Intelligent Design - What Do the Naturalists Have Against It?

Bonnie Alba

The Kansas hearings on Intelligent Design and Evolution have turned into the usual media circus. The press continues to follow the path of least resistance, supporting the scientists who proclaim that “Evolution is an established theory.” Yet those scientists provide no answers to the scientists offering ID.

What has led to bones of contention within the scientific community are the newest discoveries which bring us to the quite justified reasoning of “following the evidence wherever it may lead.” It’s about the fact that research and discoveries over the last 30 years in biochemistry, cells and organs, and the cosmology of the universe (Big Bang theory) justify following the hypotheses which have arisen out of science itself. Both ends of the spectrum strongly point to some kind of intelligent force birthing both the universe and life. The Naturalist-Atheists are the ones fighting against the paradigm shift in Science.

As for Intelligent Design being a legitimate hypothesis, of course it is since the discovery that, at the least, the smallest, basic cell had to contain multimillion parts to even live. The human body contains an average 70 trillion cells (more than the combined debts of all the countries in the world). Darwinist Richard Dawkins stated that one teeny cell in your body “contains a digitally coded database larger in information content than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.”

Bio-Chemist Michael Behe calls this biological cell system “irreducibly complex.” When the gene code is observed, we see even more complexity in the hereditary information and our individual uniqueness'. And to think we’re entirely unaware of what’s going on in our cells as we walk around breathing and living.

Imagine you go to see a play written by a brilliant author. You sit in the audience and watch as the play unfolds, everyone playing their parts perfectly, not a word missed. Between scenes, the stage is changed for the next. Are you aware of what is going on backstage? Stage props, stage setters, costume providers, actors awaiting their cues, make-up artists, and then, there is the director and producer who started it all.

What would have happened to the play without the writer, director, and producer? Do you think it would have presented differently, or maybe not at all? It would have been complete and utter nonsensical chaos. You know without my explanation that it took intelligence to write, produce, direct and present the play in all its intricate details.

We recognize a product or event as planned and produced by intelligence. Doesn’t take an astrophysicist to recognize intelligence when we observe places and things in our environment.

What is happening in Kansas is not about getting rid of evolution or Darwinism. This is about science education. What is amazing to me is that the textbooks exhibit the same tired, faulty examples of proof for micro- and macro-evolution; natural adaptation or mutation, fossils, moths, finches, cambrian explosion, ape to man, etc., that they did 55 years ago. And all of those are fallible and in error -- never updated in most textbooks. Where are the new discoveries in molecular biology? New fossil discoveries? Missing links? Genetic code complexity? Information theory? Statistics and probability? Where? They certainly aren’t showing up in science textbooks with any regularity.

One fellow claimed that Abiogenesis (theory that life can arise spontaneously from non-life molecules under proper conditions) was not part of Darwin’s evolution theory. If that is so, then why is it consistently taught within the science lessons and contained in the textbooks as a part of the whole Evolution theory?

The point? Evolution, as now taught and upheld by those “nature is all there is” proponents, crosses over into the philosophical realm with the postulation (unproven) that life just happened under the perfect, required conditions to do so. The missing links or proofs that man and ape evolved from other species are still missing.

By philosophical claims, the extreme left scientists, idolizing Darwinian Naturalism to the exclusion of all else, are pushing an “atheist worldview” on our children. This is the bone of contention which exists for so many parents who are teaching their children a very different worldview with which to grow to adulthood and live hopeful and fulfilling lives.

When a science teacher announces that we are all accidents, “nature is all there is,” then this is philosophy and not “empirical science.” Instead of following the evidence where it leads, the scientific community is enclosing itself in a box of its own making. Science teachers will have a difficult time as more Americans educate themselves and their children about Darwinism and the naturalist worldview.

Keep asking the questions!

[Stay Tuned]
© 2005 Bonnie Alba
balba2@earthlink.net

Sources:
“Teachers, Scientists Vow to Fight Challenge to Evolution,” Peter Slevin, Wash.Post, May 4, 05
“A Christian Response to Evolution,” Institute for Societal Ethics, Dr. Stuart Orr
“Debating Darwinism,” www.washingtontimes.com May 5, 05
Book Sources for Parents:
“Tornado in a Junkyard,” James Perloff
“Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?...,” Jonathan Wells
“How Now Shall We Live?” Charles Colson, Nancy Pearcy
“Discovery Institute,” www.discovery.org/crsc