I’ve been missing in action lately. It’s all for good reason, though. Last Thursday was a true milestone in our family’s life as we closed on our first house. This has meant that paperwork, phone calls, deliveries and now painting have consumed my every spare moment. The truth about this house we just made our own is that it represents much more for us than the “American dream.” This is actually all about the faithfulness of God. Over five years ago now, we made a deliberate decision to drop everything and follow His path for our lives, and we did so straight into financial ruin. My wife and I were two people who were never so sure that we had been called to detour our path from financial security and into a path of inner city missions. We were so absolutely confident that we would be provided for. God made the promise, so we ran hard after His calling.

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An interesting article was forwarded to me recently by Stan Jantz regarding the newly built SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) radio telescope funded to the tune of $30 million by Microsoft. The head researcher, Rick Forster, is working on this project in collaboration with UC Berkeley, which in case you don’t know, is one of the leading research institutions in the world. Why the huge investment of time, money and resources? Because, according to Forster, "It's nuts to think we're alone. It's just a matter of looking in the right direction, at the right time, at the right frequency, with the right algorithm.” Just to recap, a leading scientist receives $30 million, notoriety and accolades for having a hunch. Important to note that at this point, no substantial evidence whatsoever has been found to indicate that there’s life out there in the great beyond, and nothing suggests that anyone out there is trying to dial in on planet earth.

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Paying A Price

 

I’ve been thinking about the cost of obedience, and how following your calling in life sometimes means giving up a little bit of yourself, your hopes and your dreams. I’ve been studying the word “perfect” and its Biblical relevance, and I believe that the more I read and understand, the more I realize that perfection comes in those moments that we die to our own desires to give into the plans and calling that God has for our life. I think that perhaps I can only draw on a very personal example to illustrate my point.

 

I know a woman, beautiful inside and out, who was successful in everything she set her heart and mind to. She grew up in an environment of chaos, yet somehow figured out how to succeed at life and all that she took on.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and write, namely because everything in life has been so uncontrollably busy. Finally, I’ve got a moment between things on my to do list to reflect on something I’ve been thinking about. Two words: intelligent design. Not the kind that talks about where everything comes from, but rather, the kind that gives me a glimpse at the God I serve. To explain what I mean, I’m going to offer a little background on what’s been keeping me busy. We’re getting set to complete the purchase of our first home. That’s a big deal, but at face value, no bigger a deal than any of the millions of first homes purchased in every city and state in America. Maybe with a little more insight into the story, you’ll see why I’ve been pondering the Intelligent Designer and His perfect plans.

I was doing some research for my pastor as part of a sermon illustration. In searching for discussion on the forces of instability within an atom, I began to realize something that I have never fully appreciated. There are a tremendous amount of forces at work seeking to rip apart the universe and all that is within it. Take, for example, the atom in all its simplistic glory. The atom, built like a cell, is made up of positive charges in the nucleus, surrounded by negatively charged electrons in holding containers known as orbitals which surround it. Of course, we all know the cliché that opposites attract, and this is never more true than in the case of oppositely charged forces. The atom should be inherently unstable, with the positive and negative charges constantly pulling one another to create a destructive collapse of the atomic structure.

Sometimes the need to simplify science for the purposes of teaching, illustration and basic understanding is the worst thing we can do. I am a huge proponent of simplifying, putting things into everyday terms, making them easy to understand. Society demands this, with people desiring to learn things in sound bites, rather than taking the opportunity to delve in at full force. The science community suffers from being too “intellectual” in many realms, and most people tune us out when we start to talk technical and begin to look at the complexity of biological, chemical and physical systems that surround us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about starting simple. I love to teach General Chemistry classes to freshmen for this purpose. However, there’s a difference between starting simple and staying simple. I believe that a need to stay simple has done a great disservice to science, and I’ll go as far as to say that it does a great job at hiding the beauty and complexity of God’s created world.

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So, intelligent design is either science or its not, it’s either substantive or meaningless, and either you follow the argument and believe it or you don’t. The feedback from the “Hot Topics” session has been incredibly encouraging, with many people, both faculty and students, expressing that regardless of their viewpoint, they thoroughly enjoyed hearing both sides of the argument. For me, that is extremely rewarding and gratifying, because quite simply, I believe that anyone making a decision (and not necessarily in my favor) should do so with all the facts, with sufficient observation and research, and not just because it says so on page 1013 of some textbook.

 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to share and reflect on my experiences as a Christian and God’s hand of provision and faithfulness.

Last night, my university put on a “Hot Topics” session entitled, “Intelligent Design, Creation and Evolution: Why Is It Controversial?” The forum is a panel of four faculty members, each given 5-7 minutes to present their ideas, with a follow-up question and answer from the audience, both students and faculty. The panel of faculty included an evolutionary biologist, a social scientist against intelligent design, a pro-Darwinian philosopher and yours truly. It didn’t matter that I showed the prediction that a protein forming from a random soup is 1 in 10¹⁵⁴. It didn’t matter that I predicted that the probability of the human genome DNA sequence being encoded from random chance has a probability of 1 in 10⁶⁰⁰. It didn’t matter that there have only been 10⁸⁰ molecules present since the earth began, or that even over the course of taking every one of these molecules and colliding them 1,000,000 times per second for the life of the universe, you still couldn’t get statistically close to seeing these things begin to form.

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One of the automatic criticisms of the intelligent design movement is that it’s not really science. It’s been called creationism in a cheap disguise, Christianity’s attempt at pseudoscience and a philosophy unable to stand up to the standards of good scientific design (whatever that means). So, the question on the table is a simple one. Is intelligent design theory real science, and does it have a place in the scientific world? Be careful if you’re ready to say “no” to that question, because there is a consequence that most scientists are unprepared to accept.

 

If we refuse intelligent design as science, we must be prepared to send it to its death alongside archaeology, paleontology and any other branch of science where we can’t see, hear, touch and feel all the evidence and know its precise origins.

The ongoing debate in the science world can be frustrating for Christians. I know that I read the hostile comments made about God, Christianity and faith and I’m immediately riled up and insulted. Christians believers are called ignorant, closed minded and shallow. In fact, I recently read an article by a well known atheist philosopher saying that exposing children to religion was akin to child abuse. Everywhere you turn, you see anger, hostility, offense and insults being hurled toward God and his followers. Quite frankly, if you do too much “objective” reading on the subject, you’ll end up more than a little angry. Atheist philosophers, Darwinian scientists and associated intellectuals dominate the airwaves, the print media and the internet. As Christians, we should be fighting mad, shouldn’t we?

 

The short answer…no! Our reaction when we read this should be anything but.