Leader in the Voice for Intelligent Design

Dr. J.P. Moreland


Dr. J. P. Moreland, in addition to teaching, directs Talbot Theological Seminary's M.A. program in philosophy and ethics. He has a Th.M. in theology from Dallas Seminary, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California. Moreland is the coauthor of nine books including Scaling the Secular City (Baker), and Christianity and the Nature of Science (Baker). His most recent work is The Creation Hypothesis (InterVarsity Press).



Profile of Dr. J. P. Moreland,
1996 Mere Creation conference speaker

How does the concept of intelligent design relate to your work?

My view is that because human beings have minds different than their brains, naturalism isn't adequate to explain where we came from. The best explanation for the origin of our mental life, our mental self, is there is a big mental Self who created it. I've also done work as to why naturalism is inadequate to explain the world. You can't get the immaterial from matter; there had to be an intelligent designer to create the soul and give it its ordered structure.

I think it's critical to the struggle for the soul of America that we get to the root of the chaos we see in culture: the ideas that people now believe. They think, and I strongly disagree, that science has made belief in God and values matters of private subjective faith.

What opportunities or opposition has your interest in intelligent design presented?

I have had some publishers reject a book manuscript without even looking at it. They opened it, they looked at it and said, "We will not publish any book that even questions the theory of evolution." And these were world-class publishers.