Intelligent Design - Has God turned the tables on Evolution?
Intelligent Design
For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain
together until now. Romans 8:22
According to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, the strong survive by
a process of natural selection of the most fit. Yet many of his
contemporaries had questions that have never been answered and
now it seems that with the advent of a new understanding of
Intelligent Design these problems are being compounded by the
unique DNA sequence information now accepted in the human genome
project and our understanding of the irreducibly complex
function of biological systems. It seems that intellectual
honesty will soon force many scientists to abandon Darwin's
theory of the evolution of species in exchange for intelligent
design or outright Biblical creation.
What Darwin did was to develop a family tree of evolution where
similar organisms and creatures like man and ape were on the
same branch of the evolutionary tree. Yet recent multi-gene
comparisons of the amount of divergence between different
organisms now provide better support for a complex relationship
between different organisms, a relationship that first looked
more like a shrub, with many more early branches. Now the trend
seems to be toward nearly independent origins, a model more like
grass. This model is consistent with the independent origins of
major kinds of plants, sea life, and animals described in the
Genesis account.
New genetic data suggests complex relationships or more
independent origins for major kinds of organisms. The universe
is too complex, the conditions for life too exacting, to
conclude that it could have developed in such a sophisticated
way without help from some "external agent." Some scientists
have decided that a more acceptable explanation for the
diversity of life is that an intelligent force has expressed
itself through the different stages of the evolutionary process.
In fact for many a scientist it is easier to believe this method
of ceation than to believe that the earth rotates around the sun
or the tides are influencd by the moon. Yet a select few are
becoming increasingly vocal and more convinced that there is a
need to change this common perception. This new paradigm shift
is headed up by a small group of mathematicians, philosophers,
biologists and chemists. Their belief is that an "intelligent
agent" - they rigorously refute using the term "God", has been
the prime factor in every step of the creationary process and a
guide to the history of human existance. Many scientists have
seen this new uprising as a vain attempt to dress God up in
scientist's clothing and trying to push creationism as a
scientific option. Even still it's adherants are making an
impact in the academic world. They call their unconventional
argument "intellient design". Due to it's foundational values,
this theory of intelligent design has been embraced by Christian
colleges and Christian education which has begun teaching it as
an alternative to evolutionary theory. Mainstream educational
bodies have been less symapathetic, leaving it at the edge of
their discusions and lectures. Though more and more are finding
it necessary in their students development to have informal
discussions in which the students can discuss the theory
alongside evolution.
Those scientists who do support intelligent design have been
able only to teach it as a nonscience course. Still, the
visibilty and promotion of intelligent design has grown in leaps
and bounds as a viable affront to Darwinism. This is a hard pill
for many troubled academics to swallow. A recent American poll
found that 45% of the U.S. population believe that God created
human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
39% of the same poll said that they felt Darwinism is based on
scant evidence and faulty assumptions.
The scientific community has had a lack of openmindedness toward
all the factors and possibilities of an intelligent agent acting
to create and intervene in man's creation and well-being.
The intelligent design movement is an affront to evolutionary
theories in two ways. Philosophically, it argues that because of
this closed attitude toward anything other than natural
explanations for life and the universe, it is therefore biased
against any (even remote) posibility for divine intervention.
And secondly, it argues against evolutionary evidence through
natural processes.
The drive forward has left itself very broad and encompasses
scientists who take many views and perspectives on man's origin
but having intelligent design that strings all of them together.
On the one hand we have scientists who believe that the earth is
several thousand years old, and that man came from one common
ancestor to any number of other concepts from God's deelopement
of the human raace through an evolutionary process. Regardless
all agree that there is a supernatural force, which many believe
to be God, active in the development of human life.
Much research is being undertaken to establish academic
credibility for intelligent design by publishing their findings.
Their argument is that science should at least teach the
controversy, giving another option to the flawed and unproven
theory of evolution. As more and more people become sceptical
over the ability of random mutation and natural selection to
account for the complexity of life, and wary of believing that
biological systems can advance from the simple to the complex,
they realise that if these were true their lives would be void
and empty, with no reason for laws, or in fact for any precedent
for moral behaviour.
Many intelligent design sicentists have no problem with
microevolution, the small changes within species over time. Many
do find problems believing in macroevolution, the transformation
of reptiles to birds for example, as being full of assumptions
and speculation.
It is an intriguing argument and many will find it necessary to
discuss the options available to human beings to seek out their
origins, either in divine action or natural selection. After all
if we don't start right we won't end right.
Man today is faced with two incredible choices, to believe that
life's complexity can be explained through chance and natural
selection, which is in itself a form of faith, the religion of
naturalism. Or to believe that the diversity and complexity of
life is a result of a divine God who created the world in seven
days and is consistantly and constantly involved in it's
development and redemption, the Christian faith.
I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was
disappointed in the monkey. - Mark Twain