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LOOKING FOR THE LABEL

Designer labels have made their mark in popular culture and the consumer economy. The youth culture in particular pays attention to brand names. The designer label often determines which pair of blue jeans or tennis shoes a young person buys. Clothes that seem indistinguishable to the casual older adult observer bear no resemblance at all for the person who is only concerned with the label. At any point in time, one designer name brand is more popular than another for no particular reason.

Indulgent parents go along with this pop fad approach to buying clothes and other goods, often paying outrageous sums for items that have nothing to commend them above the competition except for the designer label. In an age of media hype and image building, the price a person pays for goods may have no significant relationship to the quality of goods. This trend represents a radical departure from the historic reason for placing the name of the manufacturer on its goods.

My grandparents went through the Depression. Even though they survived with their home intact and lived until 1980, they never got over the challenge of living with so little disposable income. They managed their money carefully and saved a little each month. They took care of the things they had and knew how to make things last. If something was broken, they fixed it. With what has come to be called a "Depression mind-set," however, they always bought the best-quality goods they could find. In the long run it paid to buy the best quality because in those days quality meant that something was made to last. Quality meant both excellence of design and manufacture. In those days people went by the slogan "You get what you pay for!"

When craftsmanship and price had a direct relationship, the label on a product meant a great deal. The label did not appear on the front of a shirt for the neighbors to see. Instead, it was discreetly sewn into the fabric where only the wearer of the shirt could see it. The neighbors saw only the quality.

During the last decade of the twentieth century, scientists and theologians began to use the word design when speaking of the universe. People had used this word or at least this idea to speak of the universe for thousands of years in different parts of the world. Most scientists and theologians in the West, however, rarely used this idea after the mid-1800s. Why, after all this time, has the idea of design of the universe and everything in it once again come into the conversation of scientists and theologians?

The idea of design provides a way of coming to the idea of God from the back door. The idea of design suggests the existence of a designer. If the universe actually was designed, how did it come to be designed? More importantly for personal beings, if the universe actually was designed, who designed it?

It does not take a philosopher, scientist, or theologian to discuss the idea of design. People around the world do it every day. In fact, even after the academic community of scientists and theologians had discarded the idea of design, the overwhelming number of laypeople in the West clung to it. The great philosophers of the last twenty-five hundred years, going back to Plato and Aristotle, developed elaborate logical arguments to prove the existence of God by appealing to the idea of design. The average person, however, discusses the same idea without the need of such a carefully thought-out argument.

Plato often used dialogues to present his philosophical arguments. He set the philosophical conversation in the context of a conversation between two people so that he could present both sides of the question and systematically answer the objections to his argument. When most people first encounter the design idea, they hear it in the form of a dialogue. I do not recall how old I was when I first heard the idea of design explained to me, but I clearly recall the terms of the explanation.

"Momma," I asked, "where did the sky come from?"

"God made the sky," my mother replied.

"Momma," I continued, "where did the sun come from?"

"God made the sun," my mother replied.

"Momma," I persisted, "where did the trees come from?"

"God made the trees," my mother patiently answered. "God made everything."

In its simplest and most common form, the idea of design is not an argument to prove the existence of God. It is an explanation of who God is . It assumes the existence of God and proceeds to explain how God relates to everything else. But people talk about the idea in more sophisticated terms in the everyday as well.

Before taking the path that would eventually lead me to writing books that deal with theological themes, I had intended to pursue a career in law. In the early 1970s I served as law clerk for a year to Fletcher Mann, a brilliant trial lawyer in South Carolina. Mr. Mann was involved in what was then the largest antitrust suit ever tried in the United States. It involved many textile mills primarily in the South and in Europe. In the midst of the suit which dragged on for years with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, Mr. Mann turned to me and mused:

I remember the most peaceful, serene day I ever spent. It was an early fall day, and I was with your parents at your grandmother's mountain house. I was stretched out in that big Pawley Island rope hammock they had on the front porch. The sound of the river rushing over the rocks around three sides of the house was like music. From there I could look straight up the Jones Gap with those mountains in full color on both sides. The temperature was just perfect, and the air smelled so sweet and fresh. I remember thinking, On a day like this, how can anyone doubt the existence of a great and good Supreme Being ?

The discussion suggests that it is easy to believe in a great, good creator when everything looks beautiful. The discussion seems almost glib because it ignores those days when the storms rage and everything lies in darkness. What happens to the discussion on those days? The problem of evil, pain, and suffering inevitably raises its head when scientists, theologians and philosophers discuss the question of design. Note the context in which Mr. Mann raised the question of design. Everything was not beautiful and sweet smelling. He was living out of a suitcase in Rock Hill, South Carolina, eating a steady diet of motel food, enduring an endless contest of wits with a stable of high-priced lawyers from New York. The litigation had gone on for years and would go on for years more. It was in the midst of the strife and the darkness that he remembered an experience that became as real again as the moment it had occurred.

Mr. Mann did not raise the question of design to prove the existence of God to me. At that point the question of design did not involve the theoretical idea of what kind of God exists. Instead, he was reliving the experience of having met the Designer on a balmy fall day in the mountains. It did not matter what might happen on any other day. The Designer penetrated his soul and gave him a peace that he could draw upon for the rest of his life. He had experienced the personal implications of the existence of a Designer who relates personally to what he has designed. To that extent, what he had to say was not intended to persuade me or change me. On the other hand, on a lousy fall day in Rock Hill, the observation did persuade him and change him. The idea of design sometimes has a purely personal quality to it.

When scientists, philosophers, and theologians speak of design, they usually think in terms of a formal proof for the existence of God. They may digress and discuss the possibility of ever proving anything. Then they explain they mean to show a preponderance of evidence that would demonstrate the strongest possible probability that something may be so. The first time I ever heard such a formal proof for the existence of God, it did not come from a Christian theologian, philosopher, or scientist. In fact, it did not come from a Christian at all.

I first heard the design argument for the existence of God from Swami Chinmayananda. He had formerly had a successful law practice in India before his experience of enlightenment during a mountain retreat. The year was 1972 on the campus of the University of South Carolina. I chaired the Lectures Series Committee of the University Union, and my committee had agreed to help the Indian students by providing travel expenses to allow the Hindu teacher to visit Carolina and give a lecture. As the chair of the committee, I was invited to eat with Swami Chinmayananda and the Indian students. He was a charming and engaging man who spoke with me for several hours. He agreed to give one public lecture for the student body but devoted the rest of his time to the students from India.

He chose as his topic the theme "Why God?" The provocative title was intended to stir interest. The large lecture hall in Currell College was almost full to hear Swami Chinmayananda explain what he meant by "Why God?" He proceeded to give what I now know to be three of the classical proofs for the existence of God: the argument from first cause, the argument from necessary being, and the argument from design. We will explore these proofs later.

He presented the arguments quite clearly with wit and contemporary illustrations, but I learned several years later that they were the same arguments Thomas Aquinas had elaborated seven hundred years earlier. These arguments of Thomas Aquinas were the same ones Aristotle had elaborated sixteen hundred years before that. Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Swami Chinmayananda had radically different understandings of God. Aristotle and Swami Chinmayananda did not share the biblical concept of creation held by Thomas Aquinas. Yet all three found the idea of design compelling. They lived, thought, worked, taught, and wrote in quite different cultures, times, and places. Nonetheless, design stood inescapably obvious to them and helped them make sense of their world. In spite of many varied understandings of the nature of the universe and the nature of God, some understanding of design forms an aspect of most of the world's great cultures past and present.

A WORLD OF VIEWS

People do not always mean the same thing when they speak of design, just as they do not always mean the same thing when they use the word God . Before exploring why the design argument would reappear after so many thinkers assumed it had been stone cold dead for one hundred years, it may prove helpful to understand how other people in different times and places have viewed design.

People living in the West tend to make enormous assumptions about what "everyone knows" or what "other people think." In terms of design, people with quite different views of reality have recognized design in nature, yet they have given different accounts of it. Judaism, Islam, and Christianty share a common understanding of why nature might appear to have characteristics of design. The people of these faiths believe that a personal being created all of physical reality with a purpose for all things from beginning to end. The Bible and the Qur'an relate God's relationship to the physical order as its Creator. These three religions have different perspectives on the person of Jesus Christ and the way to salvation, but they agree about God as Creator. Even people in the West who do not have personal faith in God have tended to have at least a general awareness of the view of God and creation held by these three great monotheistic religions. While the Christian perspective will be discussed in more detail later, several other religious perspectives will help to illustrate that the idea of design is not simply a culturally derived concept of the West.

Hinduism

As I mentioned earlier, the first person to explain to me the design argument for the existence of God was a Hindu teacher. I did not know much about Hinduism when I heard him speak, but his lecture seems all the more fascinating now that I have studied a little about Hinduism. Unlike the three monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not conceive of God as a personal self-conscious being. Westerners often think of Hinduism as a polytheistic religion, but this view is not quite accurate. Hindus do believe in many gods as they conceive of gods. They do not believe in many gods in the way Christians conceive of God. Instead of the word god it may be more helpful to use the Hindu word Brahman . Brahman is Absolute Reality. Brahman is everything physical and everything spiritual, because ultimately there is no difference between the physical and the spiritual. These are merely two different expressions of Brahman. Whereas Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe that people are made in the image of God, Hindus believe that people are God or an expression of Brahman.

Behind what we think of as the objective, physical reality of a person or a tree or a solar system or a pebble lies the Absolute Reality of Brahman. The person, the solar system, the pebble, and the tree have the same ultimate nature as expressions of Brahman. They have no separate and individual identity distinct from one another. The great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber made a significant contribution to Western thought in his discussion of the "I-it" relationship. These distinctions are ultimately meaningless in Hindu thought. Hindu thought has a different expression to describe the unity of all things as expressions of Brahman: "That thou art."

Walk barefoot along a sandy beach on a summer afternoon with the sun beating hot upon your face, the waves of the ocean crashing on the shore, a gentle breeze breaking the heat, and a seagull screeching overhead. Feel the sand between your toes. That thou art. See the glare of the sun millions of miles away. That thou art. Hear the waves as they scatter their spray. That thou art. Feel the coolness of the breeze. That thou art. Watch the gull as it darts and dives for a fish. Thou art both the gull and the fish! All is One. All is Brahman.

Though all is One, not every expression of Brahman has experienced the enlightenment necessary to realize their own unity with Brahman. Every form of life, whether human, animal, or plant, undergoes an endless series of rebirths or reincarnations as other forms of life unless the series of births is broken by enlightenment. The law of Karma determines the future destiny. According to the law of Karma the form of one's next birth is determined by one's behavior in the present life. Whatever one experiences in the present, whether good or evil, pleasure or suffering, is the consequence of actions in a previous existence.

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Excerpted from Designer UNIVERSE by Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe Copyright © 2002 by Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Designer Universe

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