Warren Cole Smith of World Magazine came through our Seattle offices recently — it was good to see him. He interviewed Stephen Meyer, Center for Science & Culture director and author of Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. Dr. Meyer spoke very directly and incisively, I think, to World‘s primarily Evangelical Christian readership.

He explained the mission of Discovery Institute — where’s the link between George Gilder and intelligent design? — and recounted how ID advocates were surprised, in proposing an alternative to faltering neo-Darwinian theory, to meet with opposition not only from die-hard materialists but also from some Christians who hadn’t kept up with science. The latter insisted on the importance of persuading fellow Christians that there’s no choice but to embrace Darwinism.

Meyer emphasized the need (which applies to members of others faiths as well) to separate issues of first importance (whether the apparent design of nature is real or illusory) from fascinating but secondary questions (how exactly to interpret the Genesis creation narrative).

Excerpt:

Q. There are committed evangelical Christians reading this. They are earnest in their desire to follow God, and to develop an understanding of origins that is consistent with Scripture. They’re confused by, "Should I believe intelligent design? Should I believe six-day creation? Should I believe old-earth creationism? Should I believe theistic evolution?" What would you say to that person, other than, "Accept my position," to help guide them?

A. There’s a wonderful journal that’s published out of New York called First Things, and I think C.S. Lewis once wrote an essay called "First and Second Things." I think it’s important to distinguish first things from second things, so the first question, I think, the most important question, is, "Design, or no design?" If there is no evidence of design, and materialistic processes can account for everything we see, then the simplest metaphysical explanation of the reality around us, the scientific reality, is the materialistic worldview: Matter and energy are eternal, self-existent, self-creating, and perfectly capable of producing everything we see around us.

If, instead, we see evidence of a designing mind, then I think that evidence has faith-affirming implications because the most logical candidate for the designing mind is obviously God. There are some who have suggested, "Well, maybe there was a designing intelligence that’s imminent in the cosmos, some sort of space alien on Andromeda galaxy or something." I find that implausible. I think the biological evidence establishes a designing intelligence of some kind, but when you look at a wider ensemble of evidences, you see evidence of the design of the entire universe, what the physicists are talking about, the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics. 

The very fabric of the universe itself shows evidence of design from the beginning. We see evidence of a definite beginning in the history of the universe with the new cosmology. I think there’s a lot of evidence that has theistic implications, faith-affirming implications, and for me, for that reason it’s an incredibly exciting time to be a scientist, and also a person of faith. Because the science and the worldview affirmed by the Bible are extremely consonant with one another.

I think the first question is this question of design or no design, materialism or theism. What does the science seem to favor? Which of those two worldviews does it favor? Then after that, I think there are a lot of questions of biblical interpretation that people can rightly sink their teeth into. What do the "days" of Genesis mean, and what does the geology or the astronomy tell us about the age of the rocks or the universe? Those are interesting questions, but we’ve tried to, in a sense, separate those out and say, "Let’s look at this fundamental question." We’re at a time when the materialists have been dominating the culture, in the universities, the law schools, the court, and in the scientific labs, and certainly in the scientific popular press with people like Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins, and yet they have an exceedingly weak hand, scientifically.

What I’ve tried to do in the two books I’ve done, Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, is to show just how weak the materialist’s hand is in explaining the key events in the history of life. … We would encourage people to roll up their sleeves, do their homework on this. It’s a fascinating subject, they key ideas and arguments are very understandable to lay people who are willing to put a little time into it, and they’re hugely consequential questions.

What could be more interesting than finding out where we really came from, and which worldview is most likely to be true?

Yes, what an innovative concept! Do your homework, study the science, read the relevant material, think it over for yourself, and only then come to a reasoned, independent conclusion on the question of genuine versus illusory design.

Apart from theistic evolutionists, the same advice would serve many of our atheist Darwinian interlocutors well. I was struck by Ann Gauger’s observation earlier today that in her exchange with biochemist Lawrence Moran, sparked by Dr. Gauger’s new paper in the journal BIO-Complexity, Moran avoids discussing the paper itself and is content to reason in circles: Evolution is true, therefore all the evidence proves that evolution is true.

You can also listen to the whole conversation between Smith and Meyer here.

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