Intelligent Design is Not About Religion

Gregory Rummo

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
–Charles Darwin, “Origins”

If Kansas can be considered Ground Zero in the debate between Darwinists vs. Intelligent Design proponents, a recent explosion rocking the battle zone took place last month at the University of Kansas in its religious studies department. A course titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies,” was to be offered.

I suspected, despite the closed-mindedness of the department chairman—Paul Mirecki—and his approach to relegating ID to “mythology,” there would have been lively debates in the classroom.

And had this been the case, hopefully more light than heat would have been shed on a debate that simply won’t go away between Darwinists, who base their theory more on naturalism—a philosophy—than science, and the proponents of Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design is a systematic evaluation of observed biological phenomena resulting in the logical conclusion that design is inherent in living systems. The inescapable implication—and I guess the thing that drives its critics hysterical—is that design implies A Designer. Why this never presents a problem when we admire a work of art by Van Gogh or a musical composition by Claude Debussy escapes me. But logic and common sense dissipates when Darwinists are confronted by an alternate theory to their most hallowed orthodoxy. And instead of dealing with the substance of the arguments for ID, they skewer its proponents, labeling them as “stealth creationists;” a charge that is not altogether fair.

While many Young Earth Creationists and Old Earth Creationists support Intelligent Design as a rational answer to Darwinism, Intelligent Design itself stands apart from biblical creationism as a non-religious approach to origins. William Dembski, one of its chief proponents describes it as “the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence.”

Tom Burr, a retired biology teacher from Franklin Lakes explains on his blog: “Intelligent Design Theory is not the same as Biblical Creationism. The ID theorists are trying (if the evolutionists, the press and the general public would let them) to approach their ideas as pure science. They are smart people and they know how to separate their science from their theology… Biblical Creationists, on the other hand, openly admit to using God’s Word as the basis of their worldview and as their approach to science. In their operational (experimental) science—science in which repeatable experimentation and falsification are the rule—they operate under the belief that God created and sustains His universe by laws that can be discovered by science (thinking God’s thoughts after Him.) In studying prehistory, however, Biblical Creationists realize that different rules apply. The past is not subject to repeatable experimentation. Evidence (the same evidence that any scientist has available) must be interpreted according to un-provable (in the scientific sense) assumptions and philosophical (religious, if you prefer) presuppositions. This is where God’s Word must take precedence over purely naturalistic assumptions and must act as the guidebook for the interpretation of evidence.”

Access Research Network, (arn.org) a website that showcases books, papers and articles written by scientists in support of ID explains, “Intelligent Design theory—also called design or the design argument—is the view that nature shows tangible signs of having been designed by a preexisting intelligence. It has been around, in one form or another, since the time of ancient Greece. The most famous version of the design argument can be found in the work of theologian William Paley, who in 1802 proposed his ‘watchmaker’ thesis. His reasoning went like this: ‘In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever. ... But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think the answer which I had before given [would be sufficient]. To the contrary, the fine coordination of all its parts would force us to conclude that …the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.’”

“Paley argued that we can draw the same conclusion about many natural objects, such as the eye. Just as a watch’s parts are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of telling time, the parts of an eye are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of seeing. In each case, Paley argued, we discern the marks of an intelligent designer.”

In order to understand the crux of the issue, one must first understand that the debate between Darwinists and the proponents of Intelligent Design is not about science but a world-view.

Science is that which can be demonstrated in a laboratory by a process involving an idea or hypothesis followed by experiments to verify the hypothesis. When sufficient evidence has been accumulated, a theory can be proposed.

There have been no such experiments providing the evidence in support of evolution as a testable, scientific theory.

The evidence, if we can call it that, is contained in a fossil record filled with gaps and lacking a single, indisputable, multi-cellular transition form demonstrating one species evolving into another. One would conjecture that if evolution were true, there would have been millions of years of the fossilized remains of species evolving into other species. None have been found.

Steven J. Gould, an ardent evolutionist, admits the evidence does not show gradual change, but sudden appearance and stability: Most fossils species appear all at once, fully formed, and exhibit no directional change throughout their stay in the rocks.

Neither side claims to have its own “evidence.” The fossil record is what it is. It is the interpretation of that evidence—or the lack thereof—that differentiates the two sides in this debate.

But the fossil record, damaging as it is to Darwinism, is only one part of the debate. An examination of life at the biochemical level sounds its death knell.

The complexity of living systems and their components, from the simplest ones such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the cilium of a paramecium, to the biochemical intricacies of such processes as vision, the immune system and the clotting of blood, coupled with the refinement of the microscope and x-ray crystallography—none of which Darwin could rely on when he proposed his theory in the 19th century—make Darwinism implausible.

Klaus Dose, a prominent worker in the field of origin-of-life research comments, “More than 30 years in the field of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life here on Earth rather than its solution. At present, all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in confession of ignorance.”

In the book, “Darwin’s Black Box,” the author, Michael Behe, echoes this sentiment: “If you search the scientific literature on evolution and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence…The question of how life works was not one that Darwin or his contemporaries could answer. They knew that eyes were for seeing but—how exactly do they see? How does blood clot? How does the body fight disease? The complex structures were themselves made of smaller components. What did they look like?”

Behe introduces the idea of “irreducible complexity,” best understood by his example of a mousetrap. Composed of five basic elements: a hammer which impacts and kills the mouse, the spring which provides the force to drive the hammer, a trigger upon which the mouse steps, a latch which keeps the trap from springing closed until the right moment and a wooden base upon which the whole contraption is assembled, a mousetrap is irreducibly complex. In order for it to function, all five of its components must be present and assembled correctly.

By extending this notion of irreducible complexity to several biochemical systems—vision in the human eye, the clotting of human blood and the immune system—it quickly becomes apparent that these processes are impossible without all of the components being present simultaneously.

The question then becomes: What random natural, process can account for complex, biochemical systems to come together? Again—the silence on this issue is deafening.

Writing about the immune system, the author explains, “Whichever way we turn, a gradualistic account of the immune system is blocked by multiple interwoven requirements. As scientists we yearn to understand how this magnificent mechanism came to be, but the complexity of the system dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration.”

Apparently Darwin himself realized this. Writing in “Origins,” he stated, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

As it turns out, there will be no debate in Professor Mirecki’s classroom even though twenty-five students had signed up for the class. In a follow-up story, the Associated Press reported Mirecki had sent an e-mail to members of a student organization in which he referred to religious conservatives as “fundies” and said that his course would be a “nice slap in their big fat face.”

The class was cancelled and Mirecki was forced to apologize, saying, “I made a mistake in not leading by example, in this student organization e-mail forum, the importance of discussing differing viewpoints in a civil and respectful manner.” The university’s chancellor, Robert Hemenway said Mirecki's comments were “repugnant and vile [and] …misrepresent[ed] everything the university is to stand for.”

None of this comes as a surprise. The debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design is almost always inimical. Instead of addressing both theories in an atmosphere conducive to learning, Darwinists prefer to avoid the substance of the issue and instead, resort to name calling. By denigrating its proponents as “Bible-thumping, knuckle draggers,” they quash any open-minded investigation into an alternate theory of the origin of the species; an approach that is, quite frankly, hardly intelligent.

Edited versions of this article appeared in the Herald News and the New Jersey Herald.

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Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist and the author of two books, "The View from the Grass Roots," published in July 2002 and "The View from the Grass Roots -Another Look," available in June 2004. Visit his website, GregRummo.com to find out how to purchase autographed copies.

GJRummo@optonline.net