Recent
talk of the theory of intelligent design raises several questions. Is it a form of Creationism? Is it more of a theological argument
than a scientific study? Do
intelligent design theorists believe in God? These questions are answered in my Study Guide on The Theory of Intelligent Design from
Knowledge Box Central. In this
article, I would like to briefly answer these questions and tell what the
theory of intelligent design is and is not.
There
have been many answers to the question, “Where did this world come from?” The Ancient Greeks believed it involved
a clash between the gods and the Titans, and some recent ideas have included an
early visit from aliens or perhaps a “great spaghetti monster.” The two mainstream ideas, however, that
have had churches and public schools at odds with each other for some decades,
are Creation and Evolution.
Creationism
says simply that God created the world as is depicted in the Bible. Many Creationists believe a “young
earth” theory, which means they believe that the earth was created in six
literal days as told in the book of Genesis, and that the earth is only about
6,000-10,000 years old, which is an estimate of the timeline of events in the
Bible from Creation until the present day. Creation scientists begin with the supposition that the
Bible is true and that God did create the world. They then investigate scientific evidence which supports the
Creation theory and which otherwise supports the literal truth of the Bible,
which is why they often also include a lot of scientific information about
Noah’s Ark and The Great Flood.
Does their religious bias make them any less scientific? Certainly not. “Science” is the pursuit of knowledge,
mainly through objective evidence that is observable and repeatable. While the act of Creation cannot be
repeated by man, Creation scientists study objective evidence that is in the
world using the scientific method and arrive at their conclusions. Some people who do not share their
starting suppositions, however, will not share their conclusions.
The
same could be said of the theory of Evolution. Evolutionists believe that the world was brought about by a
series of random occurrences and the process of natural selection. They begin with the supposition that
there is no God, and so an alternate theory of origins must be found
scientifically. Because natural
selection supposedly only happens in very small changes over a large span of
time, they reason that the earth must be billions of years old. This is the “old earth theory.” Again, the origin of the Universe
cannot be observed or repeated, so like the Creationists, the Evolutionists are
also studying the evidence available to them to arrive at their conclusions. No theory of origins can be
scientifically proven, because there is no way to go back and see what happened
or to repeat it. All of the
scientists are researching evidence available today for clues to our origins. Some people who believe in God, but who
believe the scientific evidence points to Evolution, reason that God may have
created the world through Evolution, which would still require the earth to be
billions of years old, and which would mean that the story in the Bible is
figurative rather than literal.
Recently,
a third alternative to the way we study the evidence has gained following.
The theory of intelligent design, by
definition, “holds that certain features of the universe and of living things
are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as
natural selection.”
(
http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php)
It can be illustrated by the famous
example of a watch found in the woods.
A man is walking through an uninhabited wood when he sees a watch lying
on a stump.
Does he think, “Oh my,
look how neatly all the pieces of the inner workings of this watch came
together through random processes out here in the woods, and happened to fall
together to construct this perfectly-working watch?”
It is much more likely that he would believe that the watch
was evidence that a person had been through those woods before and had left the
watch, and furthermore, that the watch was designed by a clockmaker who had the
intelligent capabilities to design such a thing.
How much more should we look at this world and at living
things and reason that such complexity must have been designed by an
intelligent designer.
Our
earlier question was: what is the
difference between Creationism and intelligent design theory? The difference is the starting
point. While Creationists begin
with the assumption that God did indeed create the world and we are researching
evidence of that fact, intelligent design theory begins with the scientific
evidence and follows where it leads.
The theory itself does not use the Bible as evidence. These scientists research objective
evidence and conclude that it does point toward the existence of an intelligent
designer rather than to the natural and random processes of Evolution. The scientific theory itself stops
short of naming the Designer. Is
it then anti-Christian or anti-Creationism? No. It simply
does not deal with the theological implications of the conclusion. Many books have been written about
intelligent design theory and are listed under “suggested resources” in the
Study Guide. Some of them were
written by Christians and overtly state that the Intelligent Designer is God,
while others stick only to the scientific theory. Intelligent design theorists may include Christians, Jews,
Muslims, and scientists who have not claimed a faith but who believe in the
possibility of an Intelligent Designer.
They also include those who believe in both the “old earth” and the “young
earth” theories.
At
this point, before you purchase the Study Guide, you may be wondering what the
leaning of the author is.
Truthfully, I am a young-earth Creationist. I believe that the Bible is true and literal, and I believed
that before I had any scientific evidence of it, so I fit the definition of a
Creationist. In today’s world,
however, we deal with all kinds of people, sometimes including our own
children, who are not convinced that the Bible is infallible. Sometimes saying, “because the Bible
tells me so” is not enough evidence for a scientific-leaning mind. I teach Intelligent Design Theory as a
science class because it deals with scientific theories and evidence both for
and against Evolution and Creationism.
I believe it is good for us to teach this objective study to our
students. For those who believe in
Evolution, I believe you may find there is a lot of evidence that you were not
taught in school and at which you may want to at least take a second look. For those who believe in Creation but
have not studied a lot of the scientific evidence, these are tools your
children will need during a secular education in today’s world, especially if
they go on to study science at a University. And if you already know a lot about this subject, this Study
Guide will give you an organized way to teach it, complete with lapbook
templates and/or journaling pages.
