St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, January 15, 2006
The Designing God – Rev. David Mundy
Genesis 1:1-5 John 1:1-14
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The very
first Confirmation Class I conducted was in outport
Newfoundland which is where I began my ministry at the age of twenty-five. It
turned out that there were no teenagers in the group but a number of
participants in their twenties, thirties and forties, as well as one woman in
her sixties who surprised the whole community by returning to church after
decades away because of the tragic death of her grandson.
By far the
most spirited conversation came the evening we got on to the subjects creation
and evolution. More accurately, it was creation versus evolution, with
strong feeling expressed on both sides.
One person
huffed that she hadn’t descended from any monkey, while the science teacher at
the highschool claimed that he couldn’t be a
Christian if it meant he must ignore evolution. As I sat there trying to figure
out how to steer us beyond our relationship with the apes, the tension was broken when the older
woman pronounced, “Well my son, all I knows is that some of us looks like ‘em, and some of us don’t!”
This was
the first, but far from the last conversation I have been involved in with
parishioners through the years about how the earth and all its creatures,
including humans, came into being and whether the scientific explanation of our
origins was in conflict with our Christian faith, or whether the two could be
successfully integrated.
That
conversation became very public last year when it actually became a legal issue
in the state of Pennsylvania. A group had lobbied for the teaching of something
called “intelligent design” in science classes, alongside the theory of
evolution. Another group of parents, some of them active Christians, launched
legal action to stop intelligent design from being taught in schools.
Part of the
argument for intelligent design is that the theory of evolution cannot
explain “irreducible complexity.” Our visual system and immune system are given
as examples of “irreducible complexity.” The premise is that these systems are
far too sophisticated to be developed through evolution or any other random
process. As we become aware of this, we will be led to the conclusion that
there must be a creative force – God – who brought them into being. The
argument against intelligent design is that while we might conclude this as a
matter of faith, it is not science and shouldn’t be taught as such.
Although
the Pennsylvania case got the most attention, there are 70 controversies over
the teaching of Intelligent Design across the U.S. In the end the Pennsylvania courts ruled that
intelligent design is a matter of faith rather than science and prohibited its
teaching in science classrooms.
While this
turmoil hasn’t spread across the border into Canada we can’t help but notice
what is happening. There has been a steady stream of articles and news reports
on the subject, and one journal called The Christian Century ran a cover
story recently which shows someone peering into a book which has a scientific
symbol on one side and a Christian symbol on the other.
This
morning we listened to scripture passages which sure seem to say that the world
and all that is in it were created by an intelligent, purposeful God – a
designing God. And these passages aren’t tucked away in a biblical closet
somewhere. The opening words of our bible say “In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth . . . ,” then go on to speak of the orderly
purposeful work of creation over the course of seven days.
Our gospel
reading from John is about Jesus as the Living Word or logos both echoes
and affirms this creative work. The first words in this
passages are also “in the beginning,” which echo the words of
Genesis and then “all things came into being through him, and without him
not one thing came into being.”
For as long
as scholars and theologians have been reflecting on these passages there has
been discussion about whether they were meant to be taken literally,
particularly the notion of a seven-day creation. Someone once offered that the
bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. We could go a
step further and say that the bible and our faith affirm our earthly existence
as well but is not meant to be a science textbook.
Do we believe in a
designing God? We say we do in the
creeds of our faith, including the three we find in our hymn book:
I believe
in God, the Father almighty,
creator
of heaven and earth. Apostle’s
Creed
We believe
in one God,
the
Father almighty
maker of heaven
and earth,
of all
that is, seen and unseen. Nicene
Creed
We believe
in God:
who has created
and is creating United Church Statement
of Faith
I certainly
believe that God is the creator, although not necessarily in the same way as
some of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Years ago while I was on sabbatical
I attended a big Pentecostal church where the preacher railed against the
“godless evolutionists” who were undermining the faith. I was so offended by
his pronouncement that I wanted to get up and leave, not because I am any great
defender of evolution but because there seemed to be such a narrow approach to how
this all could have happened.
Actually,
our United Church statement of faith leaves the door open to God’s ongoing work
of creation in the evolutionary process. I should point out that in the
congregations I have served through the years there have been lots of scientists –
physicians, geologists, biology professors, others -- and while I must admit
that I have never really checked to see if their lips were moving or if their
fingers were crossed, I assume that when the congregation repeated one of the
creeds and faith statements of the church they are as well.
This highly
publicized tension
is certainly not new. The arguments for a God who designed the natural order go
back many centuries. One of the earlier proponents of the Conscious Designer theory
was, William Paley, an English theologian. His 1802 book called Natural
Theology begins with these words:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot
against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there: I might
possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there
for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this
answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be
inquired how the watch happened to be in that place: I should hardly think of
the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have
always been there.
You can
probably see where this is going. Paley concluded that something constructed
with such intricacy and precision must have a maker or creator, even if that
person was not visibly at hand. To use his own words:
the watch must have a maker: that there must
have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or
artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer:
who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.
Paley then
took this a step further, saying that the complexity of the creatures of this
planet point to the existence of an intelligent creator God. Intelligent Design
is really a modern variation on Paley’s argument.
But roughly
fifty years after Paley’s book a scientist who also had theological training
published a paper called The Origin of the Species which began a
revolution of thought that shook the worlds of faith and science. Rather than a
seven-day creation by an unseen watchmaker, life-forms developed through a
process of natural selection over millions of years. It could be argued that
the work of Charles Darwin jolted religion and science into an
adversarial relationship. During his lifetime Darwin was vilified as the devil
incarnate, although he was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey in London.
For the next century and a half we have sought
to heal the rift between the disciplines of theology and science and bring
about reconciliation. The controversy over Intelligent Design reminds us that
the process isn’t finished even yet. My story about the visit to the
Pentecostal church shows us that for lots of Christians this is still a line
traced in the theological sand, or snow as the case may be! There are also
prominent scientists such as Richard Dawkins who claim that creation is a
random and purposeless process and we should just get over the religious stuff.
His book called The Blind Watchmaker sets out to refute William Paley’s
argument with almost evangelical zeal.
So how
should we approach this as Christians here in the frozen north where we have
so-far avoided the legal battles of our neighbours to the south?
Some of you
may feel that it is a matter of faith to believe in a seven-day creation, and I
want to affirm that there is room for all of us under the United Church tent.
For others
it may be that we decide we don’t need to be in an adversarial relationship. We
can choose to listen as thoughtfully as possible and draw our conclusions.
There are many scholars from both realms who do believe that we can have a
peaceful coexistence and even learn from one another as we explore both the
“why” and the “how” questions. Perhaps we can come up with another term that
will work for us, something along the lines of “intelligent evolution,” as
someone has suggested.
In the end
we don’t have to choose between godless science and biblical faith. I feel
extremely fortunate that I can benefit from the best of both worlds. I can
openly respond to what science has to offer in all its explorations and
appreciate it as a gift from God rather than as a threat to my faith. And while
I do believe in an intelligent God who has created fundamental constants and
physical laws I am open to a great and glorious range of cosmic and biological possibilities.
The late pope, John Paul II stated a decade ago that there doesn’t have to be a
conflict between evolution and faith and as he put it “truth does not deny
truth.”
I can also
be captivated as I look into the face of a newborn child, or admire the beauty
of a bird in flight, or crane my neck in awe at the Milky Way, and in doing so
simply appreciate that God brought them all into being.
More than
this, I am grateful, beyond expressing, that the God who was “in the
beginning” has “come in the flesh and lived among us and we have seen his
glory.” In the end we are the people who have been redeemed in Jesus
Christ. The God who created me, loves me and gives me
hope.
Together we
can say “praise to the designing God.”