How Intelligent Is Intelligent Design?

by Michael Gregory Steele and Herman B. Hayes

You've no doubt heard the rumbling of controversy about the teaching of intelligent design in our schools. ID is an idea that has received the endorsements of such venerable politicians as Senator Rick Santorum and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. In fact, even President Bush supports the teaching of ID:

I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.

So clearly intelligent design has some high level supporters, but just how intelligent is intelligent design? The short answer: absolutely brilliant.

But in order to understand the true genius of intelligent design, we must first answer the question of what exactly this ground breaking idea is. According to the Discovery Institute, a Conservative Christian think tank, intelligent design is defined as such:

The scientific theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent design theory then is an alternative solution to answer problems with Darwinian evolution.

This definition brings us to one of the more indispensable parts of ID -- the disqualification of evolution. Much of what is written about ID deals with pointing out the flaws of evolution and discrediting it as an explanation for the origin of life. Ideally we would simply replace evolution with creationism and rest well knowing that the souls of our children are safe, but unfortunately we are not fighting this war on our own terms.

And as long as we limited by the current idea of what is considered scientific, creationism will continue to be scoffed at. The true brilliance of intelligent design is not that it is creationism explained in a vaguely scientific manner, but that it is a theory that will usher in a new brand of science.

Here's how the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center put it when talking about evolution:

Naturalistic explanations are those which assume that there were no forces involved in the history of life other than matter, energy, and the chemical and physical laws governing their interactions. Naturalistic explanations assume that there were no intelligent agents which could have influenced life in the past.

And therein lies the problem with secular science, they're missing an essential part of the equation: the intelligent designer. This leads to the central precept of this new science: if any part of a scientific theory is in question then the entire theory is invalid and must be explained in terms of the intelligent designer.

But is this new version of science more pleasing to the Lord? And who is this mysterious intelligent designer that created us all and serves as an explanation for all natural occurrences? I'll answer these questions and reveal the secret identity of the intelligent designer tomorrow, so stay tuned.