The Intelligent Design debate is set to explode. It's everywhere from science magazines to religious parodies, from Encyclopedia entries to T-shirt designs. The notion that an 'Intelligent Designer' created and is maintaining the Universe and the lifeforms within it is not a new idea, but getting that concept placed on equal footing with the science teachings in our school classrooms is. I would go so far as to say that ID is a Trojan Horse intended to smuggle creationist theories into schools, to subvert scientific authority and thus ultimately lay claim on the beliefs of the people.

In an interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Brother Guy Consolmagno, The Vatican's personal astronomer, gives his own opinions of Intelligent Design (ID). His refreshing perspective flies in the face of the current alignment which places Religion and ID in the same camp. Theology has to come into the debate too:

"The trouble is that some people think they can use science to prove God. And that puts science ahead of God; that makes science more powerful than God. That's bad theology." - link

He also comments on the relationship a supposed God/Intelligent Designer must have with reality:

"You also don't want to deny human freedom. If you say it's all God's design, then what about evil in the world? Well, you could answer that evil comes out of human freedom. But then what about tsunamis in the world? Where do you draw the line? At some point, God intended things. At some point, God gives the universe freedom to do what it's going to do. There is a line - and I don't know where it is - but if you're going to believe in human freedom and not pre-destination, then you have to believe that there is a huge chunk of the universe that God allows, rather than God controls." - link

While my personal beliefs about reality are devoid of any idea of God this perspective is compelling. From the point of view of an ID advocate the Intelligent Designer (who when the fluff has been striped away is basically God) has intervened in the process of the evolution of life at many stages. The Darwinian processes which took atoms of hydrogen and over billion of years and trillions upon trillions of advances turned them into living, conscious entities must be false, they state, because the complexities of life are too broad for such random, unintelligently mutated structure to occur by itself. What the ID community have failed to notice here, and what Brother Guy Consolmagno outlines so succinctly, is that by invoking an Intelligent Designer as integral to the process where by life develops they have by proxy managed to deplete their designer's powers.

Suppose for example that two autopilot systems have been designed for domestic air travel. One system is fully autonomous in that it flies 100% of the time, all the way to its destination without any intervention from a human pilot. The other system is only semi autonomous and although it succeeds in tackling most aspects of its journeys through the skies in 80% of cases a human is often needed to correct its mistakes. Which of these systems would you say was the most intelligently designed?

By all accounts the ID community is invoking a Designer who NEEDS to intervene in the processes of evolution he/it set in motion, just as in the case of the second autopilot system. On the other hand Darwinian evolution, as scientifically acceptable school textbooks would have it taught, is a process which self regulates, self promotes, and in random fluctuation is devoid of any 'self' - i.e. there is no Intelligent Designer, God or co-pilot reshuffling its outcomes!

Whether like me you believe this process can be completely explained without an all powerful deity or whether like Brother Guy Consolmagno you tend to have faith that "At some point, God intended things" is a matter of choice. But ID advocates who try to prove their Intelligent Designer exists with science will find they are walking a narrow pathway into a philosophical and scientific cul-de-sac, and from where I'm standing it appears there is no way out but back the way they came in.

Categories: Science, Religion, God, Christianity, Intelligent Design, Theology, belief, Vatican, ID, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Evolution

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