Intelligent Design Informed By Fact

A couple of recent editorials and letters to the editor questioning the merits of intelligent design, or the ID movement, has me curious as to what exactly the secularists and people on the left have against the growing scientific movement.

It seems as though the critics of the theory try to immediately label it as an attempt to introduce religion into the classroom and undermine it as legitimate scientific theory.

To make that assumption is to say that intelligent design is based off of absolutely no science.

This would be incorrect.

Intelligent design has plenty of scientific merits and is based on numerous observations.

The theory proposes that the universe is not chaotic but structured in an organized manner that follows certain rules and principles (gravity, for example). These certain principles can also be seen in how the natural environment has the ability to replenish itself and tends to follow set guidelines and principles. The human being, for example, is very structured and seems to behave in an orderly manner.

Since the universe seems structured, has order and seems designed, we make the assumption that intelligence must be behind its design. Hence the name of the theory: intelligent design.

Unfortunately, too often "hard" science is taken as the absolute or indisputable fact to any dilemma that faces humanity.

However, what many people fail to realize is that everything breaks down to assumptions and axioms, or basic principles that are self-evident.

From these axioms, frameworks are built to analyze the world around us. Now, we may test certain components of the framework to see if they hold any weight, and may also repeatedly do so within the precision that we can measure and test.

But there may be certain instances when they don't hold weight, and we may never run across them or can't even design an experiment to test them. So we take it on "faith" that they will always hold.

Take, for example, the testability of the big bang theory. Some people would respond that we can test the theory by studying background radiation. However, is there any other explanation that can fit the measured background radiation besides the big bang? A reasonable person would say yes.

Also, scientists have been "measuring" that the universe is actually accelerating rapidly. How do they actually measure the expansion in the first place within any accuracy? It seems as though some basic assumptions, which are unscientific, are taking place.

Stephen Hawking is actually working on a new theory that views the universe neither with a beginning nor an end (i.e. no big bang).

This seemingly sounds a lot like a creator, the uncaused cause of all things.

What is ultimately being proposed is to introduce new theories and expose our children to different levels of thinking.

As the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis once wrote, "By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes."