Ronald Reagan's Deeply Personal Argument for Intelligent Design

[00:00:05] Speaker A: ID the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. I'm Andrew McDermott. On this episode, Discovery Institute vice president Doctor John west sits down with radio host Michael Medved to discuss President Ronald Reagan's deeply personal argument for intelligent design. During remarks given at a national prayer breakfast event in 1988, Reagan shared his argument for intelligent design in unscripted, humorous fashion. But Doctor west explains that Reagan's commitment to intelligent design went much deeper than a few off the cuff laugh lines. Reagan fought against atheism and materialism in his diplomacy as president and even in his role as a father. Now let's listen in to Michael Medved and his guest, Doctor John west. [00:00:59] Speaker C: And on the Michael Medved show. Today is President Reagan's birthday, and it's a day that every american patriot, every conservative in particular, should take very seriously because there are all kinds of lessons that we can take away from President Reagan. In fact, today there is a wonderful piece, and it got my attention, it got Jeremy's attention, got my wife's attention. It's by our friend John West. John is the vice president of Discovery Institute here in Seattle, and he's the managing director of the center for Science and Culture Discovery Institute, which he co founded together with Stephen Meyer Way back in 1996. And for twelve years, John west was a political science professor at Seattle Pacific University, where he also chaired the department of political science and geography for several years. John, congratulations on this piece. It begins by recalling a prayer breakfast many years ago that took place two days before his birthday in 1988. Is that right? [00:02:22] Speaker D: Yes, it does. Michael, thank you for having me on. It's a privilege to especially be on Reagan's birthday. So, yeah, this was a talk he gave and someone had shown me or directed me to a clip from it. And it started a whole long sort of, not sort of mystery story, but trying to track down where did this come from? So he's speaking, it's the last year of his presidency, so 1988, and that's important to understand for what happened later. But so he's before the prayer breakfast and he starts talking about how he'd always been unable to understand the atheists in this world. You know, the world is so beautiful. There's so much wonderful how he couldn't really understand why they thought that. And then he said, I've always had an unholy desire to invite some atheist to a dinner and then serve the most fabulous gourmet dinner that has ever been concocted. [00:03:12] Speaker C: Okay, let's let President Reagan himself hit the punchline. Here. This is President Reagan from two days before his birthday in 1988. [00:03:25] Speaker E: Listen, I have long been unable to understand the atheist in this world of so much beauty. And I've had an unholy desire to invite some atheists to a dinner and then serve the most fabulous gourmet dinner that has ever been concocted. And after dinner asked them if they believed there was a cook. [00:04:04] Speaker C: Okay, you found out more about this line of reasoning, which is obviously a very strong argument for intelligent design. You don't have a wonderful gourmet dinner just by accident. Somebody had to design it and cook it up, right? [00:04:26] Speaker D: Yep. And just like in nature, whether the laws of physics or cosmology, the intricacies of chemistry or biology, we see that sort of same level of design and purpose. And so that also points to a design. And so, yeah, this is Reagan's riff on this age old argument for design. And so I began to wonder, well, where did this come from? Was this written by his speech writer? When did he use it elsewhere? And so this sort of became a sort of historical detective journey. And searching through all of his public papers, it turned out that as president, this was the first time. So in 1988 that he used this story in public as president, according to his public papers. So then I wondered, but it wasn't the last time. He ended up doing it five times, and we'll get maybe a little later about his private meetings with Gorbachev, but he used it five times in the last year of his presidency. So it didn't appear before then, but it was five times in his presidency. He gravitated toward it, but I wanted to know who did it, who came up with it. And I tried to track down the speechwriter, and I ultimately did. Dana Rohrabacher, former congressman who actually was the designated speechwriter for this, but before that, the Reagan library, very graciously, even though I'm not in southern California, I'm in the Seattle area, was able to scan things for me from the private files, the White House files, showing the development of that speech. And lo and behold, there was nothing on this in the draft speech. So this was added by Reagan. This was something dear to his heart. It wasn't a speech writer. And now where did he ultimately get it? That's an interesting question. I ultimately tracked down that apparently on one of his Reagan. Many people know in his earlier life, starting in the 1950s when he was representing General Electric, he'd go out and give speeches, and he'd collect comments and jokes and other things on these little notecards well, apparently one of those note cards actually had a variation of the story. So this, although this is the first time he used it as president, this apparently went deep into things that Reagan collected. And Reagan overall had a really fascinating sort of fascination, both with nature. If you read in his autobiography, he talks about at age five, in one of the many places that his dad rented, because his dad didn't have a great job history, so they kept moving. They had a house that in the attic, someone had left this great collection of butterflies and other things, and he would just go up in the attic and just look through the birds eggs and butterflies and just be fascinated. And as he said in his autobiography, it left me with a reverence for the handiwork of God sort of in nature that never left him. And then, of course, one of his favorite books was by Whittaker Chambers, the autobiography witness where Chambers account. And this was one of the favorite passages that Reagan would cite, almost actually by heart, where Chambers talked about, when did he veer away from atheistic materialism? Well, it was his little daughter having breakfast, and his eye came to rest on the delicate, as he wrote, convolutions of her ear, those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind. No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms and nature. They could have been created only by an immense design. And that was Whitaker Chambers from a favorite passage of Reagan. So he had this interest throughout his life, but somehow, in the ending year of his presidency, he just kept coming back to this in public meetings and private meetings. [00:08:05] Speaker C: And again, this, this idea has to do with Reagan's view of american history as well, which is that you can't explain truly remarkable things entirely as happy accidents. And a pattern of happy accidents still represents a pattern. Speaking with John west, this story you have about President Reagan and Gorbachev is just so remarkable, and I know that you will share it with us. Can we just take a moment and talk about some of the things that we might learn from President Reagan that perhaps our leaders could remember right now? [00:08:55] Speaker D: Yeah, well, I mean, of course, there are a lot of things. I mean, I do say every age is different, and so not everything that Reagan did is necessarily applicable, but certainly his positivism toward America, his treating of other people civilly, but also his backbone. I mean, Reagan had a lot of backbone through much of his career, and he was, he stood in the face of that. So there was the happy warrior, the civility. But I remember as a college student having people demonstrate against him, calling him names like Hitler burning flags because they hated him standing for truth. [00:09:37] Speaker C: Well, and so how did he handle, is a product of some kind of accident. The idea of a design of a purpose in the world was one that he cared about very much, but he was also hurt or disappointed, at least that that idea never seemed to persuade somebody very close to him. Explain. [00:10:08] Speaker D: Yeah, so, you know, often pundits negatively compared Reagan on the issue of religion and God to say Jimmy Carter, who sort of wore his faith on his sleeve, which Reagan didn't. But we now know basically through a lot of private letters and other things that have come out, that Reagan was deeply, not just religious, deeply christian. And so his son Ron, which now it's known more openly that his son Ron is an atheist. And his son Ron has sort of made that clear and really done spots on that. But it was. [00:10:42] Speaker C: Yeah, he's done television ads for atheism. [00:10:44] Speaker D: Yes, he has. Now, having said that, his son Ron has actually said, has been very respectful of his dad and actually admired his dad despite that fact. But that really did, we now know from private conversations, other stuff that has come out that that really troubled his dad. And his, and Ronald Reagan senior had lots of discussions over the table with his son Ron, not only on his atheism, but on, he wanted him to accept Christ as his savior, and that was something that really wore on him. And as he told his other son, Michael, about that, he was praying for his son. And so that is part of the background. And so then, you know, we go to Russia in the last year of the Reagan administration. It was the year after he said, tear down the wall. And so there was the beginning of the thaw. Things were changing under Gorbachev. We were getting some arms control, but Reagan. So going into May 1988, Reagan, though, had something deep on his heart that related to his faith that he wanted to still bring up with Gorbachev. They were handling arms control. They were doing other stuff, political freedom. And he did that, too. But the first thing he wanted to address in their one on meeting was religious liberty. And we now know it was just a few years ago that the private notes, we don't have a complete transcript, but we have the private notes that were taken of that one on one meeting that were released finally a few years ago. And it's just fascinating to read because this is Reagan one on one with Gorbachev behind the scenes, pressing Gorbachev. Gorbachev is talking about other things like mission to Mars and just trying to make small talk. And Reagan is going for the jugular in a nice way that you need to allow religious freedom for everyone in your country and how deeply important this is. And Gorbachev pushes back, said, well, in your place, you don't have freedom for atheists. And then Reagan actually opens up and says, well, actually, I have a son who's an atheist and he does have freedom, unlike in your country. And so Reagan was really articulate. See him? And then again, Gorbachev is clearly uncomfortable about this conversation. Just can't, because Reagan won't give up. He's like a terrier and they're very nice. And then Gorbachev goes off again onto the Mars thing. Let's do a cooperation. He's trying to say everything's good. Let's go on. Let's end the conversation. Reagan, at the very end, then comes back and he first shares a story about a soldier that he had recently gotten, I think a letter from a widow of a soldier who had died on the battlefield in World War Two. And it was a soldier who was reflecting how he had been lied about, that the universe was cold and uncaring, that there was no God. And then he was in his foxhole, basically, and he was looking up at the stars and he realized that he had been lied to. There was so much more behind the universe that he couldn't understand that there had to be a God. And then this was found on the soldier after he died. But Reagan saved the punchline to the end, which is, well, that soldier wasn't american. It was russian. And then Reagan tops it all off at the end by retelling the story of the banquet. But this time, the only time he tells the story to Gorbachev, he actually tells it in a different way in all the other stories. He says, I'd like to invite atheists to this banquet and then ask them, well, is there a cook with Gorbachev? He says, with my son, who's an atheist. I've always wanted to invite my son to the banquet, to set this banquet, and then ask him, do you think there's a cook? And so this is deeply personal for him. He didn't tell anyone else, but to Gorbachev. He told that. And then according to the note taker, this is really the clincher. At the end, Gorbachev said that the only answer to that question of whether there was a cook, which is a stand in for a creator, the only possible answer was yes. Now there's been a lot of debate about Gorbachev, and to the end of his life, publicly, he insisted he was an atheist. There've been lots of rumors, but this is intriguing, both about Reagan and about Gorbachev and about how deeply man of faith that Reagan was. [00:15:15] Speaker C: Yeah. And in terms of Gorbachev, I mean, considering he was the head of this officially atheist, materialist, socialist, marxist country and that he was trying to change it in a more religious direction, I believe they said that his wife's name was Raisa, I think Gorbachev, that she was more religiously inclined. Is that right? [00:15:42] Speaker D: Well, no, actually, I think she was a professor of atheism, and she was actually much more out there promoting atheism. But he was, although both as children, it came out later that they were baptized as children, but they had always rejected it publicly. But he was a little bit more. But she was very much, she was, like I said, I think she gave college classes and promoted dialectical materialism and atheism. But he was a little more cagey, although he did publicly to the end of his life, say he wasn't a believer. But this shows a little different insight. And he did open things up, you know, after that. And the thing is, Reagan also told this story with Dis. I mean, there's parts I didn't even tell in my story. But while he was there, he told the story about the banquet. Again, he invited, when he was there, he had to invite people for a celebratory dinner in honor of the host, and he chose to invite 50 or 60 dissidents to come along with the government officials, which really made the Soviets angry. And he told the same story. [00:16:46] Speaker B: That was Doctor John west in conversation with Michael Medved in a segment from the Michael Medved show. We're grateful to the producers of that show for permission to share it here. If you'd like to read Doctor West's account of Ronald Reagan and his views on intelligent design, complete with links and images, we'll post a link to his article in this episode's show notes, which you'll [email protected]. tons more episodes await you, and show notes for every single one of [email protected]. for the id the future podcast, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Visit [email protected] and intelligentdesign.org dot this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.