I attended the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity annual National Convention on Bioethics last month. 4 members of the President's Bioethics Council spoke to us, including Robert P. George, Leon Kass, Gilbert Meilander, and Francis Collins. (I am *not* a groupee!)
Dr. Collins spoke about his conversion after med school and then about the work on the Human Genome Project, which he led. He showed us specific similarities in the mouse and human genomes and explained the significance in light of a common ancestor. He then explained that the current explanation of Intelligent Design is falling apart, even the "irreducible complexity."
Now, my own gut feeling is that, just as Genesis depicts, man was a special creation. It's not surprising that the Architect's work shows similarity at the basic blueprint. But, I just don't believe that this Architect built in false clues to fool us. It's a lot easier for me to believe that we misunderstand the clues (and are encouraged to misunderstand them and divide over this lack of understanding by the deceiver).
Just as we learned that the Sun doesn't move around the earth, but can understand that the ancients saw it be still in the sky and we know that "four corners" of the earth is figurative in a spherical planet, somehow we may - as the evidence builds - have to accept the age of the earth and of the species of life on it. My understanding of God can't contain an earth built to deceive us more and more as we use our God-given minds to study science with finer and finer tools.
(Or to put it another way: While Adam may or may not have had a navel at his creation, I don't believe that he had scars and wrinkles until he had wounds and age.)
We must not allow *anyone* to teach our children that God did not work to create us all. That has no place in science class, anymore than it does in math class. Math is another great example of the orderliness of our Creator, but we don't need to discuss that while we learn about prime numbers, pi, or the universal constants.
We are called to teach the Gospel and to be all things to all people. We must begin with, "Let me tell you about the Creator Who did these things you've discovered," rather than "Don't report what you see."
Suppose I decide to clean my wife's and my bedroom. First stage in cleaning often is total demolition. So I get just far enough that I've pulled everything apart, and then I get called away to something urgent. I close the bedroom door and leave a note on the door saying, "Honey, I know it looks like trash, but I'm in the middle of cleaning. I'll finish it up with I get back. Love, Dan."
Then further suppose that my wife arrives, reads my note, walks into the bedroom, and blows her stack. Then, when I get home, she reads me the riot act for being so thoughtless and irresponsible and selfish as to tear the whole bedroom apart for no reason, and just leave it for her to clean up.
Whose fault would her explosion be? And what would it say? If she concluded that I was selfish and abusive, is it because I left misleading clues? Or did I not myself leave a framework for understanding the OTHERWISE-misleading clues? Are they not only misleading if my explicit word is ignored?
God says explicitly that He created everything in a six-day timeframe, and more recently than billions of years ago. The approach the modern materialistic priesthood takes says in effect, "OK, forget that, and assume that all processes have always played out just as we see them today, and -- hey, look! We come up with different conclusions!"
Ignore the note, screw up the interpretation -- and don't blame the note-writer.