The Continuing Creation: Not Carpentry, But Bonsai

This year marks Ben Franklin's 300th birthday.  A philosophy professor claims that Franklin would have favored the teaching of intelligent design.  (Hat tip: TitusOneNine.)    Let's assume the professor is right.  What exactly would Franklin have said that God designed?  

Many intelligent-design proponents claim that what God designed was the actual universe itself.  They see God as akin to a carpenter or a sculptor, who took raw material of some sort and fashioned it into what he wanted. 

But we have a lot of evidence indicating that the universe has evolved, and continues to do so.  Over billions of years, observable processes following seemingly-understandable laws have been transforming the raw energy of the Big Bang into stars, planets, and us.  We're a long way from completely understanding those processes and laws, but we're working on it. 

It's tough to ignore all that evidence.  (Although a lot of IDers seem to try.)

I wonder.  Maybe God is more like a bonsai gardener than a carpenter.  

It seems highly likely that God envisioned an overall design for the "garden" we call the universe, and that he planted various seeds in various places.  Perhaps somehow, on an on-going basis, he might also guide and constrain the growth of the "trees," which would otherwise grow wild.   

(And of course we conjecture that God also provided the raw materials and designed the underlying evolutionary processes in the first place; as the punch line to an old joke goes, "oh, no — get your own dirt!")

Building a universe through "gardening" would certainly be an impressive feat.  It'd be much more clever than a carpenter's simply nailing together what he wanted. [1]

Another point:  There's little doubt that, as a race, humanity has influenced the growth of the "trees," mostly but not entirely for good.  We would do well to think of ourselves — and conduct ourselves — as part of the gardener's work crew, as created co-creators. 

That's a big responsibility.  And awesomely exciting too.

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NOTES

[1] The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, particle physicist and Anglican priest, has said:

Early on, an Anglican clergyman, Charles Kingsley, stated powerfully the right way to think theologically about evolution. He said that God could no doubt have brought into being a ready-made world, but in fact the Creator had done something cleverer than that in making ‘a creation that could make itself’.

The world is not God’s puppet theatre in which the Creator pulls every string. It is instead the theatre of Love in which creatures are allowed to be themselves and to make themselves.

That is the way in which Christians can understand the scientific insight of an evolving world. It is fully compatible with the belief that that world is God’s creation.

(Extra paragraphing added.)