What is Intelligent Design?

Intelligent design (I.D.) is not what people often assume it is.

For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism.  Unlike earlier generations of creationists, proponents of I.D. do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is 10,000-years-old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah's flood.  Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: Adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth.

The movement's main positive claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that, in any other context, we would attribute to intelligence.  Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural--or more precisely, by any mindless--process.  Instead, the design inherent in organisms can be accounted for only by invoking a designer, and one who is very, very smart.

All of which puts I.D. squarely at odds with Darwin.  Darwin's theory of evolution was meant to show how the fantastically complex features of organisms could arise without the intervention of a designing mind.  According to Darwinism, evolution largely reflects the combined action of random mutation and natural selection. 

I.D. advocates point to two developments that, in their view, undermine Darwinism.  The first is the molecular revolution in biology.  Beginning in the 1950s, molecular biologists revealed a staggering and unsuspected degree of complexity within the cells that make up all life.  This complexity lies beyond the abilities of Darwinism to explain.   Second, they claim that new mathematical findings cast doubt on the power of natural selection.  Selection may play a role in evolution, but it cannot accomplish what biologists suppose it can.

But there are biologists that point out different ways Darwinian evolution can build irreducibly complex systems.  In one, elaborate structures may evolve for one reason and then get co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function.  Design theorists have made some concessions to their criticisms but emphasize that, while irreducibly complex systems can in principle evolve, biologists can't reconstruct, in convincing detail, just how any such system did evolve.

Source: "Master Planned: Why Intelligent Design Isn't" by H. Allen Orr, The New Yorker, May 30, 2005

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All of which puts I.D. squarely at odds with Darwin. Darwin's theory of evolution was meant to show how the fantastically complex features of organisms could arise without the intervention of a designing mind. According to Darwinism, evolution largely reflects the combined action of random mutation and natural selection.