The Intelligent 

Design Movement 

at Loma Linda:

Reflections and Proposals

by John B. Wong

University of California at Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson recently visited the Loma Linda University campus. For a whole weekend he talked about creation, on the one hand, and materialistic evolution in the Darwinian sense, on the other:  a mindless, purposeless, unguided process which leaves out God. He argued for the reality of God, a God who acted openly and left His "fingerprints" all over the universe.

Among other things, Johnson discussed strategies for dethroning Darwinian evolution, a giant log so to speak,  by employing  "the Wedge; that is, by penetrating a crack in the log and gradually widening the split.  The widening crack is the seldom-recognized difference between the facts revealed by true science and the materialist philosophy that dominates the culture of atheistic scientific imperialism.  According to Johnson, the Intelligent Design approach recognizes the difference between information and matter and speaks against the reductionism which distills all our thoughts, emotions, volitions, decisions, and behaviors to a stimulus and response pattern and physical electrochemical neural events.  In addition,  "irreducible complexity" as championed by Behe, the lack of intermediate forms in the fossil series and the assumption that if given enough time microevolution will become macroevolution, all help in widening the split and in challenging the validity of materialistic evolution, he stated.

In my view, Professor Johnson’s crusade is much needed as a counter force in the contest for modern minds. His efforts on mobilizing Christians of all persuasions in favor of an alternative worldview—the Christian worldview that posits a Creator and Redeemer—is laudable. 

Nevertheless, I am somewhat taken aback by his insistence that his battle—theistic realism versus atheistic naturalism—must be fought before we can engage the remaining points of our disagreement, especially within the Christian community. These differences include old versus young universe, ancient versus young life on earth and various combinations thereof as well as the role of God in creation then and now. Other disagreements about interpretation of Scripture must also wait, I seemed to hear him say. To him, these so-called phase 4 or 5 contests should have no place in our current priorities because they are irrelevant to our present concerns. 

My question is this:  Because life is short and science and Scripture are both formidable, Why can’t we proceed on all fronts concurrently?

In my experience and conversations with others, many Christians have already gone past the battle-point where Professor Johnson is fighting so hard. Many of us are searching for a model that we can live with authentically—a coherent paradigm that respects the findings of science but is also faithful to Scripture as we interpret it.

I firmly believe that God is not self-contradictory.  The God who created the universe and humans is also the God who speaks through the Scriptures to us. There must be consonance, consistency, correspondence between Nature and Scripture. I would not want to live in two separate, disparate spheres of faith and rationality, notwithstanding the degree of tension between them that must be accepted this side of eternity.

 
Using what we already know, with inspiration by the Holy Spirit and the freedom of creativity gifted by God, let us learn from each other as we think through some of the obstacles while structuring this model. I invite those who are interested to embark on a journey with me and to share our discoveries! 

For now, I’ll attach my model as a beginning point for discussion. Poke holes in it if you will, but be ready to give me your reasons. I have already anticipated criticisms on different points, but let me hear them aloud from you, if for no other reason than to bounce them off an affirming echo in my mind.

Toward a Sensible  Position on the 

Origin of the Universe and Life on Earth:

One Christian's Perspective

    
Basic Premises

1.  God is the Creator of everything there is (ex nihilo--direct, immediate and/or through intermediate agencies and derivative means that He maintains). He is the causation of all reality.

2.  No one knows for certain all the details of when and how God created.

3.  Anyone who claims to know for certain any specificity of Creation must at least prove himself or herself  as a credible Biblical scholar, hermeneutics and historical linguistics expert, theologian, anthropologist, astrophysicist, biochemist, physicist, molecular and cellular biologist, zoologist, geneticist,  paleontologist, and archaeologist.  No one I know qualifies for all the above.  Even if  there were a scholar who had mastered all these disciplines, his or her knowledge about Creation would be like a drop of water compared to the Pacific Ocean.

4.  Thus, it behooves the Christian to adopt a humble and open-minded attitude, to be willing always to listen and learn even from those with whom he or she totally disagrees; to be diligent in study, research, reflection; and to seek God’s illumination in both Scriptural interpretation and the evaluation of scientific data.  Above all, one should not  bury one’s head in the sand or deliberately or neglectfully break fellowship with other Christians who are struggling with similar issues.

5.   One’s presuppositions and worldview largely determine how he or she interprets facts, data, and the conclusions made by others.  This is true for both scientists and theologians.  No one is immune to bias.

Bias is a tendency which hinders impartial consideration of a question or weighing of a matter.  There are different kinds of bias: data collection bias, technical and interpretational bias, paradigm and presuppositional bias, etc.  In addition, the problem of incomplete knowledge, the integrity of the theologian or scientist, the problem of language, the individual’s training and research competence and the noetic effects of sin, all play a part in the understandings and conclusions to which one arrives on any given subject.

6.   Scientific interpretations and theories change; biblical exegesis also go through transitions and modifications; and concepts are constantly in flux.

7.  True Christian faith is not blind or unexamined. It is a faith centered on God, His Word, and illumined by His Spirit, shaped by reason and reflection, seeking support from evidences open to public scrutiny,and constantly looking for  experiential confirmation and authentication by personal trust and heart-commitment.

8.   There can be differences between a "fact" and a "truth."   For instance, "The Lord is my shepherd" is not a fact; however, it is a figure of speech that points toward a "truth."

9.  Most of us who are serious about creation and evolution are looking for some model with which we can live with intellectual integrity, a model with which we can live without compromising our belief system and our concept of God.

Theories of Origin:  Two Major Approaches

1.  Theistic approaches hold that every non-living and living thing ultimately owes its being to God.  There are many theories of creation:  fiat creationism; gap theories with big, medium and multiple small gaps; theistic evolution; progressive creationism; flood theories; age-day theories; ideal-time theories; apparent age theories; and pictorial-literary-framework theories. Some synthetic theories posit an old universe (8-15 billion years), an old earth ( 4 to 5 billion years) and ancient life evolved over eons or progressively developed under divine supervision.  Others contend for an old universe, old or young solar system and young life on earth.  Still others argue for a young universe and short human chronology (6,000-10,000 years).  There are other possibilities and combinations as well.

 
  2. Non-theistic approaches hold that everything,  animate and inanimate, has come by chance from what-we-don’t-know; that all life forms on earth are the consequence of  the blind forces of evolution, beginning with the first life that arose from non-life. This was accomplished subsequently by inherited variability, mutations, natural selection, and other mechanisms of microevolution acting together with environmental changes over long periods of time (millions of years), giving rise to trans-species macroevolution (single-celled organisms evolved into invertebrates, then vertebrate fish, then amphibians, then reptiles, then birds and lower animals, then primates, then human beings).

3.  The young universe, young earth theistic approach has major problems.  These include the finding that the most distant objects in the universe are 10-15 billion light-years from the earth (Riemannian space invalidated).  Other problems include exploding stars and radiometric dating by various methods (potassium 40/ argon 40; strontium-87; rubidium-87; uranium-238/ lead-206; thorium-232 to lead-208).  These methods all seem to confirm long periods of geological time.  Other problems include sedimentary rocks, geological columns (flood geology faces an enormous body of scientific evidence that points to antiquity); coral reefs; evaporite varves; varves with pollens and the cooling times of igneous intrusions. Counter-arguments against these scientific findings are generally not convincing or would besmirch God’s trustworthy character.

4.The theistic evolution, or progressive creationism, approach also has major problems.

A.  According to the more conservative of these theories, the first 3 chapters of Genesis are a blend of history and  allegory.  Although all life evolved according to Darwinian principles, God picked one pair from the animal species and endowed these beings with spirituality.  This pair disobeyed God and suffered spiritual death which was passed on to all of us.  Because Adam and Eve were historical and the Fall was real, we all need Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

  B.  According to the more liberal of these theories, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are to be dismissed as myths.  God used evolutionary methods to bring into being men and women who evolved from apes.  "Sin" and imperfections are leftovers from animal ancestry and not results of the Fall brought on by Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience.

 C.  There are significant arguments against these theories, particularly against the more liberal view.  It is contrary to the Old and New Testament records.  Jesus and other New Testament figures refer to Adam and Eve as historical (Mark 10:6).  The New Testament traces Jesus’ genealogy back to Adam (Luke 3:21-38).  It is contrary to Paul’s teaching (1Corinthians. 15: 22, 49;  Romans 5:12, 17) in a way that creates a domino effect:  If Paul’s teaching about the First Adam and the Second Adam is undermined, so also is his argument and testimony concerning the Resurrection of Christ.  This effect leads to the collapse of the whole fabric of Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15:17). It is also contrary to the Genesis references to "after his kind" which preclude trans-species evolution (dogs do not become cats; cows do not become horses, frogs do not become eagles.  (However, some would translate "after its kind" as "all kinds of," so this argument may be weak.)  This view is also contrary to the plain language of Gen. 2:7.  It is a challenge to the conservative theistic evolutionists who accept the Fall as real but disregard all its detailed consequences: punishment for Satan, Adam and Eve; painful childbearing for women, men’s having to struggle in order to survive; alienation from God, and death.

5.  Non-theistic evolutionary theories have scientific problems.  The doctrine that blind natural forces through randomness and chance acting on non-living substances bring forth simple cells resulting in more and more complex organisms through mutation and natural selection and small variations over millions of years does not reconcile well with the anthropic cosmological principle that things in the universe and the earth are delicately balanced and fine-tuned to make life on earth possible.  For example, according to theoretical physicist Paul Davies, gravity and the weak nuclear force have to be tuned to each other with the astonishing accuracy of one part in 10,000 billion billion billion billion.  Furthermore,  (1) there are no significant intermediate fossils;  (2) some dating methods and the principle of uniformitarianism they usually presuppose can be challenged;  and (3) there are important differences between general and specialized adaptation.  In addition, mutation, the result of copying errors in the genes, is almost always harmful, seldom creative.  According to professor C. Martin of McGill University, it is a pathological process which may have little to do with evolution.  Grasse, himself an eminent evolutionist, Europe's greatest zoologist, along with other evolutionists, reject Darwinism as demonstrably false, and calls it a 'pseudoscience.'"  Non-theistic evolution is also challenged by the "design theory," mathematical  probability theory, and the irreducible complexity argument. The probability of the simplest living cell emerging by random chance is one in 10 to the power of 100,000,000,000, about 500,000 pages of zeros after the number 1.    The complexity of the blood-clotting mechanism and the human eye also meet the challenge of Darwin (see Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box).

6.  Non-theistic evolutionary theories also have theological problems.  They are at odds with the Genesis record and Jesus’ acceptance of the Old Testament.  They seem to contradict the cross, the role of Jesus as the Redeemer, the resurrection hope and the Pauline theology in Roman 5:12 ff.;  They do not comport well with the theological construct of the Fall and descent from a state of perfection in Adam as traditionally upheld in Christendom, a view which challenges the idea of an evolutionary ascent of human beings from less complex forms of life.  They also call into question the moral structure and meaning of the universe and our existence.

 

My Own Tentative Model

1.  The universe and the earth are billions of years old.  In Genesis 1:1, the terms "beginning," "heavens," and "earth" are not defined.  Thus it is not unbiblical to postulate the antiquity of the universe.

2.  There is a brief gap between Genesis 1:1 and the following verses. There had been a catastrophic event prior to Gen. 1:2, antedating the recent six-day creation, which resulted in the "vaporization" of the residues of destruction (thus leaving no trace in the geologic column) and the chaos ("formless and empty;" Hebrew: "tohuw, bohuw") and darkness (Hebrew: "choshek") described in Gen. 1:2.

  
3.  Lucifer, who became Satan, was one of the highest created beings.  Although he was close to Christ (the eternal logos) he wanted to be God and "stole" the "blueprint" of creation.  Using the primordial living cell which God originally had created, he experimented and perfected a kind of "evolutionary process" (both micro & macro-evolution thus bypassing intermediate forms) in which simple organisms evolved into complex forms.  Over millions of years, this process finally succeeded in evolving hominids (Australopithecines, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon beings) through claw, blood and savagery.  The deaths of animals and these hominids throughout the ages resulted in most of the fossils which we find today.  Thus Satan's intelligence supervised and guided the evolutionary process.

4.  God permitted Satan to carry out the experiments, just as God allows evil and suffering to continue on this earth today, to show all other created beings throughout the universe Satan's true character. If God had annihilated Satan right after he rebelled, other created beings in the universe might have doubted God’s justice. (This is a complex subject that must be discussed in detail at a subsequent time.)

5.  About 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, God intervened and "said" to Satan, "By evolving human beings, you think you are a creator even though it has taken you millions of years to do it.  Let me show you who the true Creator  is.  I will create Adam and Eve in a split second from the dust of the ground."  This God did and the record is what we read in Genesis.

6.  Thus, there were two separate and distinct human races: (1) the "God-race" made after His image some 6,000-10,000 years ago, and (2) the "Satan- race" who were without the image of God and were  the result of Satanic manipulation and the evolutionary process with a history of several million years.  These two races intermixed, intermarried, so that today we don’t know what percentage of our ancestry is derived from the "God-race" or from the "Satan-race."   Thus it is physically and spiritually true that there is the "angel" in all of us and there is the "devil" in all of us.

7.  Between Genesis 1:1 and Gen. 1:2,  prior to the cataclysmic event that destroyed the pre-Adamic creation, Satan either had shielded his counterfeit race from God’s action or had transported them from earth and then transported them back to earth after Adam and Eve were created. Satan wanted to prove to God that he could even make the crowning work of God--Adam and Eve--rebel against Him. So the battle, the Great Controversy between God and the Evil One, rages on.

8.  The Satanic descendants were cut off  at the time of Noah's Flood; however, the Satanic gene-pool had already been mixed in with that of the God-race in Noah’s families.  Alternatively, if Noah's Flood was only a local phenomenon, the Satan-race was unaffected, as they were clustering  in other parts of the world.

9.  What about the fourth day of the six-day recent creation? I tend to argue that our solar system is as old as some of the other stars and galaxies, created within the time frame of Gen. 1:1.  However, when God initiated the more recent six-day creation, as recorded in Gen. 1:2 ff., in order to make human life on earth possible (part of the anthropic cosmological principle of fine-tuning complex systems), He "made" two great  lights and the stars. "Prepared," "adjusted," "fashioned," "programmed," "dressed"—all these meanings are not excluded from the Hebrew word "asah," translated "made." "Asah" does not mean to create without the use of pre-existing
materials.  God therefore did to the ancient solar system on the fourth day of His recent creation something like what He did to the formless and empty earth of Gen. 1:2, which, as I have stated, is also billions of years old, and was created during Gen. 1:1 time-frame.

10.  My tentative model  is not without problems.  But it seems to me that it is a model that can accept the scientific findings seriously and honestly regarding the antiquity of the physical universe and the long-age of biological organisms and "humankind" (the Satan-race) as recorded in the fossil record.  This model attempts to be faithful to the six 24-hour-day creation week  and the historical Adam and Eve.  It argues well for the character of God and preserves the redemptive role of  Christ as well as the Pauline teachings.  In this model, the problems and implications of sin in relation to the fall of Eve and Adam are not psychologized away or mythologized.

11.  Genesis 6:2 does state that the sons of God (I interpret this to mean the ones from the "God-race") intermarried with the daughters of  men (I take this to mean the generic descendants from the Satan-race).
Also, Gen. 4:17 speaks of Cain, the murderer, lying with his wife.  Where did that woman come from?  Cain’s sister?  We are not told specifically that at that time Adam and Eve had given births to daughters, perhaps they did later.  So Cain’s wife could very well have been from the Satan-race.

12.  Jesus called Satan "the father of lies" (John. 8:44).  What greater lie is there than to pose as the Creator who can "create" humans (even through an evolutionary process)?   Since Satan is called the "god of  this world" (2 Corinthians. 4:4) and "the prince of this world" (John 14:30), it may be inferred that he has subjects who belong to him—subjects partly of his own biological making, subjects he can manipulate and enslave. 
                  

13.  Satan is reportedly (Revelation 12:7-9) the leader of the fallen angels, with the title "Lucifer,"  "Light-Bearer," "Morning Star" (There are other interpretations of Isaiah 14:12-15 to be sure.).  His super-intelligence can be inferred and  his  hierarchical proximity to God’s "headquarters" can be appreciated.  Thus, the possibility of his access to God’s creation secrets cannot be ruled out.  By successfully evolving human beings, Satan intended to demonstrate to the whole universe that the sovereignty of Creator-God is  legitimately challenged.  The time (chronos) had come for God to intercede. See  under (5).  This God did at the decisive  time (kairos)—beginning at Genesis 1:2.

Let us continue to study and critique this model, or one similar to it, while remaining reverently humble as we seek God’s illumination for understanding His truth regarding His creation.  Because God is the Author of what both science and theology study, the Gifter of reason as well as  faith, I hope that we will arrive at a position where my heart does not have to embrace what my mind repeatedly rejects.  On this side of  eternity, even with our best efforts,  we shall not understand to any great degree the mystery of God's eternal purpose and methods of creation. Nonetheless, there is no fault in trying and failing.  Our confusion is rather the result of our excuses, fear, sloth and unrecognized intellectual and spiritual inertia.