The Intelligent Design Theory
Science can often be a double-edged sword, as in many cases a discovery is made, people find out something new about a certain topic but the new knowledge might come in conflict with the old beliefs about that topic.
In 1543 Copernicus declared that the Sun did not move around the Earth, and as anyone would expect, the news made quite a stir. In 1859 Charles Darwin made a shock through his book “The Origin of Species.” His theory is very hard to accept, as it says that the human life was born out of non-human life, and that it was the result of the natural process. He stated that the natural process is random and that it occurs over billions of years. He also stated that life on Earth could be traced back to a single ancestor. The most shocking statement was that life existed for billions of years before the humans, and that we are not the creation of God. According to him, life has no purpose and it does not have a meaning. We live and then we die. That’s it.
For many people, Creationism has been a very tempting way in which life as we know it appeared. The Creationism is strictly connected to the Intelligent Design, which states that some features of the natural world are so great put together that they must be the work of a Supreme Being. Scott Minnich, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho and an ID proponent, stated that when one looks at nature, the first thing that pops in his mind is design. It is unknown if the design is apparent or real. The Intelligent Design theory is huge, as it makes the difference between proving that we have been created with a purpose on this Earth, or that we have been created at random.
If it is proven that we are the result of chance, then we would not feel any moral pressure, we would do whatever we would like because we would know that we would not suffer the consequences in the afterlife. Of course, the morality is connected with religion, as for many atheists, the consequences of the afterlife do not matter, as they do not believe in hell or heaven. There are many religious scientists, and many of them say that science can only explain how life arose on Earth, but it can not explain why it did. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio stated that the purpose of life is not connected to the science, but to religion and to philosophy.
The Center for Science and Culture, which is a subdivision of the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank based in Seattle orchestrates the ID movement. The main purpose of the CSC is to challenge the scientific theory regarding the evolution, and then to replace it with the Intelligent Design. In order to carry the first part of the strategy, the CSC has created the campaign “Teach the Controversy”. It is aimed at the teachers and at the school to teach the children that Darwin was wrong. However, that is easier said than done. In science, any theory must go under a peer-review before it is accepted. Under these standards, ID does not have a chance.
ID has no credible scientific evidence and because of that no scientist can say that the theory behind it is true. The main strength of ID is its ambiguity. The movement does not say who the creator is, and how he created the world. It does not say if the designer got involved only once, or numerous times in the creation. It also does not say if the designer plays an active role in managing the world right now. It simply says that the world was created by a Supreme Being, and that’s it. The supporters of the Intelligent Design theory say that the ambiguity was on purpose, and that is one of the strengths of the theory. They are exploiting the relationship between nature and creator, and thanks to that, they have gathered the sympathy of various groups and movements.
Many skeptics and conservative Christians have joined them, and so did the Young Earth Creationists who believe that the Earth is only a few thousands years old, and the Old Earth Creationists. The ID supporters do not want to reveal information about the creator of the world. According to them, the creator could be God; it could be an alien race, and so on. The ID supporters have also stated that this information will probably never be revealed, as it is the task of each individual to imagine the creator. Some say that the main task of ID is to prove that Darwin’s theory is atheistic. It is unknown if the supporters really believe that, or if they simply want to get the religious people on their side.
In “Wedge Document,” which was discovered in 1999, it was said that the main purpose of the movement is to overthrow the materialism and its cultural legacies, and to replace it with the understanding that the world was created by God. Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University stated that the Intelligent Design is nothing but the Trojan Horse of Creationism. She believes that the main task of the Intelligent Movement is to sneak into public schools and that they would do anything to accomplish this task. She believes that once it will manage to get into schools, the teachers will advertise it as religion.
Forrest believes that what the Intelligent Design supporters are doing is unfair for the community because they want to achieve in an instance what science achieved in decades. They want everyone to take their theories for granted, when they have not proven a single thing. The ID supporters often say that their theory is not based on religion, or at least not on the religion we are familiar with. The scientists stated that evolution is not opposed to religion, unless there are people who make it so.
