designer, who fashioned the forest to precise specifications and routinely runs it like clockwork according to a master plan. Although the designer is never seen anywhere, he nevertheless is accessible at all times to everyone who speaks to him. He takes requests, and sometimes is thought to cure diseases. Most people are greatly comforted by speaking to him, although he never answers directly.
The designer manages the inhabitants of the forest through guardians who interpret the rules for all inhabitants. The first rule in the forest is required attendance at weekly group meetings, during which the guardians explain how life in the forest is to be lived; rule two requires exact compliance with all the minutiae of rule one. If these two rules are followed, the irregularities sometimes disrupting the harmony of the forest will not occur. The designer uses disasters to get the inhabitants’ attention when they forget rules one and two.
All worthwhile knowledge is found in a Book written long ago by the designer himself. The guardians are the chief interpreters of the Book, since the inhabitants long ago gave up being concerned with the ancient past and the designer languages in which the Book was written. Today, however, few even of the guardians bother with the ancient languages; they simply assume modern translations of the Book are invested with the designer’s authority. Among other things, the Book describes our past, present, and future. Apparently being captivated by the view of life in the enchanted forest is preparation for admission to the Utopian garden where it all began. Although no one knows where the garden is, most anyone living in the forest will confidently tell any traveler how to get there.
My point is this: the truths we live by are like one-eyed angels who see only in single dimensions.
This brief allegory, a thinly disguised caricature, reflects the general views of Judeo-Christian religion in America today. The following essays address aspects of America’s enchanted forest, but only in an indirect and conversational way.
1. God in the American Streets
Belief in the existence of God remains constant in American culture. For most Americans, God, however conceived, is creator of all and has endowed the universe with balance and regularity. For religious people, balance and regularity in the universe lead to the idea of a designing “intelligence” behind the universe. Even those who are not particularly religious would likely agree, because they share the traditional view that God created the universe. After all, things had to begin somewhere—so the popular rationale would go. Unfortunately, disturbing events in the modern world raise questions about the idea of a “Designer.” For example, What is the “intelligence” in intelligent design?
Clearly the universe has regularity; yet things do not always work exactly the same. For example, light sometimes acts like waves and sometimes like particles, the scientists tell us. Most physicists recognize both regularity and randomness in the universe. But to describe its regularity as the “design” of a particular “intelligence” is essentially a confessional, not a scientific, statement. The “confession” derives in part from observable reality, and in part from religious ideas, and it is not the only way to account for the universe. A religious physicist, working with strict standards for scientific statements, might make a religious “confession” about the origins of the universe but would not pass it off as scientific—unless he or she had a particular agenda.
“Designs” are not always deliberate or intelligent. For example, anyone who has ever made an ink blot knows that the particular design one achieves is not deliberate but only accidental, produced by the amount and consistency of the ink and the way pressure is applied—a purely fortuitous product, it would seem. Cancers also have design—but what kind of intelligence would deliberately design a cancer into the fabric of the universe?
The idea that our universe is, more or less, regular does not lead inevitably, or even necessarily, to an intelligent designer—and certainly not to a benign intelligence. Some could well conclude that the intelligence behind the universe is careless, capricious—or worse, devious. What sort of intelligence would design a universe purposely hostile to life? Yet we seem to have such a universe. Debilitating disease (cancer, birth defects, cerebral palsy, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, etc.) and natural “acts of God” (like tornados, hurricanes, and floods) are apparently designed into our present universe.
In antiquity, some groups opposed the idea that a benevolent God fashioned the universe. Mindful of the suffering in the world, they argued that the fashioner was flawed, stupid, or even evil. How could caring intelligence deliberately produce a universe so frightfully hostile to humanity? Christians and Jews argued back that the designer did not originally create such a world. God created a world suitable for, and beneficial to, humankind (Genesis 1:31). As a result of willful creaturely rebellion, however, the designer then deliberately “cursed” the world to punish humanity (Genesis 3:17–19). But this does not solve the problem, for, like it or not, the “designer” is still left with responsibility for our hostile world. Cursing a world hospitable to human life over one infraction hardly seems the act of a caring intelligence. In arguing “intelligent design” the problem is how to distance the designer from the present world.
Could one also surmise that the designer simply abandoned the universe? Possibly, and without the designer’s oversight, creatures abandoned in a hostile world must adapt or perish, and, that seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves. In this world, as presently ordered, we either adapt or perish—as Mr. *Darwin argued nearly 150 years ago.
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We usually describe God in terms of the attributes with which we endow him.1 For instance, he gets angry with sin (wrath), he punishes the evildoer (retribution), he loves his creatures, he is patient, he forgives (merciful), etc. We don’t reflect on God as an entity with “personhood,” but rather only in terms of how we think God reacts to us. We don’t think God is a blind force, but rather as a deliberative deity who reflects the very best of our own human characteristics. At least we use our best features to describe him, so it is surprising we don’t inquire into God’s mind, and ask questions like does God ever muse about things?
What does God think about when he has time on his hands (so to speak)? Is God introspective or curious? Does he ever daydream? Has he ever had a new thought—an “Aha” experience? The question is not far fetched, since the Bible portrays God in the first account of creation giving himself a reflective pat on the back (“he saw that it was good,” Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), and kicking back for a rest on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). In a second account of creation, he takes time off for a relaxing walk in *Eden “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8)—still the custom in the modern Mediterranean world. I know some will object: “metaphors”! These are just figures of speech—the biblical writer is not speaking literally. Still, even to use such images begs the question: does God ever take time off from the business of running the world, curing disease, punishing the wicked, and the like, or is his divine mind always occupied with the cosmos and its creatures?
Does it really matter? Well, perhaps not to you, but it mattered a great deal to some of the ancient philosophers. For them, the ideal state for a God was “at rest.” God existed in silence, singularity, solitariness, and stillness—he even moved “motionlessly”! Movement, or thought, changed the deity, and change was a flaw. Deity, as they conceived it, was truly the same yesterday, today, and forever—without beginning, without end.
On the other hand, the popular view in ancient Mediterranean culture conceived of the Gods actively involving themselves in human affairs—destroying and protecting cities, devising plagues, working miraculous cures, discoursing with human beings, and much more. Today God is conceived more like the ancient popular view than the philosophical view. God is constant motion 24/7, everywhere at the same instant, juggling myriads of activities, starting plagues, performing miraculous cures, creating hurricanes, answering prayers, winning ball games—to mention just a few.
The
