INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED EVOLUTION

   To be honest, I have not been closely following the often-heated debates going on all over the country, it seems, between those who support teaching the theory of evolution in school, those who oppose it, those who want to add the theory of intelligent design as a counter-measure to evolution, and those who believe the whole issue is being blown all out of proportion. Frankly, I agree with the latter.

   I think reading, writing and math skills need to be addressed and attended to before we get onto dogfights about issues that are only theories at best. I also think that focusing on this issue allows us to avoid addressing another and perhaps even more pressing issue, and that is the frightening fact that the rest of the world is fast outpacing us in science and math. But I digress.

   I am not a scientist. I am a theologian, and not a very good one at that. But I do know more about theology than I do about science. I barely scraped by in biology and chemistry in college and they were introductory courses to boot. The theory of evolution fascinates me, but I have never been tempted into exploring it any further that my cursory study in college.

   On the other hand, my whole course of studies centered on intelligent design. It was never called that, of course. Intelligent design is simply a code word for creationism, not hardcore creationism, mind you, which many of those involved in the present debate support, namely, the six-day-creation-of-the-world scenario. Intelligent design, for me, simply means that God created and continues to create everything and does so in God’s own way. Intelligent design is also not deism: the belief that God created everything and then stepped aside to leave creation on its own.

   Rather I have always believed in both intelligent design and evolution rolled into one, or, if you will, intelligently designed evolution. As chaotic as this world and this universe are, there is a method, a design to this madness we encounter and of which we are often victims – hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the like. But there is much more method than there is madness. No one of us is either the result of total or haphazard chance or of the complete-to-the-very-last-cell control of God.

   I believe God created everything and everything evolves from something else, as a child from a parent, as an oak from an acorn, as man from an inferior mammal, and so on. This, I believe was and is God’s intelligent plan for this world. It is a belief as well as a theory, neither of which can be proved either in a science laboratory or a theological classroom.

   I also believe that if those who hold the theory of evolution cannot see the “hand” of God in all of creation, then they are not looking deeply enough, not into a microscope but into their very minds. Those who cannot see how God’s evolving work in all of creation are not looking deeply enough into their hearts.

   That said, how about all of us getting about what is really important: taking care of those whose life and whose world has evolved, whether by happenstance or by design, into poverty, ignorance and disease? We must first take care of that problem, one which equally confronts on every level both the theories of evolution and intelligent design. In the meantime I will hold to my theory of intelligently designed evolution and being about what I believe God created and intelligently designed us all to be about: evolving into a person who loves and respects all of creation.         W.J.P