Intelligent Design

What’s the fuss? Haven’t we learned yet that the How questions are for science and the Why questions are for faith?

Recently, a scientist, who is also a leader in his congregation, prepared a devotional for his local church board based upon a reading from Genesis 1. His comments were prompted by an essay in The Washington Post by Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian pastor and a regular contributor to Homiletics, on the debate within his congregation between proponents of Intelligent Design and Evolution.

The scientist began by describing himself as a scientist and a Christian. He went on to explain the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis: The first is proven by a rigorous testing of hypotheses; the second is not provable by a set of repeated tests and thus remains a hypothesis. Theory is not the same as hypothesis.

Then he stated his own conviction regarding creation. “God did it. The Genesis stories of creation, while different in detail, agree that God did it. This theme runs throughout the Bible. That God did it does not suggest how God created us, and I find it somewhere...