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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

About the Author

Aleck runs www.god-life.com  a news and issues website with free ebooks and online community.

Written by: Aleck Cartwright