Intelligent Design Part One

“Intelligent Design”(ID) is a theory that attempts to refute Darwin’s doctrine of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection is a scientific fact that has been proven and accepted by established science. It has become the central organizing principle of modern biology. ID advocates claim that modern species, including humans, did not result from evolution as described in Darwin’s theory. Rather, they were created from the design of an “intelligent” designer (namely God).

ID proponents claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution is atheistic. However, Pope John Paul II declared that the theory was compatible with faith. On Darwin’s birthday last year, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false.

Because the courts have forbidden the teaching of ID, a purely religious theory, in the schools ID advocates have come up with the tactic called “teach the controversy.” The idea is to get teachers and students to debate and challenge Darwinian Evolution and thereby slip ID in the back door.

The first problem with ID is that ID is not a scientific doctrine. It is not backed-up by any serious scientific research. It does not publish credible scientific papers or submit to the kind of scientific verification employed for every legitimate branch of science. It is a religious theory promoted by Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists.

The second problem, one that does not get much attention, is that ID is blatantly, obviously, palpably false. It is so self-evidently absurd that one wonders how even uneducated Christians can believe it to be true.

Proponents of ID cannot accept the idea that human beings evolved from “lower” animals. They insist that humans must have been designed by God. But I ask, if God designed human beings, how does one explain the mistakes of nature? Why do the bones of our back and the musculature of our bellies display the vestiges of quadrupedal life? Why do we have a vermiform appendix which we do not need or use? Why do men have nipples? Why do humans have a shortened tail called the “coccyx”? Why is the human throat designed with the windpipe (trachea) coming off the food pipe (esophagus) so that swallowing impedes breathing (and vice versa) with a constant risk of choking? Why do we have wisdom teeth?

There are thousands of mistakes in nature. These are just a few examples of oddities that can easily be explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution but cannot be explained if God was the designer. All of these peculiarities are vestiges of our earlier existence as and development from “lower” species of animals (they are not really lower, just different).

The structure of all living things is defined by the DNA molecule and the genes. According to ID proponents, the intelligent designer designed those molecules and genes. One has to ask, therefore, whether God designed the genes which cause the genetic diseases and defects with which so many babies are born. Does God design the genetic infirmities of children born deaf, dumb, blind, mentally deficient, or horribly deformed? Does God design babies born without arms and legs and babies born with conjoined heads or bodies? What about the many babies born with spina bifida or congenital heart defects?

Does God design Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome? It is a genetic disease in which children are born with the compulsion to bite their lips, tongues, cheeks, fingers, and any body parts they can eat. They bite off everything in their oral cavities and assume gruesome corpse-like appearances. They die while very young of kidney failure.

Does God design Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease in which babies gradually lose their abilities to see, hear, and move? They develop seizures, become completely immobile, and die by age 5.

These genetic defects can be explained by evolution, but cannot be explained by the design of an “infinitely loving,” “omnipotent,” “omniscient” God.

ID advocates argue that certain things are too irreducibly complex to have developed by natural selection. They claim that the human eye could not have developed by pure accident. It had to be designed by God. But if God designed the human eye, how do we explain its opacity, its want of symmetry, its color blindness to parts of the spectrum, its need for glasses and optical instruments? Why are there so many eye defects such as macular degeneration? Scientists know that the inefficient eyes we now have evolved from eyes that were even less efficient. A number of animals, including eagles, falcons, buzzards and octopuses have better eyes than we do.

It would be a strange theory indeed to claim that the creator of the universe designed human beings but made a lot of mistakes. Do ID proponents expect us to believe that their “designer” is not an omnipotent, infinitely loving God, but some sloppy, incompetent bumbler, or worse, some cruel and evil demon?