Recently I watched a documentary called "Flock of DoDos". And in it they discuss the relatively recent push of Creationists attempt to provide a more scientific approach to their beliefs under the flag of "Intelligent Design". The Documentary did a fairly good job of presenting the evidence, and the guy doing the documentary was very up front about his firm belief in evolution.
The basic premise is this.... Creationists were not winning any ground because of the "Separation for Church and State" portion of the Constitution. So they came up with this concept of Intelligent Design which is meant to be packaged as a more scientific approach. It basically claims that life is far too complex to have been developed through random acts of nature, thus it must have been formed by some Creator. They are quick to point out that the "Creator" may or may not be God. This allows them to cry out that this should be taught in schools along side the "Theory" of Evolution.
I don't intend to get into the details, but I will call out one humorous example they use. After being shown a picture of a normal Mountain Range, they ask the person to describe the forces required to create that Mountain Range. They then show a picture of Mount Rushmore and ask the same question. Their point being that... This is analogous to life. Life is so complex that, like Mt. Rushmore, it must have been created by a designer. Well I could write at length how that really isn't a comparable analogy. But instead I want to address a different concern I have with this approach.
In my opinion, this is a very dangerous approach. Honestly I think I prefer the view of hard core Creationists. They state that God did and base their faith on the Bible. While I may not agree, I don't think their views challenge the Scientific Approach like the Intelligent Design approach does. It basically comes down to this one question... What is the practical purpose of believing in Intelligent Design? That is to say, if we choose to accept that idea how then should we proceed?
Now if the answer is that we should still continue to pursue the ultimate causes, that we should continue to scientifically study the underlying forces that created life... Then what's the difference in believing in Intelligent Design versus Evolution. The difference becomes moot since you still believe that science plays a role and is capable of discovering the truth. Thus by practical implication, this cannot be the true purpose of believing in Intelligent Design. So this really only leaves one other choice... That we should not bother trying to learn or study the forces of Evolution, but should instead accept that it was created by some grand designer and move on to other things.
And this is where I have a huge problem. Who gets to decide that evolution of life is the one aspect of Science where we should cease our attempt to understand, and leave it to the concept of a higher power? This becomes merely a subjective decision. If we were to apply this same logic to all science, where would we be today? What if scientists looked at the Himalayas and decided that these mountains were so majestic we couldn't possibly begin to understand the Creators Methods? What if we looked into the universe and decided that it was so complex and amazing that we simply didn't need to bother studying it? How little would we know of our universe?
The concept of Intelligent Design is not simply a creative way for Creationist to repackage their beliefs. My personal opinion is that it is ultimately detrimental to the very pursuit of Science because it seeks to place subjective limits on what we can and what we cannot know. And if that isn't what it seeks to do then it has no practical value other than to simply be stubborn about accepting Evolution as a fact. In short, there is nothing intelligent about the "Intelligent Design" Theory.
Then again, I could be completely wrong...
