By Chris Hearn
Evolution- “The biological theory or process whereby
organisms change with passage of time so that descendants differ from their ancestors.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
Belief that species change from one to another over long periods of time. For example, that monkeys evolve to become human beings. God or a Creator does not exist within this theory.
Intelligent Design- The belief that a being of some type created all the plants and animals that currently exist. While there can be changes within a species, species to not change from one to another. For example, monkeys do not become human beings but have always been and always will be monkeys.
There has been a lot of rhetoric lately coming from the evolution side against Intelligent Design (I.D.).
As one who believes in I.D., I would like to state some of the more common objections that I have seen along with a response to each one.
* 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.
* 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. It is a highly complex and intricate organism. Evolutionists say that it was formed by random chance over thousands (millions?) of
years. Yet this seems highly unlikely, as for the eye to have any working function, all of its parts must fit together and work together in precisely the right ways. The eye is just one of many examples of an organism so intricate and complex that in studying it, using scientific methods, one can see that it could never have been formed by random chance. This the case no matter how much time you give for its formation.
It is the understood and documented intricate complexities that are found throughout life which lead people to accept I.D.
* 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 or gods. Nevertheless, one can start with and only use scientific principles and evidence and come to believe in I.D. Scientists who teach I.D. use scientific arguments, not religious ones, to show that I.D. is a plausible theory.
* 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? My belief, which I trust is shared by a majority of those who support I.D., is that we simply want I.D. taught in schools along with evolution.
Let’s teach the kids the best scientific (not religious) arguments for both evolution and I.D. Isn’t that what education is all about? What are the evolutionists afraid of? The evolutionist
basically says, “I’m right because I’m right, you’re wrong and that’s all there is to it.” In other words,
“Heads I win, tails you lose.” Yet its our kids who lose because they are never given the chance to hear different and opposing ideas to evolution.
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 the laws of physics must have come from a Lawgiver. Evolutionists, on the other hand, say that such universal laws come from
blind, random chance.
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 together with 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.
Chris Hearn is a resident of St. Johns, MI.