Please explain.

I've read John Haught and I've read John Garvey ("Intelligent Design?" August 12) and I still don't understand how I can stand up every Sunday and say, "We believe in one God / the Father Almighty, / maker of heaven and earth, / of all that is seen and unseen ..." and still not believe in "intelligent design." Could somebody explain this?

JOHN C. CORT 

Nahant, Mass.

JOHN GARVEY REPLIES:

Intelligent Design (ID) is not so much a statement that God is the creator of all (something that I believe, as I am sure John Haught does), but an attempt to argue that science can prove this. It is the limitation of science to those areas that can be weighed, measured, replicated, falsified, and demonstrated that seems to frustrate the defenders of ID. Yet those limits are in fact science's strengths. To try to prove what is finally a matter of faith would seem to challenge Hebrews, where it is said that faith is "conviction of things not seen" (11:1). ID folks want to see them. They are reacting to the arguments of some Darwinians that natural selection disproves religion; but they react by becoming like their opponents, who also move beyond the limits of science. In our real life, the one lived apart from such stupidities, all we get are faint clues. If you want to find some indications in creation that there is no God, no meaning, you can. If you want to look at other--I think more compelling--moments you can believe that God is moving us toward something wonderful beyond all imagining. But you can't demonstrate either thing scientifically. The creed begins, "I believe ...", not "I regard it as provable that ..."