Archbishop of Sydney

Is The Universe Planned?

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
11 September 2005

President George Bush recently put the cat among the pigeons when he told Texas newspaper reporters that a theory called “intelligent design” (I.D.) should be taught alongside evolution as a competing theory about how the world was made.

Some scientists and teachers objected strongly, claiming I.D. is codswallop, smuggling in religion dressed up as science, while one wag derided I.D. as “creationism in a cheap tuxedo”.

This debate is not new in the U.S.A., and will be with us for the foreseeable future.  Therefore it is useful to try to identify some clear points.

Science cannot tell us whether there is or is not a Creator.  To claim this (or deny it) we need to go beyond physics (to metaphysics) and do philosophy.  This is legitimate.

I.D. does not accept the Adam and Eve story literally, that God created the world in six days as explained in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.  So they are not creationists or fundamentalists.  They appeal to scientific evidence, to the laws and patterns in nature, to the wonderful complexity we now understand better than ever.

Evolutionists generally believe that life evolved by numerous, successive slight modifications.  Many follow Charles Darwin in believing that these changes came about by chance, were random occurrences and those changes which were successful survived through natural selection, were more suitable.

In other words Darwinists do not acknowledge any design or any purpose in the universe; a bleak view.

There is no doubt that a good deal of evidence supports evolutionary theory e.g. the fossil records and the late Pope John Paul II acknowledged this much.  It certainly helps us understand how changes occur within a species.  Good food and climate, exercise and the absence of strife have meant most Australian children are taller than their parents.

But, for the moment at least, there are some changes evolution cannot explain.

The development of life from inanimate matter is one such example, but the development of the human brain, of our voice boxes is equally marvellous.

In the past the debate was more about the laws of physics.  Today the arguments are also about biology, about the fantastic complexity of animal and human cells.

Could the human eye be the result of chance?  The whip-like propellers of bacteria have 40 parts worked by dozens of proteins.  Is such complexity too specific to have occurred by chance, by a succession of flukes?

These are enormous gaps in our knowledge.

Some of these gaps will be filled, but we do not need a God of the gaps.  The whole universe is not self-explanatory and the Designer to be God must be beyond the design, have created it and sustain it.  God is not just another powerful cause.

I believe there are beautiful and fantastic patterns in nature, which indicate design and point beyond coincidences to God the Designer.