How is intelligent design different than evolution

It is indeed curious that they would choose deception to advance their religious beliefs. Q: Why not "teach both sides"? A: This would be like teaching astrology in an astronomy course or alchemy in a chemistry class. There are not "two sides" to the science.

Evolution is a scientific theory that seeks to explain how life on earth has changed over time, while ID is simply an ideology that attacks science and asks that its ideas be accepted as if they are true. Evolution and ID address different topics, employ different methods and certainly should be judged by entirely different standards. Q: How does ID undermine science education? A: Teaching ID as a so-called "alternative" to evolution would misinform students as to the scientific standing of the theory of evolution and the workings of the scientific method.

In addition, it would improperly prepare them for postsecondary science education, placing them at a significant disadvantage to their peers. All scientists and physicians who study such diseases as SARS and AIDS, as well as those who trace how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, completely rely on evolutionary theory to understand the phenomena they are examining. We are certain that even ID proponents would prefer to rely on these scientists rather than a scientist who believes that SARS or AIDS was created by intelligent design and can be explained only by intelligent design.

Q: How does ID undermine religious freedom? A: ID is attempting to insert its particular religious beliefs into science education - as if it were science. By trying to use governments to give the prestigious label of "science" to their controversial theories, they are misleading children and parents. By attempting to elevate a single religious viewpoint over others and situating religion in conflict with science, they are endangering the religious freedom of all Americans.

In the words of Theologian John F. Haught, "If a child of mine were attending a biology class where the teacher proposed that students consider ID as an alternative to?

Q: What's wrong with the claim that evolution is "just a theory"? A: Calling evolution "just a theory" is deeply misleading because it confuses the everyday meaning of the word "theory" a "hunch" or an "opinion. The scientific theory of evolution is one of the most robust theories in modern science.

It has been corroborated by hundreds of thousands of independent observerations and has succeeded in predicting natural phenomena in every field of the biological sciences, from paleontology to molecular genetics.

No persuasive evidence has been put forward in the last years to contradict the theory of evolution. In the words of Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the most prominent geneticists of the 20th century, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.

Q: Does the scientific theory of evolution deny the existence of an intelligent designer or God? I thought, This is not something we should trust as a creation story for all of life, because instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks or the color of peppered moths in a species.

This is a totally different story. It's quite inadequate for the purpose, I thought. And I think the world should understand this. There is a relatedness. But what does it mean? Say we have almost 99 percent of our genes in common with chimpanzees.

We also have at least 25 percent of our genes in common with bananas. There are these commonalities that exist throughout life. Do they point to a common evolutionary process or a common creator? That is the question for interpretation. The genes are going to win when people ask me about that great degree of similarity between human genes and chimpanzee genes. I answer that genes must not be anywhere near as important as we have been led to believe.

If there were that great a commonality between chimps and humans, it ought to be relatively easy to breed chimps and come up with a human being, or by genetic engineering to change a chimp into a human. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families. So the real question to me that needs to be explained is the enormous difference between chimps and human beings. That's what evolutionary science needs to explain and can't explain.

It might be because of common ancestry. That is definitely a possibility to be considered. I'm just not insistent that common ancestry is true. It's a possibility. That's a possibility that has to be considered also, that there's a commonality not only between chimps and humans, but among all life. It's a common biochemistry.

And thus this might be pointing to a single evolutionary process, or it might be pointing to the responsibility of a single creator. What if the Darwinian mechanism doesn't have the creative power claimed for it? Then something else has to be true. It's two sides of the same coin as I look at it, and that's why I've always devoted my energies to making the skeptical case about Darwinism.

Others have evidence of a positive nature—irreducible complexity and complex specified information are part of that.

To understand the positive evidence I think we have to realize that Darwin was writing a long time ago. He didn't understand anything about complex specified information or the irreducible complexity of the cell. In Darwin's day it was thought that cells were simply globs of a kind of jelly-like substance, a protoplasm.

So it didn't seem to be very difficult to imagine how you could get a blob of some substance like mud at the bottom of a prehistoric pond, lake, or ocean.

But since Darwin's day an enormous amount has been learned about the cell. The point there is that to Darwin the cell was a black box. It did something, but you didn't know how it did it. So the cell was a black box in Darwin's day, and now it's been opened. Thanks to the work of biochemists and molecular biologists since that time, we know that the cell is so enormously complex that it makes a spaceship or a supercomputer look rather low-tech in comparison. So I think the cell is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all for the Darwinists to get over.

How do you get the first cell? It's not just that if they get the cell then everything else will be easy. But it was thought in Darwin's day that the cell was no problem at all. The only problems came after that. How do you get from cells to complex animals and then to apes, and from apes to human beings? That's the story that he told.

Now, I don't think that story will hold water when you look for proof rather than just accept it as an inevitable, logical consequence of a naturalistic philosophy that you're starting out with. I think so. To answer that question I need to go back to the point that I see the scientific question as one of choosing between two hypotheses.

One is that you needed intelligence to do the creating that had to be done in the history of life, and the other is that you didn't need it. Then the scientific approach is to decide between these two hypotheses on the basis of evidence and logic. That's what I want to see done. That's why it is a scientific question. If evolution by natural selection is a scientific doctrine, then the critique of that doctrine, and even of the fundamental assumption on which it's based, is a legitimate part of science as well.

When people ask me whether this is creationism relabeled, one thing that always occurs to me is that the real creationist organizations are highly critical of intelligent design, because they say it doesn't do the job that is the very essence of creationism.

It doesn't defend the Bible from the very first verse. It doesn't defend the Bible at all, and it doesn't even defend Christianity. It's saying that there's an intelligence, but the intelligence could be natural as well as supernatural. And that if you assume it's supernatural, what the God is—well, we have nothing to say about what kind of God it is.

It isn't limited to one particular kind of religion, to Christianity or to a particular kind of Christianity. If you want, it can be the Muslim god. It's true that supernatural causes are a subject outside of science. But intelligent versus unintelligent causes is a subject very much within science.

For example, forensic scientists and pathologists regularly determine whether a death was due to natural causes or intelligent causes. If somebody dies of a purported heart failure, and then they do an autopsy on the body and find signs of arsenic poisoning, they say this was not a death by natural causes; it was a poisoning. That is perfectly legitimate as a scientific inquiry. Now, if the intelligent cause turns out to be supernatural, that's a determination that is outside of science.

But that you need intelligence is not a determination that's outside of science. It's the regular business of science, like deciding whether a drawing on a cave wall is a painting by prehistoric cavemen or a product of natural erosion and chemistry in the wall. Well, to a large extent it depends on what you mean by evolution. When I speak to audiences about this, I like to say that even the Darwinian theory of evolution is valid up to a point.

The problem with the theory of evolution is not that it's altogether wrong, but that it's correct only in a very limited and relatively trivial sphere rather than as the grand creation story that it is made out to be.

It's a good theory for how finch beaks vary in size or how disease-causing microorganisms become resistant to antibiotic medicines. So it's valid within that limited sphere, and that may be important. That's interesting in itself. Scientists are largely interested in details, whereas I'm a different kind of person. I'm interested in the big picture. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid, although some kind of a theory might be valid.

It also depends on what you mean by religious belief. Most of the evolutionary scientists will say, "We're not opposed to religious belief so long as you understand that that's what it is—it's religious belief. When you talk about God, for example, that's something that exists in the human imagination.

It's something we study in the department of anthropology or psychology, where we talk about the beliefs that various kinds of people hold. Religious belief is one of those kinds of beliefs. In the university, we don't talk about it in the departments where we are considering what really happened. The beliefs may be important; they may even be beneficial.

It's just that they don't reflect reality. They only reflect what's going on in people's heads. That's the metaphysics of religion and science that is taken for granted in the universities. This is something that may change. One of the things that's so controversial and so hated about the concept of intelligent causes in biology is that it threatens this division of things into naturalism, which deals with how things really are and is called science, and religious belief, which [in their view] is about make-believe in people's heads out of fairy tales and the like.

In short, though ID advocates certainly hope that their concept will instill renewed faith in a creator, such faith is seen primarily as a means by which to advance a conservative political agenda in American society.

Many scientists and philosophers argue that the philosophical and cultural implications of evolution are irrelevant to its scientific validity: They cannot and should not alter the outcomes of scientific research. Theologians also counter that the religious notions advanced by intelligent design are actually bad theology, while evolution is more compatible with religion than ID advocates allow.

Moreover, scientists point out that current scientific understandings of the universe and evolutionary processes involve more than random chance. In addition to complaints that intelligent design is invalid science, narrowly-conceived philosophy, and bad theology, critics finally object to the methods and tactics used to promote the concept despite these critiques. These deceptive tactics have brought the movement limited success but cannot change the essential facts about intelligent design.

Furthermore, advocates push ID in an ill-conceived effort to challenge materialistic philosophy, advance faith in a narrow conception of God, and establish a politically conservative ideology in public life. Their efforts actually undermine our strongest traditions and understandings of science, faith, and honest political debate. Bryan Collinsworth was an intern with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative during the summer and fall of Elaine Sedenberg. The idea is known as the evolution of evolvability.

Interestingly, all of these components can be altered by past evolution, meaning past evolution can change the way that future evolution operates.

For example, random genetic variation can make a limb of an animal longer or shorter, but it can also change whether forelimbs and hindlimbs change independently or in a correlated manner. Such changes alter the building blocks available to future evolution. If past selection has shaped these building blocks well, it can make solving new problems look easy — easy enough to solve with incremental improvement. For example, if limb lengths have evolved to change independently, evolving increased height will require multiple changes affecting each limb and intermediate stages may be worse off.

But if changes are correlated, individual changes might be beneficial. The idea of the evolution of evolvability has been around for some time, but the detailed application of learning theory is beginning to give this area a much needed theoretical foundation. Our work shows that the evolution of regulatory connections between genes, which govern how genes are expressed in our cells, has the same learning capabilities as neural networks.