It took the Catholic Church 400 years to apologize for its treatment of Galileo, the person who first observed the moons of Jupiter orbiting around Jupiter and not the planet Earth. That the Earth is the center of the Universe is still the predominant view of Christianity, which is slow to accept modern science and even slower to adapt to contemporary society and culture. The Christian opposition toward birth control, condoms, abortion and homosexuality are all based not on scientific evidence, but on religious morals. In short, if science contradicts religious ideology, Christianity will err on the side of denying the validity of science. As the Catholic Encyclopedia says, ‘When a clearly defined dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, the latter has to be revised’. This is true for the major denominations of Christianity, the bulk of which in the US are protestant and in many cases seek to take the bible literally in matters of religion and science.

This paper argues that, while evolution is an empirically-rich research programme whose theories support and fit into many scientific disciplines, Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) is an empirically-poor research programme with very little support from other scientific disciplines. In effect, this paper argues that IDT is a thinly-veiled attempt to resurrect Creationism, the theory that all that is material was created by God thousands, not billions, of years ago and explains the existence of humankind by the progenitors of Adam and Eve, thereby bringing the idea of faith over science back into mainstream society. In this way, this paper will demonstrate that God is not dead in ‘scientific’ belief, but rather is emerging with as great a force as ever due to the promulgation of religious officials in government.

CHRISTIANITY AND GALILEO

Galileo (1564-1642) could have not made his discoveries at a more inconvenient time. He wrote a letter in 1632 which outlined why his observations that Jupiter’s moons were not Earth satellites and the Earth was not the center of the universe were not anti-religion. In short, he argued that meaning in the bible was often ‘abstruse’, especially in matters which involved the physical universe. The reply of the Church was unequivocally condemning of Galileo and his ‘heretical’ theories and decreed that Galileo should be imprisoned. As the Church wrote in 1633:

The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. The proposition that the Earth is not the centre of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith. [1]

Of course, the Church has recently corrected its ‘mistake’, but has admitted no wrongdoing, per se, as Christianity, at least in its Catholic form, separates religious dogma (morals) from science, although these two can never be politically separated.

However, not all scientific discoveries are scrutinized by Christianity. Inventions such as the light bulb, the combustion engine and the airplane have all been major leaps forward in science, but these inventions did little more than scare people who were more awestruck than offended. In order for science to offend religion, it must not only contradict prior beliefs of human limitations, it must also contradict some fundamental idea underlying standard Christian teaching. Galileo’s ideas were frightening to the Church because they made the Earth seem less important. That the Earth is the center of the universe is only overshadowed by one other idea: that humans are the center of the living universe.

Evolution is even more frightening to Christianity than astronomy because it challenges the first most powerful idea of Christianity: that ‘man’ is the center of the universe. Like the view of astronomy toward the creation of the Earth, evolution is the idea that humans are only one of many species which came to be through random chance. It is no wonder why this position threatens Christianity. If it is accepted, it would mean that Adam and Eve, the very first humans according to Christianity, are mythical. If Adam and Eve are mythical, then so might other characters (and events) in the bible be mythical.

Eventually, Galileo’s theories came to be accepted to the extent that religion does not try to fight the teaching of planetary motion, gravity, etc. in public schools. Even in private religious schools (in America), pupils learn the heliocentric model of the solar system. Creationism-based criticism of evolution, however, is seeing a renaissance, at least in America, where some science textbooks are inscribed with the disclaimer that evolution is a ‘theory, not a fact’. [2] The political and religious partnership in challenging the science of evolution has been grounded not in the scientific journals, nor even within an alternative scientific model of biology on Earth. Primarily, the criticisms of evolution are Darwin-centric. Moreover, they suffer from what empirical methodology calls ‘selection bias’ in their attack on the taxonomy of human evolution. And finally Creationism and IDT lack any falsifiable scientific content, meaning in these theories there are no positive assertions about human development which can be observed or tested in any accepted scientific methodological form.

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

While many view IDT as a ‘challenge’ to Darwinism, the poster child of evolution critics, it would be more appropriate to see Darwinism as a challenge to the roots of IDT: Creationism. With the advent of Lamarckian genetics at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was finally documented that animals pass on traits to their progeny. By theorizing how the traits of species might change over time, Lamarckian genetics was the first serious threat to the idea that God created all species on Earth and that these species have remained virtually unchanged for the five to ten thousand years life has allegedly existed on planet Earth. During the time of Lamarck, it was not known that life had existed on Earth for billions of years, although astronomy had already measured the speed of light in the seventeenth century and quickly developed the concept ‘light years’, thereafter discovering that stars in the universe had been shining for billions of years. In other words, while scientists had already envisaged the material universe existing for billions of years, the hypothesis that life could have been around this long was yet to be formulated.

There are many criticisms of the theory of evolution. Some arguments, such as the traditional belief that Lamarckian genetics claimed that an injured or mutilated animal will pass on injuries or mutilation to its offspring, are based on a misreading of Lamarck. These arguments can easily be contradicted by a careful reading of original texts. Moreover, it is now being recognized that Lamarck might have been ahead of his time, as research in genetics has begun to vindicate Lamarck’s theories. Other arguments, those on which this paper will focus, rely on criticizing what Imre Lakatos describes as the ‘auxiliary hypotheses’ of evolution. [3] In Lakatosian terms, there is the ‘hard-core’ theory of evolution, namely that all species on Earth have a common ancestor and that the vehicle of this process is natural selection, and the ‘auxiliary belt’ of evolution that creates a taxonomy of species, which includes the most debated hypothesis of evolution: that the direct ancestor of humans are primates. Criticisms of evolution tend to attack the taxonomy of evolution because the hard-core assumptions are far more difficult to refute due to the overwhelming scientific record. However, even the attacks on the taxonomy of evolution are not comprehensive, as they merely find single puzzles within thousands of evolutionary trees.

This paper does not defend the hypothesis that humans evolved from primates, per se, but rather merely supports the hard-core assumption of evolution that life on Earth has evolved over billions of years, beginning with single-celled organisms. In the end, this paper will argue that IDT and the Christian Church are co-conspirators in (1) mischaracterizing evolution as the theory that humans were once apes, and (2) claiming that IDT presents a purely secular and scientific ‘challenge’ to evolution. This paper will argue that both of these assertions are false.

In Darwin’s words, ‘In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment’. The theory of evolution is about survival of the fittest first and foremost. In the case of determining what constitutes ‘the fittest’, one has to look at which modes of survival are best adapted to a given environment. We can observe this principle in terms of wild animals. Lions are best suited as predators in the African Savannah, but are ill-equipped to survive in arctic climates. Moreover, lions more often kill weak and sick prey because it is easier; thus, fit prey will have a much better chance of survival (and hence the opportunity to procreate) than unfit prey. It is important to note that evolution does not say that the most fit should succeed over the weak, but that in nature this tends to be the case. Whether the evolution of biological creatures can be analogous to other social scientific disciplines is a debate beyond the scope of this paper.

What Creationism, the sacred predecessor of evolution, denies is the principle that one species of animal can evolve over time into another species. Evolution is not purely human-centric, although its critics certainly portray it this way. To put it simply, Creationism does not believe that less complicated life turns into more complicated life at the genetic level; life, according to Christianity, does not evolve. According to Christianity, humans and animals are already ‘perfected’ genetically in the sense that they were first put on this planet in roughly the same genetic form and will continue to exist on this planet indefinitely until ‘the end’. Evolution theory directly contradicts this view by developing a model in which all species on Earth originated from common biological ancestors.

Evolution has a great amount of evidence to support it, both from inside the discourse of evolution and within other scientific disciplines, especially earth sciences, as the fossil record is correlated with the geological record to establish what kind of life was living during which periods. In this way, evolution is merely one scientific block among many; to remove this block would be to discredit not only evolution, but also sciences such as carbon-dating, paleontology, geology, anthropology, archeology, and other sciences which link human remains and human artifacts to specific times and places. Puzzles within evolution theory are no more compelling than puzzles within any other scientific discourse. For example, although probes are successfully sent to Mars using Newtonian physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity has demonstrated that Newton’s Laws are imperfect. Indeed, many of Einstein’s theories have been vigorously challenged by theories such as quantum physics and ‘string theory’. However, in these cases other theories explained the same phenomena in more parsimonious ways, while also explaining anomalies within the original theory. IDT theory, in its position that something we cannot see created life, does not present a theory which explains the material evidence in the form of fossils and artifacts which themselves show gradual change from ‘primitive’ life, e.g. Cro Magnon Man, to ‘modern’ life, i.e. Homo Sapiens.

Moreover, evolution puzzles are few when compared to the overwhelming amount of evidence which supports the hard-core theory of evolution.

Some creationists cite what they say is an incomplete fossil record as evidence for the failure of evolutionary theory. The fossil record was incomplete in Darwin’s time, but many of the important gaps that existed then have been filled by subsequent paleontological research. Perhaps the most persuasive fossil evidence for evolution is the consistency of the sequence of fossils from early to recent. [4]

And yet IDT/Creationism makes the argument that there is a missing link in the study of human evolution and therefore all scientific evidence relating to evolution is called into doubt. But the missing-link argument itself is no longer relevant:

Scientists have unearthed thousands of fossil specimens representing members of the human family. A great number of these cannot be assigned to the modern human species, Homo sapiens. Most of these specimens have been well dated, often by means of radiometric techniques. They reveal a well-branched tree, parts of which trace a general evolutionary sequence leading from ape-like forms to modern humans. [5]

Indeed, the idea that one set of bones need be found which ‘link’ humans directly to primates is a myth and based on a misunderstanding of the principles behind evolution.

DNA

The greatest underlying evidence for evolution is DNA. The mapping of the human genome is to Christianity much as the invention of the telescope; both present verifiable and repeatable evidence of a contradiction to Christian belief. DNA is responsible for specific genetic predispositions, such as height and diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. Both height and Multiple Sclerosis are inherited from one or both of the parents. It is not difficult to reason that those people with a degenerative nerve disease are going to produce fewer offspring than those without, as their lifespan is shorter and their capability of movement, once the disease is advanced, is limited. Of course purposeful intervention, such as selectively breeding only those people with genetic predispositions for disease is no more ethical or rational than only allowing people with superior genetic traits to breed.

Moreover, the mere fact that disease exists within human DNA indicates a lack of genetic perfection in humans, which contradicts the idea that humans are ‘too perfect’ to be a random creation. However, with enough genetic manipulation, entire populations would be able to breed out diseases and select out undesirable traits, thus ‘perfecting’ human DNA. While the morality of this kind of genetic manipulation has been questioned, the mere fact that humans have this capability verifies the theory that the DNA of biological species can evolve over time, even without purposeful intervention (e.g. ‘genetic drift’), and with enough time the possibility of a change in species, which signifies a point at which ‘no significant cross-flow of genetic material [passes] between the two populations’, becomes greater. [6] For example, a male donkey and a female horse can create offspring, but the result, a ‘mule’, is almost always infertile. Thus, these two animals could be seen as species which are in the process of becoming sexually incompatible.

Evolution believes that when significant genetic material does flow between populations that the environment will significantly impact the way this material is carried. On the other hand, when an animal species is separated for long enough, their respective DNA eventually becomes incompatible due to the lack of sharing of genetic material. While the taxonomy of this process is sometimes debated, the underlying principle of the inevitable evolution of DNA is solid. DNA is not unique to humans; it is present in all animals, and thus all animals, including humans are subject to the scientific observations of how DNA is carried over time. Christianity separates humans and animals as if they were not created equally, but genetics shows that animals and humans are qualitatively the same in terms of that which they are made.

While Christianity would not deny that hundreds of races are placed in hundreds of different regions across the world, Christianity would propose, for example, that Africans, Mediterranean people and Anglo Saxons were all put on this Earth as they are now. According to Christianity, there was no ‘changing’, as this would imply that God’s creations were imperfect at some stage. According to Christianity, the fact that DNA is slightly different between races explains not an evolutionary adaptation, but rather a different original design. Needless to say, such thinking can be used in dangerous ways, e.g. Hitler and his ‘scientific’ persecution of Jews, those born with disabilities and homosexuals. On the other hand, evolution contends that life adapts over time in sync with the environment resulting in new species and that this process has been in motion over billions of years beginning with one-celled organisms.

That the physical environment plays a significant role in determining what genetic material moves forward and what genetic material is weeded-out has been demonstrated in the laboratory with fruit flies, an invasive species which has been observed making significant evolutionary changes, such as changes in wingspan size, within the span of only two decades, in order to adapt to a fast changing microclimate. [7] In order to make the argument that species do not make evolutionary changes would be to deny countless tests on fruit flies in the laboratory and observations of fruit flies (and other invasive species) in the wild. But to deny the possibility of life significantly adapting itself (evolving) over time would also be to contradict microbiology. The influenza virus evolves each year which necessitates new vaccines. Bacteria develop resistances to antibiotics. In short, to treat evolution as ‘only a theory’ is to deny a great deal of scientific research in a great deal of specialist fields which have concrete results, such as the virtual elimination of the disease polio in the modern world.

What Christianity, Creationism and IDT fail to consider is that the proposition that humans evolved from primates is only one of many pieces of a puzzle which has been assembled by millions of pieces of evidence over hundreds of years. In other words, it makes no sense to invalidate fruit fly research by poking holes in the idea that humans and Chimps share a common ancestor. IDT cannot produce the knowledge required to make a vaccine against the newest influenza virus.

The hard-core of evolution, in its modern form, looks at genetics as a code which changes over time. Evolution sees the possibility of humans in a one-celled organism, because the chemical composition of human DNA is no different than that of other animals; it is merely arranged differently. IDT argues that humans are ‘irreducibly complex’ because to remove part of our DNA would be to create an unviable organism, but this argument stems from an incomplete understanding of genetics. For example, rats share a great deal of DNA with humans. Humans, rats, chickens, dogs and fish all share a common ancestor from 400 million years ago and have all recently been found to share strands of DNA vital to their development. [8] The fact that there is shared DNA between humans and other animals is supported by the fact that most drugs and vaccines are first tested on animals before human subjects are selected for testing.

In the end, evolution believes that the building blocks of life, the ‘map’ of how our bodies are constructed and how our bodies develop from youth to old age, changes as the environment necessitates physical adaptations. Some adaptations are successful, as in the opposable thumb in humans, while others are poor, as can be observed in the faux thumb of the giant panda. The greatest area of tension between evolution and its critics is the idea that humans developed not just from the same ancestors as primates, but also, if one goes back far enough, the assertion that all life was once single-celled. It is important to note that this one area of contention is not a make or break point for evolution; indeed, it is the least relevant point for scientific research on genetics and evolution. It is ‘the big question’, but it is not something on which the majority of evolution writings focus, and yet it is the one point being attacked by the quasi-scientific permutation of Creationism: IDT.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN THEORY

While Creationism might accept that bones are found which resemble humans, but not exactly so, they do not accept that humans were ever not human. Likewise, butterflies were always butterflies, ants were always ants, elephants were always elephants, etc. IDT is a ‘scientific’ variation on creationism which posits that something intelligent created the blueprints for life, although it does not specify exactly what, it does suggest God as a possibility.

The primary argument of IDT relies on the awe of life itself. As the argument goes, life is too complex and perfect to have evolved randomly. If there was not a creator, and life did evolve due to random changes in the environment, would there not be numerous cases of strange life forms with protruding vestigial organs and unexplained mutations? Moreover, we should see hundreds, if not thousands, of species dying out due to imperfect evolutionary adaptations.

The above argument relies on an incomplete understanding of evolution. The life which has existed since the advent of written language (after which it was possible to write religious texts such as the Christian bible) is the culmination of billions of years of evolution. Evolution weeds out inefficient adaptations. ‘Junk’ DNA and vestigial organs do exist in healthy individuals, but are not protuberant. In humans, the existence of the appendix, tonsils and ‘Darwin’s Ear’ are all proof that genetic patterns are either dying out or emerging. The creation and refinement of species, as evolution specifies, is a long process which involves the death of the least efficient creatures and the sustaining of the more efficient.

The second premise of IDT relies upon the complexity of DNA itself, which has been compared to computers, albeit, as Bill Gates once remarked, ‘far more advanced’. Comparing DNA to a computer program immediately begs the question, ‘who programmed our DNA?’ IDT claims an intelligent being programmed our DNA like a computer programmer programs a computer. However, the comparing of DNA to a computer program has its faults. First, life is not a computer. Computers are a human invention which are made of silicon, as opposed to carbon, and rely on an external source of electrical current. Furthermore, computers cannot self-replicate. The science of nanobots is still science fiction as the original studies were proven fabricated. Computers have no self-awareness. The promise of AI theory does bring up questions of what constitutes life, but for now these questions are purely theoretical.

As historians argue, the comparison of the computer to the human brain follows a long tradition of seeing the brain as an analogue of the greatest human accomplishment of the time. For example, renaissance thinkers compared the human brain to the complex systems of aqueducts which carried water throughout a city. Nineteenth-century thinkers compared the human brain to the bourgeoning railway systems in industrializing nations. And now the brain is compared to computers. The point is that humans have always compared the design of the human body to the greatest human invention at the time, as we tend to place our existence as the centerpiece of meaning. These comparisons are rooted in Christianity, as they place humans, human accomplishments and the biology of human construction above all other things on Earth.

The fact is that DNA consists of proteins which ‘give orders’ by a series of chemical reactions. That DNA is ‘programmed’ is no more a valid analogy than the idea that gravity is ‘programmed’. Both DNA and gravity are pre-existing phenomena which act according to scientific principles, that is, the way they act is verifiable and repeatable in a laboratory. Science is not so much interested in asking questions about the origin or meaning of its theories and laws, but merely how things in the physical environment act over time and space.

For example, astronomy is a science which has traced all that is observable in the universe to a single point in space-time by the observation that celestial objects are all moving away from a single point in space. The conclusion is that objects in the universe were once united, much like Pangaea, but that over time they moved apart, something which can be observed, through various mathematical techniques, happening during our lifetimes. The question is not so much how this mass came to be concentrated in a single point in space, nor how the ‘Big Bang’ was started, but rather tracing the qualities of the resultant universe. DNA is the mechanism of evolutionary change just like gravity is the mechanism of movement in the universe. To deny evolution is to deny DNA.

In terms of the sheer complicated nature of DNA, it must be remembered that evolution believes that life evolved over billions of years. ‘Undisturbed strata with simple unicellular organisms predate those with multicellular organisms, and invertebrates precede vertebrates; nowhere has this sequence been found inverted.’ [9] In other words, as we dig deeper into the earth, we find simpler life forms. One need put aside the question of how the first organisms were created and focus on the fact that at least we know that life does get simpler as we dig deeper into the earth. The fossil record is vast and comprehensive. Those who doubt the fossil evidence have probably not observed this evidence. In short, billions of years are a long time for complexity to develop. But this can only be an explanation if one accepts that the Earth is billions, not thousands, of years old, something IDT theorists do not accept.

The third premise of IDT is that IDT is a scientific methodology and thus presents a viable alternative to Darwinism. However:

[w]hile the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection has observable and repeatable facts to support it such as the process of mutations, gene flow, genetic drift, adaptation and speciation through natural selection, the ‘Intelligent Designer’ in ID is neither observable nor repeatable. This violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. It has also been charged that ID violates Occam’s Razor by postulating an entity or entities to explain something that may have a simpler and scientifically supportable explanation not involving unobservable help. [10]

But still, IDT claims to rely on forensic methodology in its embracing of ‘The Design Inference’ which distinguishes ‘designed things’ from chance and ‘impersonal’ laws. Scientific methodologies which underlie fields such as forensics rely upon distinguishing intelligently-designed patterned things from randomly patterned things, i.e. those things made in nature. For example, a sand castle is clearly not the result of sea tides on the beach, not least because we know the architecture of a sand castle mimics the architecture of real castles. IDT proponents argue that likewise the existence of humans is clearly not the result of random events in nature because humans are, like a sand castle, constructed in very specific ways. IDT has pointed our attention to Mt. Rushmore and asks the question how an intelligent being without knowledge of the history of human civilization, might distinguish Mt. Rushmore from natural mountain formations. [11] This is the most contentious point of IDT and will thus warrant a greater amount of space to discuss than the above points.

First, the argument above commits a logical fallacy when reduced to a syllogism: (1) that which is created by intelligent life exhibits repeating patterns which can be distinguished from events resulting from random chance, (2) DNA in humans is an ‘irreducibly complex’ repeating pattern; (3) therefore, intelligent life designed life. The first problem with this argument is that all things, not just DNA, are constructed in very specific ways which, when reduced to their constituent parts, become seemingly irreducible. All matter is made up of molecules, which are reducible to atoms, which are reducible to protons, neutrons and electrons, which have not yet been successfully reduced in a laboratory. Theoretically, of course, all matter can be reduced by half infinitely because there will always be one half of something left after the cut.

In other words, to distinguish life, specifically human life, from non-life and argue that the former is an intelligent creation as opposed to the latter, assumes that one is more complicated or impressively-constructed than the other. This reduces the argument to subjective criteria. That human life is any more impressive than star formation is a purely subjective argument because it cannot be made empirically; there are too many variables which go into each process to make judgments about either process being any more impressive or complex than the other. Another example is the computer.

Archeologist aliens visiting a dead Earth, for example, would be able to tell that a laptop was a product of intelligent design because it is something designed with an intelligent interface in mind. Human-built structures are distinguishable from caves because they contain facilities and artifacts whose purpose cannot be explained as fitting into the natural environment, as they are too perfectly adapted for one particular species. In short, while bears rely on caves (naturally occurring), and presumably the bones of bears, and many other species, would be found around caves, the structures of humans are designed by humans for necessity and comforts beyond that of necessity. Moreover, where there are large metropolises, there is very little species heterogeneity and therefore it is easy to conclude that city structures were built by intelligent life.

While computers are both a creation and design of humans, and we know this because most adults alive today were alive when silicon-based computers were invented and built, life itself is something for which we only have evidence that animals create, but do not design, life. IDT assumes that there is a creator because there is a pattern which works the same way each time it occurs; that is, when a viable egg is fertilized by a viable sperm and a woman’s body does not reject the fetus, the result is a healthy baby human, as opposed to a hairy ape. IDT argues that the principle of an egg and sperm itself, meeting to join together the DNA from both parents, is the design of something intelligent because it is such a complicated process which results in more healthy than unhealthy babies. The evidence of IDT that something intelligent designed life is that this process works so well, that DNA is basically the same for all humans with only a small percentage of variation and that the genetic ‘code’ is something with repeating complex patterns.

What separates evolution from IDT is that while the former relies on empirical evidence, the latter relies on deductive logic stemming from faith-based premi. In other words, if archeologist aliens assumed, by religious faith, that no intelligent life exists on Earth because their holy texts said so, then not even the discovery of a computer would convince them of intelligent life having existed on Earth, unless there were secular scientists available to overthrow faith-based belief. In other words, IDT seeks to be deductively sound, but its premises are inspired by religious and metaphysical principles which immediately ignore material evidence when it contradicts dogma. On the other hand, evolution is an empirical argument. The fossil records support evolution theory, despite anomalies, such as large proliferations of life during certain periods (e.g. Cambrian Explosion) which IDT theorists explain as possible ‘injections’ of new life by an intelligent being. The theory of evolution relies upon vast records of fossils which are catalogued and compared and shown to be similar in every way but a few important ways, which are then correlated with geography and the geological record. IDT ignores the majority of the fossil evidence and instead focuses on particular anomalies claiming that one missing link in the empirical evidence undermines the entire fossil record. In short, IDT has no theory of its own, but rather depends upon creating superficial doubt in evolution in order to sustain the fallacious possibility that God, which cannot be observed, and science, something that only looks at observable things, are not incompatible.

MOTIVATION

Very few scientists support Creationism/IDT theory. As explained earlier, to support IDT theory would be to call the entire field of scientific methodology into question, not just evolution. Whether science has brought humans more benefit than harm is a question for scholars of ethics and morality, but not one that impacts science. Science is about recognizing the idea that if one jumps out of an airplane at 30,000 feet without a parachute or other device that will slow one’s decent sufficiently one will die upon impact with the surface of the Earth. This experiment can be repeated thousands of times and will produce the same result. If for some reason a person is saved by an unexplained gust of wind, or something else, this does not call the theory of gravity into question, but merely presents a puzzle to be explained. So, what is the motivation of IDT theorists? Why attack evolution when so many other sciences, such as astronomy, contradict religious belief?

The answer is that evolution, as opposed to astronomy, deals with the hard-core principle of Christianity: that God created humans in God’s image. Just as in Galileo’s time Christianity depended on the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe, so too does Christianity in its present form depend upon the idea that humans are the center of all life. Animal rights activists and environmentalists have made both scientific and ethical arguments why humans should curb their abuse of the Earth. Without the assumption that humans are morally entitled to consume the resources of the planet unfettered, the basis of the Capitalist system—the mining of raw materials and the farming of animals—would come into question as ethical enterprises.

Another motivation of IDT, and Christianity since the time of the Renaissance, is the fear that science will undermine religion because scientific discovery seems to contradict literal interpretations of the bible. It is no more self-evident that the bible is an historic text than any other text written in ancient periods, or even contemporary texts written one hundred years ago. Some names and events in the bible have had some support from the archeological record, for example, but this does not validate the religious principles of the bible. Christianity, like IDT, depends upon only shreds of evidence and artifacts to support its broad and deep conclusions, while science requires overwhelming evidence (and repeatability) to support even the narrowest of conclusions.

Evidence is at the heart of why IDT theory attacks evolution. Evolution has overwhelming evidence that contradicts the possibility of humans developing from only one couple (Adam and Eve). Evolution also rules out a creator at lest to the point at which single-celled organisms first appeared. Science is especially contradictory toward the stories of the bible, such as the story of Noah’s Ark. The current knowledge of the millions of species on Earth and the science of buoyancy and a myriad of other scientific principles, and logistical complications, indicates that the creation of Noah’s Ark, having allegedly carried two of all species of animal, was an impossibility, without, of course, divine intervention, something which is non-scientific because it cannot be verified, measured, or repeated in a laboratory.

Thus, if one accepts evolutionary theory, one must accept billions of years of life which existed before humans. If one accepts all science besides evolution, then one must deal with the fact that evolution is a part of the larger field of earth sciences, which are interdependent. According to Christianity life is meaningless without humans. All things in the heavens and the Earth are all created as part of a human-centric universe. To believe that humans evolved from random chance is to deprive Christianity of this meaning and therefore undermine the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people and their ancestors who have fought wars and sacrificed everything in support of their religious beliefs.

In the final analysis, the motivation of Christianity to deny evolution is that it fears that people will no longer be willing to sacrifice if scientific principles, especially evolution, are accepted. Indeed, the relations between politicians, what were called the priest class in ancient civilizations, and the military, what were called the warrior class in ancient civilizations, has always been one of interdependence. Warriors protected priests and their congregations (the citizenry) in exchange for justification and forgiveness for the killing of foreign people.

A more insidious, and politically salient, motivation of IDT theory is bringing Creationism back into the curriculum of public schools in the USA. George W. Bush recently indicated that he believed IDT should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. [12] While IDT proponents argue that there is nothing wrong with teaching other perspectives, proponents also insist that IDT should be taught as science, and should be the alternative perspective to evolution. In other words, politicians and Christian interest groups want to install IDT outside the sanctioning of the academic community because IDT has not been accepted as a scientific research program. IDT has not been accepted as a scientific research program not because of prejudice by Darwinian ideologues, however, but because it tries to reconcile the belief that an invisible force is behind the creation of life, while also seeking the credibility of the word ‘science’, which requires at the outset only material causes and effects. IDT violates at the outset the conditions of “Occam’s Razor”, a theory that all that is unobservable must be cut away as possible variables from the outset.

IDT and its followers are on a campaign not only to get evolution out of school textbooks, but also a myriad of other political agendas, such as banning research on human embryos. IDT is anti-science; it seeks to destroy scientific progress. In this way, the motivation is simple: IDT supporters wish to replace science with religion, i.e. social devolution.

Therefore, God is surely not dead in America. In a recent poll, forty-five percent of Americans believed that God created human beings, while only a third believed that evolution is a scientific theory. [13] It is popular opinion, not science, which gives IDT its rhetorical power. So long as America is so religious (a third of Americans believe in the literal interpretation of the Christian bible), God will be alive in IDT theory. Christianity does not want to accept that God is dead and that is a powerful motivator for choosing the quasi-scientific theory of IDT over the much more parsimonious theory of evolution. With every scientific breakthrough there are people uncomfortable with the material consequences of increased knowledge and those who outright reject scientific discovery, and still others who call science ‘heresy’. Some people still deny that space travel has ever taken place. Although we can use a telescope to see objects on the moon placed there by humans, people still deny that humans have ever traveled to the moon.

CONCLUSION

Science cannot stop people from making decisions based on unscientific principles. Science, unlike Christianity, is neither a study of ethics nor morality. Science is merely a tool. Whether and how we use this tool is still a decision to make based on particular circumstances. Creationism/IDT attempts to use the tool of science to undermine the tool of science, but it fails to do so. After all, the biggest problem Christianity has with evolution is not that it relies upon the scientific method, per se, but that the scientific method has been applied to explaining the existence of humans.

Evolution is no more than the application of the scientific method to biology. On the other hand, IDT begins with a theory originating in religious texts and goes on to attempt to use science to support this theory. The science of evolution begins with observations, such as the inheritance of traits from one generation to the next, and goes on to theorize about the processes of this inheritance. IDT presents itself as an alternative to evolution, but goes on to make arguments concerning only a narrow range of evolution theories. Out of millions of pieces of evidence one or two are found lacking of explanation and IDT theory claims that these anomalies require throwing out the theory of evolution entirely, thereby throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

It is true that IDT is a theory and evolution is a theory, but this observation alone does not justify seeing the two as equal theories. When seen from the perspective of evidence, evolution, supported by hundreds of other scientific fields and sub-fields, is clearly the more scientific paradigm.

The fact that so many people are now educated in the Western World means that Christianity cannot simply say that we know God created the universe five thousand years ago because it says so in the bible. With the accumulation of scientific knowledge which began to proliferate four hundred years ago, when Galileo first observed the moons of Jupiter as Satellites orbiting Jupiter, not Earth, Christianity is attempting to adapt. This adaptation is logical, as Christianity wants to survive. However, its strategy of pursuing IDT, for the moment keeping God alive under the cloak of ‘science’, might end in a weeding out of Christianity as a theory that can explain the existence of life on Earth, and therefore subject itself to the very same process it denies.

Endnotes

1. Papal Condemnation (Sentence) of Galileo, 22 June 1633, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html.

2. Gary Young, 'Evolution Textbooks Row Goes to Court', The Guardian Unlimited, 9 November 2004.

3. Imre Lakatos, 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

4. National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (National Academy Press, 1999).

5. National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism.

6. Wikipedia, 'Evolution', Wikipedia.com, accessed 21 August 2005.

7. Environmental News Network staff, 'Fruit Flies Rock the Evolutionary Clock', CNN.com, 28 January 2000.

8. Julianna Kettlewell, ''Junk' Throws up Special Secret', BBC News World Edition, 12 May 2004.

9. Alex, 'Evolution a New Faith?', TheBibleForum.com, post 2461, June 2004.

10. Wikipedia, 'Intelligent Design,' Wikipedia.com, accessed 19 August 2005.

11. Wikipedia, 'Intelligent Design'.

12. Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, 'Bush Remarks On ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory Fuel Debate', Washingtonpost.com, 3 August 2005.

13. Frank Newport, 'Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin’s Evolution Theory', The Gallup Organization, 19 November 2004.