Intelligent Design & Creationism

Is intelligent design just another way of saying creationism? Read Robert Freer’s article below to see if that is the case.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

“In The Beginning” … thus begins the book of Genesis and upon that notion’s application to us and our world is about all we can agree. The rest is speculation. Being a curious sort, man has pursued a quest to answer the ultimate questions about the origin of our world and ourselves. History reveals that that pursuit has followed many paths which we have refined into bodies of knowledge. Some are referred to as belonging to a family we have called “science”. These follow rigorous rules of inquiry, verification and then application. Others which depend upon the experience of our species, free thought and intuition ultimately, when faced with the unverifiable, depend on faith.

Science for many generations was corrupted to serve faith, and humanity was ill served by that enslavement. Since the Enlightenment a general rejection of placing the straight jacket of faith on scientific pursuit and its application to the practical and immediate has created a deep divide between scientific and faith related pursuit of the knowledge of the ultimate questions about our origin. The two communities often cannot engage in polite let alone constructive dialogue. Yet much of our nation’s extraordinary history has seen these two flourish alongside each other to enrich our soul while laying a path for unprecedented affluence and scientific progress. I have written a number of columns dealing with the meaning of separation of church and state as it was actually intended by our Founders and can assure you it was not the iron curtain envisioned by much of our current judiciary in its decisions of the past 50 years.

Two cases have come to epitomize the position of the warring parties. The first in 1925 is State of Tennessee versus John Scopes for violation of its anti evolution teaching statute and more recently in 2005, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District which forbids the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools as an alternative explanation for evolution. These cases act as book ends for the debate. It’s ironic that in 80 years we have gone from you can’t teach Darwinian evolutionary theory to you can’t teach anything but.

What in part is fueling the current inflammatory rhetoric on the different perspectives is the success of the scientific process itself. Our advances in understanding human DNA have themselves revealed more complex questions of biologic sequencing which boggle the mind in ever reaching a conclusion that the result could be random. While scientific inquiry continues, we have yet to come up with an explanation other than the hand of a creator. In some of what I am about to discuss, I would like to acknowledge an outstanding article by Margaret B. Edwards in the Summer 2006 issue of the University of Virginia Magazine. It is clear, concise and yet comprehensive in its attention to the speech issues as well as the scientific.

We need to understand first that Creationism is not the same as intelligent design. Intelligent design does not identify the world’s author as “God” nor deny evolution while Creationists do. What adherents of intelligent design say is that the confluence of natural phenomena that have been explained leave a number of questions that scientific principle itself suggest are beyond chance. According to Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh and sighted in the UVA article says that in a his research on the delineation and design and natural selection, one experiment particularly requires 40 distinctly different types of proteins to produce a working synthesis. Like life itself, which requires a greater number of syntheses than this to have evolved into homo sapiens, it “…could not have started unless an intelligent agent put the right pieces in place, together at the same time.” Adherents of intelligent design also point to weaknesses in evolutionist’s time line as further support for at least the consideration of their line of inquiry.

Darwinists say no, because what the inquiry into intelligent design pursues is the unknowable and thus not science and most certainly should not be foisted off on young impressionable minds taking high school biology……….Where have these people been? What high school students have they been exposed to? -Certainly not ones on this planet. There is not a more skeptical, questioning group on planet earth than the typical American teenager! Thus what strikes me is that the battle as being fought out in the school rooms of America isn’t over who is right but over free speech and the intellectual free pursuit of ideas. The world is being turned on its head. What was forbidden 80 years ago is now the required. And this “gag rule” is all the result of a specious argument that we are turning our classrooms into Creationist churches. What the intelligent design folks are saying is that the existence of a creator of some sort can be posited pursuant to scientific method. In the same way we can prove alternative dimensions, the presence of Quarks and other quantum physics we can posit the presence of a creator.

According to Bryce Paschal, advisor at U.Va to a campus group pushing intelligent design and himself an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at U.Va. , “Good Science identifies weak links in what is known. Science should acknowledge the shortcomings in evolutionary science, especially as regards what is known about transition species.” Much in Darwinian Theory is also inferred according to Professor Paschal. The presence of the courts in all of this seems misplaced. In Thomas Jefferson’s words, “[I]t is error alone which needs the support of government.” Left to real freedom of intellectual pursuit including the non sectarian consideration of the threads created by biology’s advances, man will sort it out and shouldn’t be prevented from including those questions and the consideration of all possible answers. As for myself, I cast myself with that other 18th century scientist and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. When debating the divinity of Jesus, Franklin disclaimed an opinion saying he had never studied the question and “…think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.” I enjoy you, my readers so I hope it isn’t too soon.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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