Intelligent design is a theistic theory that claims a supernatural being is responsible for creation. Its main arguments are irreducible complexity and fine-tuning, but it lacks scientific criteria and is rejected by the scientific community. Critics argue that it is Christianity disguised as science and proponents aim to teach it in schools.
Intelligent design is a theistic theory of creation that takes a scientific approach to claiming that the universe did not evolve through purely evolutionary processes. Intelligent design proponents claim that a supernatural being of superior intelligence is responsible for creation, and point to various arguments to support this case. The scientific community overwhelmingly rejects intelligent design as junk science, as it lacks the necessary criteria to qualify as science, being neither observable nor provable.
One of the main arguments of intelligent design advocates is that of irreducible complexity – the idea that some natural systems are so complex and so interdependent of their different parts, that if one component were altered, the system would not exist. Intelligent design proponents argue that this eliminates natural selection or evolution as a possibility, since the whole system must have existed from the beginning in its current state.
Science has shown that as systems evolve over time, individual components of the system itself evolve, which changes their interaction with other parts of the system. New components are added while others are eliminated through the process of evolution, mutation and adaptation. Some systems thrive, while others die out. Intelligent design theory rules out a path of incremental steps during which greater functionality could evolve with each step leading up to the current highly functional model.
Another argument from intelligent design is that the universe is fine-tuned, making random evolution an unreasonable explanation that defies all prediction. From the molecular level to the galactic level, through the nuclear forces that hold matter together, all the way to gravity and space/time, creation and its extremely specific needs to create life demonstrate evidence of intelligent design. Had the processes gone even slightly differently, there would be no life as we know it. So the universe must have a divine Creator.
Critics point out that if creation had gone differently, it could have led to alternative life forms. Our universe is tuned to life as we know it because life evolved within this system. Another system may have created and supported another set of life forms. The argument that “life can only be as we know it or it cannot be at all” is a presumption without scientific basis or merit.
The leading proponents of intelligent design are associated with the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian group dedicated to defending and promoting Christianity. Intelligent design advocates believe that only the Christian God is the Creator, to the exclusion of any other religious God. “Who designed the designer” is presumably beyond the scope of intelligent design theory.
While science recognizes organized intelligence operating at every fundamental level of life, from the cellular to the quantum, the leap to a supernatural being is scientifically unfounded and empirically unprovable. The further assumption that this being is a Christian God is exclusively an article of Christian faith. Proponents of intelligent design are working to see it taught in schools alongside evolution as an alternative explanation for the world. Critics characterize intelligent design as Christianity dressed in pseudo-scientific jargon in an attempt to override laws banning the teaching of religion in schools.
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