Intelligent Design

Arguments Against Intelligent Design (I.D.)

Six Arguments against Intelligent Design (I.D.) with responses

1. I.D. has no scientific support. This is simply not true. There are scientists who hold to I.D. And they do so because of scientific reasons and evidence, not religious ones.

2. Believers in ID are ignorant or unintelligent. This is just a pejorative statement by evolutionists against those who are creationists. It is nothing more substantive than playground name calling. I'm surprised that so many who are evolutionists use such statements in their writings. Perhaps it shows how desperate their stand truly is.

3. The only reason people believe in I.D. is to try to explain that which we don't know. Those in favor of I.D. use a Creator, not science, to explain the unexplainable. This is also false. No proponent of I.D. would use the above explanation to support their cause. In fact, just the opposite is true. People believe in I.D. because the evidence for a Creator is evidence which we do understand. For example, DNA strands in the human body hold 30, 000 to 140, 000 genes. The gene sequences can be hundreds to millions of pairs long. Why should people believe that this was formed by random, unintelligent chance? Consider the human eye. Could such a complex organism be formed by random chance over thousands of years? All of its parts must fit together and work together for the organism to have any working function. It is the understood and documented intricate complexities that are found throughout life which lead people to accept I.D.

4. I.D. is not science, but religion packaged as science. This line of argument makes the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. Yes, if one believes in I.D., then one will be lead to believe in some type of god. Nevertheless, one can start with and only use scientific principles and evidence and come to believe in I.D. Science teachers of I.D. use such arguments, not religious ones, to show that I.D. is a plausible theory.

5. I.D. is religion. Science and religion should always be kept separate from each other. Is this a good idea? Should not science desire to discover what is true? What would be wrong if science is used to discover mass amounts of evidence which points to a Creator? The above two arguments have been used unfairly by evolutionists to keep ID scientists on the sidelines and ID teaching out of the classrooms. Why should scientists before the fact say that the supernatural doesn't exist? It is both easy and convenient for evolutionists to say that since their instruments can't detect or prove God, therefore God doesn't exist. What if they are using inadequate instruments for discovering truth? It is like saying all the sound we can hear is all the sounds that exist. Or like saying that all the light we can see with our eyes is all the light that exists.

6. To "teach the controversy" would only lead legitimacy to an unscientific idea. How can I.D. be unscientific if scientists are using science alone to support it? Why do some evolutionists refuse to let people hear the arguments for I.D.? Is this an objective way of searching for the truth? What are the evolutionists afraid of? The evolutionist basically says, "I'm right because I'm right and you're wrong." In other words, "Heads I win, tails you lose."

On another note, I had noticed years ago that even in pro-evolution videos, such as NOVA and National Geographic, they still had words like "design" thrown in.

I wanted to see if this was really true or just a rare occurrence. So recently I've watched 5 videos and was more impressed than I thought I would be! I was really surprised. Even though they taught evolution (to various degrees), the rest of their language was Intelligent Design. And quite strongly so.

Consider this one quote which refers to the liver-

"These Japanese engineers tried to design a chemical plant that would work like the liver, but as they discovered, the chemical engineering carried out in the liver is more advanced than anything modern medical technology can offer. An enormous factory would be needed just for the energy distribution system. And handling the toxins was just overwhelming."

Please keep in mind that this is not James Dobson or the Institute for Creation Research or some other Christian video. This is from NOVA. Boston. PBS. The real deal. And this is one of many such quotes. Please send me an email if you would like the whole list.

Both sides of this issue recognize universal truths; for example the laws of physics, along with mathematical truths. I.D. proponents see these and take the logical conclusion- that laws of physics must have come from a Lawgiver. Evolutionists, on the other hand, say that such universal laws come from blind, random chance.

The fact is, all around us we see both complexity and order; from how the human body works to how ecosystems work. Everything has it place and quite often works dependent on something else. This is not the chaos and disorder which one would expect to find in a universe driven by the random chance of evolution.