Editor:
I think that Jared Whitley, in his Oct. 23 feature column titled “Fruit Faith: Science and Religion Can Mix,” made a good point of science resting on its own faith. It has assumptions that it takes for granted just as theology does.
I also don’t accept the separation between science and religion. Indeed, many scientists throughout history, and even today, understand the concept of God as an explanatory hypothesis in terms of an inference to the best explanation.
It works similarly to the acceptance of other theoretical entities (e.g., quarks, electrons, etc.).
The problem comes in the limitation of the design argument. By itself, it only gives you at best an architect within the universe, and this is quite in keeping with your Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints presupposition.
Giving an explanation to these questions from a classical theistic view goes far beyond the LDS view of God being a man by nature who became exalted to His divine office.
An explanation of the former view yields a Creator with a completely different nature (not merely an office or function).
This Being would have to be truly Almighty, truly unique and in need of nothing, outside of the entire spatial and temporal universe. This being would have to be more than the architect of truth for the particular worlds that He creates within an already existing universe, but actually the source of all truth for literally all creation.
Rob Sivulka, Ph.D. student, Philosophy