So Marine,

Are you saying the only way to read the bible is literalism? I think many of the Saints would have issues with abandoning our God giving functions of reason and logic so that we are left only with a most literal reading of our sacred text.

JBP

Jordan’s original post really says it all, save the fact the Intelligent Design (a.k.a. Creation Science of the 80s) isn’t science at all. I’d recommend Richard Colling’s book Random Designer. As a Christian microbiologist, he presents an informed discussion of science, faith, creation, and God. For more information: http://www.randomdesigner.com/

Hello all,

I appreciate the vote of confidence Nick.
I believe Random Design and the Random Designer hold great potential to put much of the science/faith animosity behind us. (With time...) More on this later.

Much of religion and faith is filled with mystery and paradox. “The last shall be first” “Death leads to life”
“God becomes man” “A virgin is with child”

Yet, as people of faith, we don’t hesitate to acknowledge that these statements hold as central truths in life. Yet regarding issues of science, many people of faith have evidently decided that God is limited to work only as traditional views have described him, locking him up in a rigid box circumscribed by their limited understanding of life.

It is interesting to me that while virtually every religious person I have met would claim that God still speaks to and through people today, when someone suggests that God might act in ways different from traditional party lines, they are quickly ridiculed or demonized. (Been there...) If Jesus showed up today and suggested that we might not be interpreting scripture properly (which is exactly what he did with the religious leaders of his time), I suspect we would treat him much the same as they did then. But that did not negate what he said. He was asking them to stretch their minds. (Be transformed by the renewing of your minds) God keeps on speaking and he speaks at levels we can understand using concepts and principles that we are must be prepared to know.

The concept of a gene has a relatively recent history of just decades. DNA was shown to be the genetic information only ~ 50 years ago. We are finally gaining glimpses of God’s creativeness that have forever before been shrouded in a dense mist because of our lack of knowledge. We have done the best we can, but we see through a glass only darkly. Beleive me, even today, the details of life are absolutely beyond the most vivid imaginations. They still blow me away after over thirty years of study.

My hope is that people of faith will begin to speak with one clear voice - a voice that speaks of experience, not scientific proofs regarding God’s existence in our world. Folks, it is a dreadful mistake to jump on the intelligent design bandwagon for many reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is that it is extending damage to the cause of faith and belief in God.

There is so much to say, but I have a full plate and I certainly don’t want to monopolize the board, especially as a first time attendee. I have written another short article which will be in the Chicago Tribune this Sunday, and a more extensive article on Random Design for January’s Science and Theology News. God has always been bigger than thought by even his most sincere and devoted followers. I see no reason to conclude that things are any different today. I believe he is continuing to reveal Himself all the time. The bigger question is whether we are attentively listening for His voice.

I was told by a supposed “expert” just yesterday that “there is no such thing as Random Design, just as 2+2 does not equal 5.” This type of out-of-hand dismissal by a Christian of things that do not immediately fit one’s views of the world is just the type of response that hurts the credibility of all people of faith.

Just for the record, random has more than one definition.
Is anyone interested enough to learn what it is and the role that it might play?

The problem is that you, as well as the Intelligent Design people in general, are missing the point: “intelligent design” as a philosophy is all well and good, and is perfectly compatible with both science and religion: God (by whatever name) created (and continues to create) the heavens and the earth according to a design (religion), and It (because, let’s face it, unless God needs to engage in sexual reproduction, gender is not an issue) employs a specific protocol for engaging in this creation, the rules of which we can learn (science).

Science is strictly engaged with the latter pursuit: discovering how the process works. It does not engage in the big “why” question: why are these processes in place? That is strictly the domain of religion. Since ID attempts to answer the “why” question, IT IS NOT SCIENCE. Furthermore, scientific method requires that a hypothesis be testable. Since ID cannot be tested, IT IS NOT SCIENCE.

Unless you are going to hold to a very strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible (in which case you’re going to have a hard time answering where all those people other than Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel came from), it is perfectly reasonable for one to reach the conclusion that the Darwinian process of natural selection is the process that led to life on Earth as we know it (as well, perhaps, as life on other worlds) and that God created not only the Earth and everything on it, but also the rules that made that process possible.

To do less than acknowledge this, in fact, is to limit God, which no mere mortal should ever feel competent to do.