dover area Posts

A lot has been written about Intelligent Design (creationism without the G-word) because of the trial in Pennsylvania's Dover Area School District. An excellent New Yorker article about it a few weeks ago mentioned that one of the school board members pushing Intelligent Design is a Quaker. Who would have guessed? But should I be so surprised?

Now, I absolutely don't think it should be taught in science classes at all. I'm with the judge that the ID argument is religious and not scientific. Students shouldn't be forced to listen to Christian propaganda in a public school. But what if we take the debate out of the schoolhouse and bring it into the meetinghouse? A core principle of Friends is Fox's opening that Christ has come to teach the people himself. The era of divine agency in human affairs didn't end in the early 30s A.D. but continues. When we pray for discernment in our business meetings, we're asking for a very real presence (common metaphors are the still small voice and a "nudge from the Spirit"). If God guides us as individuals and a Society of Friends into the mystery of a direct, Christ-centered contact, then it's not much of a stretch to suppose God at least occassionally tips the scales on the evolutionary front as well.

We are a religious people who believe in God's active agency in our lives: isn't that pretty much the Intelligent Design argument? As a science geek, I don't buy it at all but as a Friend it seems to make sense. Is anyone else out there struggling with this seeming-contradiction?

ps: yes I know there are some liberal Friends who don't buy into anything dealing with God, which seems to be to be a different issue. What are those of us who do look for direct guidance to make of Intelligent Design?
pps: Things so Small Sarah skirted by this issue last week in a great post.