A Story of Two Sailors
A Dialogue on Evolution and Design
Henry and Jennifer, two graduate students in anthropology, were in Tahiti on a project when they decided to rent a boat for the day. They stayed out after dark, and as they started to head back a storm arose and tossed them far out to sea.
After the storm ended they sailed to an island they saw in the distance. They met a tribe of people there who used bone tools and lived in bamboo huts with grass-thatched roofs. Jennifer had studied Polynesian languages, so they were able to communicate with each other, albeit imperfectly. The leader offered to show them the island.
"This place is in such a low-technology state, I guess it's been ignored by technologically advanced neighboring cultures," they said to each other.
Jennifer asked the leader if they were ever visited by other people, and he responded, "You are the first people ever to visit us. Only the Provider has ever visited us before."
Jennifer and Henry agreed that the Provider was most likely the Creator in the local mythology.
One of the first places that the leader took them was the garden -- and Jennifer and Henry were amazed at what they saw. The garden sat in the middle of a large complex that let in sunlight, but protected the plants from the wind. In the center was a tree that bore many large fruit. It served as the focal point for a spiderweb of footpaths leading to all parts of the complex. A copper pipe, weathered green, came in from the side and splintered into thousands of tiny pipes that kept all of the plants irrigated.
Jennifer and Henry were amazed. "This is an incredible garden!" Jennifer said.
The leader replied, "Yes, the Provider planted it many years ago to nurture our island."
Henry said, "But you must have planted this."
The leader laughed. "I could not plant something like this. The Provider did."
Henry said, "Have you ever seen this 'provider'?"
The leader replied, "Not directly. He planted the garden a very long time ago, in my ancestor's time, and nowadays people only rarely report seeing him directly. Sometimes someone will report that a part of the garden is fixed, and no-one knows how. We say that the Provider did it in that case. He seems to come in when we are not looking and fix things that we were not expecting him to fix."
Henry said, "But if you never see him, how do you know that someone else isn't fixing things and claiming it was the Provider?"
The leader laughed. "It's possible that some have done what you say, but it's not reasonable for me to think that every claim is false. We don't know much about the Provider, but we know the people who talk to us and we trust their testimony at least some of the time."
"Besides," the leader continued, "I know of the Provider because the garden exists. Even if he never fixed anything, I know that he planted the garden and told us how to maintain it in the best way."
Jennifer asked, "What do you mean?"
The leader said, "The Provider left us instructions for tending the garden. They have been passed down from generation to generation, and when we follow them the garden provides enough fruit, vegetables, and tubers for the entire island. But when we neglect his instructions, the garden grows poorly. Even when we have tried to make improvements, the results of our attempts frequently cause the garden to be worse instead of better. This garden sustains the entire island, and since the Provider seems to know how it should be run, I am willing to go by his rules."
Jennifer and Henry had to go back to their hotel, so they thanked the leader and got back in their boat.
On the way back, they talked about what they had seen.
"I wish I knew more about the Provider," Jennifer said.
"Probably a typical creator myth," Henry said. "You won't get much new from it."
Jennifer shook her head. "No," she said, "I mean the real provider."
"What are you talking about?" said Henry. "He's a myth, as we agreed at the outset."
"But that was before we saw the complexity of the garden, and their own statements that they didn't build it."
"Well, sure, but why would that change your mind? They got lucky with a good set of initial conditions, they've been lightly maintaining that garden for who knows how long, and they've hit a kind of equilibrium that keeps their garden growing. The rules that maintain the equilibrium have been codified into a tradition. That's much easier to believe in than a 'Provider.'"
"And the copper pipes? They don't have the technology to make those."
"They must have at one point. Or perhaps a ship got stranded on the shore, and the pipes were cargo; or an aircraft crash-landed on the island during World War II, and the pipes were salvaged from the wreckage."
"Do you have any evidence for the ship or the aircraft other than your imagination?"
"I know that ships exist, and airplanes. Do you have any evidence for the 'Provider' other than their testimony?"
"The existence of the garden itself is evidence -- the natives could not have created it. And I have no reason to assume that a ship or an airplane delivered the pipes, and that they just happened to figure out how to use them to irrigate a garden, except for your insistence that there is no Provider. I can't show that the Provider exists, but you can't show that your airplane crash happened either."
"We would not expect complete evidence of a plane wreck from 50 years ago. The copper pipes by themselves constitute evidence of the plane crash."
"Only if you assume that there is no Provider, which I don't. Do you see how circular you're being? 'Something must have put the pipes there, so there must have been an airplane crash -- and therefore the pipes are evidence of the crash that put the pipes there.' It might even be as you say, but your postulate is completely circular and without evidence."
"So come up with a better explanation."
"Okay -- there was or is a Provider."
"Nonsense. That's just as unprovable."
"But it has more evidence, in the testimony of the people we just spoke to. Speaking of which, what about the stories of the Provider occasionally fixing things in the garden?"
"I don't believe them. They're making it up, or there's a natural explanation that they haven't thought of. After all, if there were a real provider capable of making a garden of that complexity, do you think that he'd leave them with such poor technology? He'd be in there, helping constantly, and when he helped them he'd show himself to them and show them how to fix it."
"Wait -- you know nothing about him and you don't even believe that he exists, but if he exists you're willing to presume that you know what his motivations are and how he would act? And further, you think that he would make radical changes in their technology and culture? As an anthropologist who tries to minimize her impact on the groups I work with, I find that somewhat hypocritical."
"At the very least, this so-called Provider can't be real because they said he's still coming back even though he first came generations ago. It clearly can't be the same person."
"That may be so, but that might also simply mean that their own understanding of the Provider is limited, which they freely admit. It doesn't mean that the Provider isn't real. That's why I said I wanted to know more about the Provider -- because he's so clearly worth studying."
Simultaneously, they both said, "Believe what you want to believe, but you're not being rational."
Postscript
This dialogue was written in response to an atheist propaganda piece that purported to show the irrationality of religious belief in general and intelligent design (although that buzzword wasn't used at the time) specifically. Rather than respond with another propaganda piece, I wanted to create a dialogue that would encapsulate some of the arguments I consistently heard regarding evidence, testimony, what's worth believing or rejecting, and so on, from both sides.
As a Catholic Christian I have no problem believing that God is behind the creation, but I don't believe that the universe was created in a literal six-day week. This bias may show through. Sorry about that!