You’re in a conversation and someone says, “intelligent design isn’t science; it’s religion.” What would you say?
Many people think that scientists must not even consider intelligence as a potential explanation for living things or the universe itself, and to invoke an intelligence of some kind is to smuggle God and religion into science where they don’t belong.
This accusation is based on a confusion about what science is, and it overlooks the many successful predictions intelligent design theory has offered.
The next time someone says, “intelligent design isn’t science; it’s religion,” here are three things to remember:
Number 1: What is meant by “Science” must be properly defined.
When people speak of “science,” they often mean something like “the scientific method”—which consists of observation and repeated experimentation—because that’s how operational sciences like chemistry and physics work.
But what about an archaeologist studying how the Pyramids were built, or a forensic scientist attempting to reconstruct a murder scene? They cannot observe or repeat the events they’re studying. Instead, the archaeologist and the forensic scientist must rely on evidence that has been left behind and try to reconstruct what happened in the past.
This is sometimes called “historical science.” The methods of “historical science” differ from the methods of operational science.
Scientists who study the beginning of the universe or the origin of life or even the fossil record are doing historical science. They cannot repeat or experiment directly on past events. So, they gather evidence, and they make inferences about what might have happened. Intelligent design is an inference about what caused the universe and life. Even more, it is an inference that is based on consistent human experience of what intelligently designed things look like.
In this sense, it is as much a form of historical science as archaeology, forensics, or for that matter, Darwinian evolution is.
Number 2: Intelligent design is an argument from evidence, not from ignorance.
Another common argument is that intelligent design can’t be science because “real” science is restricted to only naturalistic or material explanations. To propose intelligent design as an alternative explanation commits what’s often called the “God-of-the-gaps” fallacy. In other words, intelligent design is merely trying to fill the holes in our understanding of science with God.
This argument assumes that, given enough time and research, scientists will find a naturalistic explanation for everything. Someone who does this is just assuming the worldview of materialism without ever arguing for it.
Intelligent design is far from a “God-of-the-gaps” argument. It is an argument from strong evidence in cosmology, biology, paleontology, and more that our universe and life bear the marks of a designing mind. Just as the pyramids and crime scenes imply minds at work in the past, intelligent design argues that the fine-tuning in physics, the information in DNA, and the remarkable engineering present in living things imply a mind at work as well. We know of no other cause that is capable of producing these phenomena. The most scientific thing to do, therefore, is follow the evidence.
Number 3: Intelligent design has been highly successful as a scientific theory.
Another common objection is that, unlike valid scientific theories, intelligent design makes no predictions, cannot be tested, and doesn’t help us better understand the world.
This is simply incorrect. Scientists who advocate intelligent design have, in fact, made numerous predictions that have turned out to be correct.
For example, intelligent design predicts that new forms of life would appear suddenly in the fossil record, rather than gradually, as Darwin expected and predicted. This is because new biological forms require large amounts of new genetic information, which comes only from a designing mind. As it turns out, the fossil record indicates that new life forms did appear suddenly—so suddenly, in fact, that certain layers of rock are said to contain “explosions” of biological diversity, creatures that seem to come from nowhere, without evolutionary ancestors.
Intelligent design also predicts that living things should display purpose and function, without accidental or “junk” features. For many years, it was believed that much of DNA was “junk,” purposeless leftovers of the evolutionary process, as Darwinism predicts. Advocates of intelligent design stuck with their prediction, believing that more research would eventually prove their prediction, and it did. Numerous studies in recent years have identified important functions for so-called “junk DNA,” showing that the problem wasn’t a lack of function, but our lack of knowledge about that function.
Finally, intelligent design predicts that the laws and constants of physics are “finely-tuned” to support complex life. It leads us to expect that forces like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force will possess improbable values that just happen to fall within a narrow range required for creatures like us to exist. Not only does this turn out to be true, but there’s no explanation for why the laws of physics are like this if we live in a universe not intended this way. This realization led atheist astrophysicist Fred Hoyle to remark, “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics…”
It's not intelligent design that is unscientific, but ruling out intelligence from the beginning and requiring scientists to be materialists is.
So, the next time someone says, “intelligent design isn’t science; it’s religion,” remember these three things:
1. What is meant by “Science” must be properly defined.
2. Intelligent design is an argument from evidence, not from ignorance.
3. Intelligent design has been highly successful as a scientific theory.
What Would You Say?
