Intelligent Design*

      There is a “new”doctrine going around that some are touting as a way to get God back into the school classroom, a politically correct way of opposing evolution with creation. It is something called the Intelligent-Design Hypothesis. This “new” doctrine is really very old. For 2,000 years and more the incontrovertible evidence of intelligent design in nature (it could not have been produced by random happen-chance) has been used as evidence that a Creator God must exist. This is implied in the argument Paul used in Romans 1:18-25. In a created world one must see a creator. In an apparently purposeful intelligently- designed world one must see a purposeful intelligent designer/creator. Intelligence and purpose are evidence that the creator/designer is a person, not merely an inherent force or power. Many of those who see intelligent design in the natural world prefer to call the designer God. Intelligent Design is inimical to the evolutionary hypothesis.

      Organic evolution has become the doctrine of choice among God-rejecters today. It posits a steady state universe in which natural laws act upon existing matter to produce an endless variety of material forms, including life forms. The teaching of it is mandatory in most classrooms in this “enlightened” country. Any third grade child can understand why the evolutionary hypothesis is wrong and why those who reject God do not want the theory challenged, or any alternative theories presented. Just ask a few simple questions.  Is matter eternal? Science (the laws of thermodynamics) gives a firm negative. Matter can be reduced to energy, and energy is being randomly dissipated in a way that are irrevocable and the lost energy is irrecoverable. Although the end of all matter may be in the incalculable future, the point is, matter has a foreseeable end. If it has an end it must also have had a beginning. Did matter create itself? That is a logical impossibility. Is matter intelligent? Can it think and choose for itself? It cannot. Then where did it come from and who or what imposed ‘natural law’ upon it? The easy answer: from God, the Intelligent Designer-Creator.

      The impact of the Intelligent Design concept benefits from the support of some segments of the scientific community as “a more credible hypothesis than the theories of organic evolution” with fewer flaws and contradictions. The Intelligent-Design people are saying the Intelligent Designer may be God – many choose to believe it is God. The trouble is, many are willing to compromise in order to reconcile the two theories. This is because they cannot accept a relatively young earth, which seems to be  required by any conservative understanding of the Bible. So they end up with a doctrine of an intelligent being who at some point interfered with the process of evolution. They see “intelligent design carried out by God through a guided process of evolution.” This is commonly called theistic evolution. But this also contradicts the Bible. Why try to “put God back in the classroom” if you can’t take the Bible in too? The Intelligent Designer easily becomes just another name for any god of one’s own choice, just another error that leads one away from the true and living God and not to Him.

– Gerald Cowan

*For an enlightening summary of the concept and its challenge to evolutionary theories, see U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, July 29, 2002; pages .52-53.