Intelligent Design in the Science Classroom

JOHN PAUL

In the USA, a controversy has arisen pertaining to the allowance of Intelligent Design into the science classroom. What is Intelligent Design? It is the premise that life is the direct result of an intelligent source but it does not concern itself with the designer just the design. Intelligent Design is not Creationism (Intelligent Design Creationism is a blatant misrepresentation). It is not based on any religious doctrine. It is based on what scientists observe when peering through today’s powerful microscopes.

As Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin’s Black Box: ”Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.”

Intelligent Design-type processes are already used in fields such as SETI, archeology, anthropology, forensics and arson investigation. Each of those fields depends upon our ability to differentiate intentional design from natural processes. Intelligent Design just extends those principles to biology.

The fact is life exists. If, as the evidence is showing, it couldn’t have arisen via purely natural processes, what are the alternatives?

Science is ultimately the search for the truth through our never-ending quest for knowledge. If there were any chance at all that we are here via intelligent intervention, any chance at all, to not pursue that line of research would be an injustice not only to science but also to all of mankind.