To: The Dallas Morning News "Viewpoints" section
Date:  August 16, 2005
Subject: The debate about "intelligent design" 
Result: not printed

Dear Editor,

To account for the origin and evolution of life, those who reject the theory of "intelligent design" say living organisms spontaneously generated from the chemical muck that was present in the primordial earth, and then took off from there to get to where we are today. The vast complexity and engineering magnificence that we observe on the earth and beyond all came about by blind chance, they say.

These scientists seem to have forgotten that there's another part of the whole question, which is where did the chemicals come from? Where did anything come from? The argument that life could have started from nothing would have to apply to the entire physical substance of the universe, with or without life.

One thing we know is that, under normal, observable conditions, matter cannot be created. That's a law of physics. Everything that exists, including ourselves, is just different arrangements of the same basic material that has always existed. Even before the Big Bang, all the matter in the whole universe that exists now was then condensed into the infinitesimal spot that went Bang; I believe that's the theory. Just the idea that something so small could have exploded to become the whole large universe seems pretty metaphysical to me.

Given the fact that matter cannot be created but only rearranged, it seems reasonable to consider that the matter that exists was put there by a non-physical force that does not operate within the physical laws - i.e., God. How that might have been accomplished, I don't know. All we can really know and comprehend is based on the physical laws and the senses we were given to perceive them. But it's hard for me to believe, scientifically speaking, that matter could exist unless it was put there. It's no different to me than to think that I could be staring at my empty driveway, and suddenly a new car might appear.

On the other hand, since God, if he exists, would not be subject to the limitations of physical laws, it seems possible that he could have always existed throughout eternity without having had a beginning (whatever "eternity" is in a realm where there is no time). Something has to exist without having been put there by something or somebody else. It is easier for me to believe that that "something" would not be the one that would contradict the physical laws that we know and can observe.

The opponents of "intelligent design" say it is just a backdoor variety of "creationism". I think of creationism as the view that God snapped his fingers, and suddenly everything came into being. I really don't think that happened (though I don't see enough evidence to say for sure that it didn't). To me, by far, the most reasonable view is that God created the building blocks of matter and then set up the mechanism by which the universe and the life within it could evolve, starting when he first crammed everything into that little spot.

But then, speaking of the idea that people evolved from lower animals, that is something I would be quite willing to believe. However, one thing I don't understand, and have never heard anybody explain, is why we can have many complete skeletons of dinosaurs, all of which are at least 65 million years old, but we don't have one complete skeleton of a "missing link" type of pre-man, which would be much younger than a dinosaur. Such skeletons should be all over the place, it seems to me.

Thank you, John Vehon