"Intelligent Design" vs. "Divine Design"

By Raymond Swenson

Thanks for providing the link to the interesting New York Times article about the Mormon critics of the Buttars evolution bill in the Utah legislature. I am a former Utahn currently working in Idaho, with grown children in Salt Lake and Tooele Counties.

I was personally puzzled by the view of Representative Bradley King, as reported in the article, that “intelligent design” conflicted with Mormon beliefs about the creation of life.

There are certainly many Christians outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are informed supporters of the intelligent design critique of Darwinism, and who also have additional views on the role of a divine creator which differ from Mormon doctrine. For example, the Catholic and most Protestant churches are committed theologically to Saint Augustine’s idea of creation ex nihilo, i.e. that time, space, matter and energy came into existence together, and they have embraced the Big Bang theory as a scientific endorsement of that concept. (That embrace is itself a cautionary tale about tying one’s theology too closely to a current scientific theory, since several new theories in physics assert that the Big Bang was not from a singularity, without dimension or time, but produced from a pre-existing state of the universe.)

Joseph Smith, on the other hand, pointed out that the actual Hebrew of Genesis describes God organizing already-existing but chaotic matter into the earth. His written teachings (The Book of Moses, part of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and excerpted in the Pearl of Great Price) assert that the Genesis account is limited in scope to the creation of the earth, and does not describe the entire universe, and that ours is one of an uncountable number of similar planets created by God, at different times, and peopled with his children. Given the infinite scales of time and space within which God works, and the limited scope of the Genesis account, Mormons need have no doctrinal objections to the currently estimated 4.5 billion year age of the earth. On one occasion Smith said in conversation that the earth was formed out of other “worlds” or “globes”, a statement which coincides with recent theories that the earth was formed via the collision of as many as 8 or 10 of the 100 or so “protoplanets”, the size of Mercury to Mars, which first condensed out of the dust cloud around the sun, the last collision forming earth’s relatively large moon about 4.2 billion years ago.

However, “intelligent design” does not itself assume or conclude that there was an ex nihilo creation. I have read several books by scientists who support the intelligent design critique, and none of them has argued such a logical inference. Nor does intelligent design specifically assert that the source of intelligence that is detectable in earth’s biosphere is “a god,” “The God,” or that it has any particular attributes (such as the classic ones derived by Aristotle and adopted into the Nicene Creed).

I am a 56-year-old life-long member of the Church who teaches the adult scripture study class in my congregation. I have degrees in mathematics, law, and environmental law. I see absolutely no reason why a Mormon should have any religious-based problem accepting the argument of intelligent design, namely that Darwinism has failed to support its assertion that the sole cause of all features of living things is random mutation of DNA and differential survival of the mutated individuals. On the other hand, no Mormon is compelled by his religious beliefs and commitments to accept either anyone’s particular formulation of Darwinian evolution or the intelligent design critique.

There are certainly issues that traditional Christianity has when dealing with evolution, that derive in large part from the tradition’s loyalty to creeds that assert (without clear basis in the Bible) that God exists primarily in a neo-Platonic, non-material realm, especially when such a realm has moved from being the visible Pteolemaic heavens to an invisible and, by definition, undetectable one. Because Mormon belief asserts that God the Father, like his Son, the resurrected Christ, is a material, albeit supremely powerful, being, the Church’s faith is not dependent upon prior acceptance of this traditional immaterial realm. Mormon teachings are perhaps to that extent more compatible with modern science than that of some other Christians.

What is in conflict with Mormon beliefs, and most Christian churches, is the dogmatic assertion of some advocates of Darwinism (Professor Richard Dawkins is one) that Darwinism is Absolute Truth and that accepting it compels one to reject all belief in a god or other supernatural entity. Dawkins lashes out at biologists like Professor Kenneth Miller who are committed religious believers. Miller wrote the book “Finding Darwin’s God,” presenting his arguments against intelligent design, while affirming his own belief that God’s activity as creator is compatible with Darwinian evolution. Miller’s high school biology textbook was the one that the school board in Georgia put disclaimer stickers into. Yet as much as he defends Darwinism, Miller is criticized vehemently by Dawkins, including at a symposium panel they both appeared on last fall, for teaching the idea that religion and evolution are compatible.

To the extent that any individual biology teacher thinks of himself as a disciple of Dawkins’ brand of militant atheism, and wants his students to draw conclusions about religion from the theory of evolution, then we do have a problem in the public schools. Anyone who uses the mandatory nature of public schools to indoctrinate students on religious questions, whether for or against, has violated the Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.

Students learning about Darwin’s theory is not a problem. Equally, students learning about science-based criticisms of Darwin’s theory (e.g. Darwin’s Black Box, by biochemist Michael Behe) should not be a problem, either. Neither legislatures, school boards, nor teachers should be coercing students to either accept or reject particular religious beliefs. What the Utah legislature should be doing is simply affirming the freedom of teachers and their students both to study topics like evolution and to maintain their own opinions about their validity, without coercion from teachers, principals, or anyone in government. They could also appropriate funds to purchase a range of scientifically-based books and DVDs arguing the various views on the issue, and make them available in both school and public libraries, to allow citizens to educate themselves on the issue.

It is clear that State Senator Buttars could do with some study of what intelligent design actually argues and why. His clumsy efforts at legislating a solution to the problem of Dawkinsian anti-religion science teaching falsely portray intelligent design as “divine design”, confusing it with the mishmash of six-day Creationism which attacks geology, astronomy and physics, and attributing to it a religious axiom which it simply does not have. Similar well-intentioned but incompetent and uninformed action by various school boards has simply given judges the opportunity to abuse their authority and enshrine Dawkinsian atheism as the only allowable position of the public schools.

Those who, like Dawkins, assert that they are entitled to criticize religion in the context of a science course in a public school, because such criticism is “mandated” by the science, are being intellectually dishonest. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, not himself religious, argued strongly that scientists who support some form of naturalistic evolution should stick to their own business and not get out of their expertise by claiming they can draw religious conclusions from their scientific studies that are mandatory for all mankind. The fact is that Dawkins’ arguments against religion display a lack of simple logic, of integrity (judging religious beliefs by standards of skepticism he does not apply to Darwinism), and of basic familiarity with theology and religious belief.

Instead of telling students what they should or should not believe, the legislature should simply affirm that, while teachers must teach and students must learn evolution or other controversial scientific subjects, they are free to make their own judgment about their ultimate truth or falsity, and their implications for ethics and religious belief.

Raymond Takashi Swenson

Attorney at Law