's not be shy about who or what Hoyle's superintellect might be. Let us not demean our holy and awesome God by reducing his august majesty to that of a mere "superintellect." Leave that to the science fiction writers. Further, do not DARE to subject the existence of God to a scientific test. If you have a Ph.D in some branch of science, don't you dare to suggest that your scientific training somehow adds to the certainty that, when God told Moses "I am" – he meant it. Paul wrote "We walk by faith and not by sight." Why are people of faith looking to science to prove what we already know?

There are certain pompous fools who proclaim in the name of science to have proof that there is no God. The names Dawkins and Bozarth come to mind. Their strongest supporters can be found among the theologians of the Southern Baptist Convention. SBC does not deny that God is, and is with us. But SBC theologians agree that science leaves no room for God. Therefore they reject well established science, just as Bozarth and Dawkins reject God. The whole debate is incredibly silly.

C.S. Lewis explained the relationship between prayer, or faith, and events in the natural world, when he wrote the series of columns known as The Screwtape Letters. This book is probably the best exposition of Christianity since the four Gospels. It is certainly the easiest for mere Christians to understand. "If the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don't work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and 'therefore it would have happened anyway.' Thus, a granted prayer becomes as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective." (That was logic from the mouth of a devil, but believers must rise above this logic, not get snared by it.)

Stack up everything science has discovered about the empirics of the universe, the manner in which elements are made in the core of stars, the radiation from the initial burst of light at the first moment of time, the various forms of life and their relation to each other. It all amounts to "some of the physical causes" which resulted from the initial command. A human can look at this evidence and say "it would have happened anyway," or that it "just happened randomly." A human can also look at it and say "this is what we can observe in the natural world, as the result of God's commands creating the heavens and the earth." The question, which of these two perspectives is the truth, cannot be found in science. The science would be exactly the same either way.

We need to keep science classes focused on what science is competent to reveal. Science is not competent to fill in the gaps in our scientific knowledge. Science is only competent to tell us what has been observed by human sight, measured by human hands, detected by instruments of human design. Science classes should not be teaching that there is no God, or that science disproves Genesis, or that we live in a morally neutral universe. For all we materially know, that may be true. But science cannot prove it. Science also cannot prove that God is. The question, if there is a question, lies totally outside the scope of science.

When children have spent Monday through Friday learning astronomy, and then show up at Sunday school spouting "everything began with a big bang," Sunday school teachers merely need to point out that God revealed this to Moses in Genesis 1:3, long before we had telescopes to predict or detect this event. When the kids say "life began in the seas," we must be prepared to show them that God explained this to Moses in Genesis 1:20. If a science teacher told their students that Jonah could not have been swallowed by a whale, because of the screen of baleen at the back of the whale's mouth, anyone familiar with the Bible will point out that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. God could have chosen, or made, any kind of great fish God chose.

When biology class teaches recent evidence that our ancestors went through a "genetic bottleneck" about 50,000 to 200,00 years ago, any pastor worth their salt can tell those same students "That is probably an empirical trace of being in the garden east of Eden for a long time." But we do not need this sort of exact parallel. We simply need to recognize that science has made a very precise study of the material world, which we can rely on for empirical results and interpretations. God lies before, after, beyond, as well as throughout that universe.

There is no series of experiments to test for the existence of God. God is not a hypothesis. We should step letting well-intentioned educated fools treat God as a matter for scientific investigation. We must be free to talk about the Creator, not an intelligent designer. We should do that in churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, tabernacles, where we can freely NAME the Creator, not by sight, but by faith.

For those who wish to read on this in more depth and detail, click the link on the left side of the screen that says "Biblical Evolution." That is a shamelessly self-serving thing for me to say, since the link leads to a web page about my own book, With God All Things are Possible: A Third Look at Creation.

Choosing Life: Thanks to Roe v. Wade

Having the right to choose doesn't
tell you which is the right choice.

I love Charles Colson. Not only is he a human being and a child of God (distinctions that he and I share in common with Osama bin Laden, Mother Teresa, and Charles Manson), but his columns are always a great inspiration to read between the lines. Consider his Breaklines piece, "Getting Wise to the Lies: Why Young Women are Choosing Life." It is a wonderful thing to choose life. Colson has identified a very important trend in our national culture, but he has totally missed out on why and how it is happening.

Colson cites surveys which show that "Twelve years ago, 49 percent of all women between age 18 and 29 thought unrestricted abortion should be the law of the land. Today, just 28 percent of young women hold this view." Very few women, or men, have ever favored "unrestricted abortion," but take these statistics at face value: since 1973, women have had the right to choose, and as a result they are choosing life.

Unfortunately, Colson still views everything about abortion through the dark glass of a "war" that has to be "won." To be fair, so do NARAL and Planned Parenthood. These two fanatical viewpoints, each more concerned with "winning the war" than with allowing women to make healthy choices, have fed on each other for at least 20 years. Both fail to recognize that our culture is moving toward greater reverence for life precisely because of Roe v. Wade.

Pro-Choice women have daughters,
and Pro-Life women have abortions

I am old enough to remember when abortion was a criminal offense in most states. Some had begun to loosen their laws – Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing first trimester abortions in California. Where there were severe criminal penalties, women went to back alleys for abortions, with clothes hangers and caustic chemicals. That often killed both fetus and mother. The images were just as graphic, and just as horrible, as any photos of aborted fetuses. Oh, and rich women flew to Switzerland, even women who had said they would never have an abortion, even devout churchwomen, even women whose fathers and husbands were demanding everyone else suffer criminal penalties.

However sincere he may be, Colson can't expect to be taken seriously when he says that "since pro-choice women aborted their daughters, those daughters didn’t grow up to advocate for abortion rights." I don't remember the last time I talked to a pro-choice woman who did not have one or more daughters. Most pro-choice women have never had an abortion at all. Most of those I've met were either Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant. They don't advocate abortion. They support a government of limited powers, one that doesn't reach into every intimate aspect of our lives. In fact, many of the young women who are pro-life are themselves the daughters of pro-choice mothers. Somehow they made it through the birth canal and all the way to 18.

Roe v. Wade never said that abortion is a good, wise or commendable course of action. It simply said, the first trimester of pregnancy is too intimate, too personal, to impose criminal penalties on the woman concerned. The Supreme Court properly interposed itself to remind Congress and the state legislatures that their authority has limits – just as Alexander Hamilton envisioned in The Federalist Papers. The seven justices who made the ruling also were clear that by the third trimester, removing a viable baby from a healthy mother is not an abortion, it is a delivery. If, and only if, the mother's life is in danger, the state may not require her to risk her own life for that of her child. She does, however, have the right to make that choice, and some women have.

Abortion is not a virtue

I am glad to see those who have made a virtue of abortion losing ground. Of course the director of Planned Parenthood finds that the "enthusiasm" is down. Abortion is nothing to be enthusiastic about. It is hazardous, it is often painful. Abortion carries considerable emotional scars, even when a woman is certain it is the right choice. It is the interruption of the natural process for bringing a new life into the world. The more free women are to make their own choice, without the long arm of the law around their neck, the more women are choosing life.

It is only the prospect of women dying, with coat hangers perforating their uteruses, that turns abortion into a "cause" anyone could be enthusiastic about. If our prisons were filling up with women who had abortions, that might whip up some passion also. If women and doctors were being hung from makeshift gallows in front of clinics, 80% of women and 60% of men would demand repeal of all criminal penalties. But they wouldn't all line up to have abortions.

We need to deal with new information on the real harms and hazards of abortion without setting off knee-jerk reflexes. One "side" of this misbegotten "war" immediately cries "so we must overturn Roe v. Wade." The other "side" therefore denounces the new information as untrue. Truth is not the property of political campaigns, to be wielded or denied according to the prejudices of each. We need a political atmosphere that allows the truth to speak for itself. This information, if true, provides sound rational reasons why a woman should choose to carry her pregnancy to term, unless there are compelling reasons to terminate it.

What is a compelling reason? Pastors, doctors, medical ethicists, concerned citizens, have a right to advocate on that point. It is called freedom of speech. The Supreme Court has never exempted speech about the dangers or evils of abortion from First Amendment protection. During the first trimester, the woman who is pregnant, without whom the fetus could not come to term, must be the ultimate arbiter. Like it or not, none of us can take the morning sickness, the pains and labor, on ourselves. God may well have something to say, but He can speak for himself, directly to the woman concerned.

Fund the babies, not lobbying campaigns

Two pre-teen young ladies at my church asked me one Sunday if I would sign a petition to Congress about abortion. It was a spontaneous, hand-written petition, and it wasn't specific as to what Congress should do. I carefully explained that I could not sign it, because the only thing that Congress, or any state legislature, seems able to do about abortion is to adopt criminal penalties, or try to.

In the absence of criminal laws, right to life advocates have to put their time and money where their mouth is. What if all the millions of dollars now going into political campaigns, lobbying, perverted attempts to "swing" the Supreme Court, were put to more effective use? These funds should be available so that women considering abortion can be told

Whatever you need so you can bring this baby to term, we will provide it to you. We know that it takes a village to raise a child, or at least an extended family. Some mothers don't even have a family to provide support. We are willing to BE that village/family for you. Pre-natal care, top quality delivery, diapers, clothes, furniture, food, taking care of the baby one or two days a week so you can get a break... We have the heart, the mind, the time, the funds, the sense of priority, to work through this with you.

Perhaps churches could begin by taking the money many now contribute to political campaigns, and devote the same funds locally to this very purpose. Individual church members might do the same. (This suggestion will make Colson and every "right-to-life" lobbying group howl. When they do, it will certainly be very revealing about their own moral relativism on life, politics, and fundraising.)

Of course it is better if women do not run any risk of pregnancy, until they have established a covenant that will provide a stable, two-parent home to raise the children. We should not compensate for our collective failure to realize that vision, by threatening pregnant women with prison sentences. Likewise, it is very good if a pregnant woman has a supportive husband who is doing his part, concerned parents looking forward to the birth of their grandchild, brothers and sisters who will help, a strong church home, and all the other things that help make raising a child a little easier, and even more of a joy. But if a pregnant woman doesn't have those, it doesn't help much to say "keep it woman, or we'll lock you up."

Remember, the number of abortions performed in the United States was higher during the Reagan and Bush years than the Clinton years, because 1993-2000, more women were more optimistic about being able to deal with having and raising a child. The highest abortion rates in the world are in Latin American nations where the procedure is prohibited by law. Congress can't help resolve this one. Lobbying for new laws isn't going to improve anything. Only people willing to show how much they care, by reaching out to help with the overwhelming responsibilities of bringing a child into the world, can bring the number of abortions down. Women have the right to choose. Reach out to help a troubled woman make the right choice.

A Federalist View of the Roberts Nomination

A Federalist View of the Roberts Nomination

As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has pointed out many times, federal judges are appointed, rather than elected, and have tenure for life, precisely so they can apply the law rather than follow the popular will.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers #78 that appointment of judges for lifetime tenure, subject only to good behavior, "is certainly one of the most valuable improvements in the practice of government. In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince: In a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws."

In light of these fundamental foundations of the American republic, it is literally obscene for any interest group or lobbying organization to be running television commercials, or similar publicity campaigns, as to any nomination of any person to serve on the Supreme Court. It is pathetic for interested organizations to issue press releases one day, running over with praise for some memo where the nominee seems to have agreed on their pet issue. It is equally pointless for the same lobbyists to pompously announce that some equally obscure legal brief has motivated them to withdraw their endorsement. Who cares?

The endorsement or objection of anyone but the United States senate is constitutionally irrelevant, and of only the most remote secondary value practically. Mass mailings and self-promoting sound bytes are not a significant influence on the outcome. (Neither are articles like this one). Further, it will be a rare voter who decides whether to re-elect an incumbent senator based on who they did or did not vote to confirm for the United States Supreme Court. Voters have more pressing concerns, that can be more coherently expressed in casting their ballots.

A good rule for Supreme Court nominations would be: No person who has taken a public position that any precedent of the Supreme Court must be retained without change, or must be overturned, is qualified to sit on the court. If nominations and confirmations are all about how a justice will vote on this or that pet issue, then we as a people and a nation have already lost. The court by definition is no longer an independent arbiter and guardian of the supreme law of the land, but a pliant instrument blowing in the winds of political preference.

The president and the senators, no matter how much they may try to influence the atmosphere, mood and direction of the court, are appointing and confirming a justice who will henceforth be answerable to neither. Turning again to Hamilton, this independence is “peculiarly essential in a limited constitution.” Limitations on legislative authority “can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the tenor of the constitution void. Without this, all the reservation of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.” Every supreme court justice without exception has surprised or disappointed the president who appointed them, as surely as King Henry II regretted choosing Thomas a Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury. Have we forgotten that Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice by President Dwight David Eisenhower, at the urging of Vice President Richard M. Nixon?

It is therefore futile to try to "sway" the court by judicial appointments. George Washington University's Jeffrey Rosen points out that the senate might do better to ask Roberts about the issues that will come before the court in 2015 than about the controversial cases of the past fifteen years. Fortunately, the prescience to frame or answer such questions does not exist in the human mind. But we can be reasonably sure that John Roberts's greatest impact will be on the resolution of future controversies, not atavistically rolling back well settled law.

Judge Roberts was clerk to 2nd circuit appeals court judge Henry Friendly. In his younger days, Friendly was clerk to Justice Louis Brandeis, and helped write Brandeis's opinion in Olmstead v. United States, which laid the foundation for our right to privacy rooted in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Friendly is known as a judicial conservative, who hesitated to rule for the outcome he personally favored, if the legal analysis necessary to get there would set a bad precedent for future decisions. Well, what does that tell us about Judge Roberts? About as much as all the rest of the rhetoric hanging like a cloud over the coming confirmation hearings.

If I were a United States senator, I would like to ask the nominee a question about the Olmstead case. I would ask

Judge Roberts, in Olmstead v. United States, Chief Justice Taft wrote a majority opinion that, since telephones and wiretaps were not known to, nor explicitly prohibited by, the framers of the Constitution, the 4th amendment could not define a wiretap from off an individual's private property as a search or seizure. Justice Brandeis, joined by three other justices, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., asserted that the Framers "conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect, that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment." As we know, that asserted right later came to be adopted by a majority of the court in many succeeding cases. Without giving an opinion on the outcome of any past or future litigation, what is your analysis of that philosophical clash? Can the framework of a constitution expand to apply original principles to new developments that the authors could not have anticipated? If not, how durable an instrument can it really be?

There is another question I would like to ask, with apologies for the polluted political atmosphere that even raises it.

When the Supreme Court decided McCollum v. Board of Education, the only Roman Catholic sitting on the court, Justice Frank Murphy, joined the 8-1 majority in affirming that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable." Archbishop Cushing of Boston responded "I am at a loss to understand how the Catholic member of the Supreme Court could go along with that opinion." I know that thousands of elected and appointed public officials, American citizens of the Roman Catholic faith, have served our nation with complete integrity, and without having to choose between their civic and spiritual allegiances. But at a time when bishops have taken it upon themselves to blackmail or bribe public officials, to coerce their conduct in office, by manipulation of the confessional, and threats to withhold Holy Communion, I find it unfortunately necessary to ask your thoughts on the implications of Archbishop Cushing's remark. Does a Catholic member of the Supreme Court have an obligation to follow the wishes of an ecclesiastical hierarchy? Does this take some precedence over his or her understanding of what the supreme law of the land mandates?

John Roberts's career offers no reason to ask that question, no cause to doubt the integrity of his conduct in office. But the times, and the irresponsibility of certain bishops, requires that the question be openly asked.

The strength of the court as an institution is our best hope. Roberts's recognition that a judge must be humble enough to listen to fellow judges speaks volumes. What the court does really is the product of nine minds deliberating, not an electoral contest. Perhaps the best measure of what kind of justice Roberts will be lies in his remarks to a group of law students last winter, reported in Time magazine September 5: "Deciding cases was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I kind of thought that in most cases that it would be pretty obvious... that this person should lose, this person should win, and you'd spend most of your time writing the opinions. I've found that I have to spend far more time than I thought I would just getting to that first step – what the right answer should be." One can ask for no better work ethic from a man or woman entrusted with expounding the supreme law of the land.