An Intelligently-Designed Worldview

Let me say this straight up. I don't want so-called Intelligent Design taught in public school science classrooms. Perhaps in a humanities class, in the context of the creation myths of various cultures throughout the world. But not in science class.

And I am not naive enought to believe that ID-supporters are really talking about a vaguely deist Prime Mover. No, they're pushing the Christian God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But that being said, I also want to say that I understand what this fight is about, from the other side. Personal history comes in handy sometimes.

I remember what it was like to believe in a six-day creation. I remember what a demon Darwin was, and how evolution threathened to undermine my whole sense of the world and its history.

A fundamentalist reading of the Bible had provided for me a very neat and convenient structure for understanding what had been, what was, and what would be. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the end, God would send Jesus back to earth and take the faithful remnant to heaven, and things would be very, very bad for everyone else. In the middle, Jesus was busy saving us for God, and we were supposed to show our gratitude by helping Jesus save as many people as possible.

One day in seminary when the first crack emerged in my fundamentalist eschatology. As I listened to other people speak during a small group discussion, I realized that none of them, not even the professor, believed in a literal Second Coming of Christ. I ventured into the conversation to confirm what I was hearing, and then to ask how such beliefs could be Christian, or biblical.

My mind felt like it couldn't stretch far enough to understand such "heresy," and that if I tried, something would break.

There's been a lot of breaking in the years since then for me, and it has usually been painful. Not everyone chooses that path. In fact, most people choose the easier path of constructing bulwarks around their ready-made worldviews.

In all honesty, I wish such an approach were an option for me. It would feel good to have certainty and continuity. But for some reason, I find myself constantly deconstructing and reconstructing what I believe.

It seems to me that an intelligently-designed worldview is always a work-in-progress--or a creation constantly evolving.