Pinker's 'calling'

In that TIME issue on evolution, there is a revealing comment by Harvard's Steven Pinker:

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Am I the only one to think it incongruous that someone so vociferously opposed to intelligent design (and who, not incidentally, also justifies infanticide) nevertheless manages to invoke the language of calling, which, of course, would seem to presuppose the existence of a caller. Or is the notion that humanity is under a "highest calling" another of those naive impressions we are "called" to dispel through scientific investigation? If so, then Pinker is needlessly creating more work for himself.