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The Intelligent Design movement is a recent scientific approach to the discussion of the origins of the universe and life. While many Christian thinkers lead within this movement, Intelligent Design boasts scholars from many faiths and even agnostic lines of thought. These scholars have unified to challenge the notion that the possibility of “design” is outside the realm of true scientific inquiry. Instead, they say, science can and must be free to seek truth wherever it might be found?including the possibility of an intelligent Designer in the universe.
Some Christians object to Intelligent Design thought because of its inclusion of diverse theories about origins?including “old-earth” creationism and theistic evolution, as well as the more traditional “young-earth” creationism. Others, however, appreciate that the movement, by its non-religious and open approach, has developed true inroads into challenging purely naturalistic scientific dogma.
“We [proponents of Intelligent Design] have the better argument, so I think increasingly people are going to realize that. But I think another thing which is going to work for us?and I think this is why I have a sense of inevitability even that we will succeed with this?is you found a younger generation who is looking and seeing, what do the Darwinists, materialists have to offer? What do the intelligent design people have to offer? And people’s intuitions start with intelligent design, they don’t start out as Darwinists. You have to be educated out of design.”
?William Dembski, senior fellow, Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture and an associate professor at Baylor, in an interview in the March 30 edition of Christianity Today.
“The threat of ideological indoctrination [when teaching theories of origins] does not come from allowing students to ponder the philosophical questions raised by the origins issue. Instead, it comes from force-feeding students a single perspective.”
?Michael Newton Keas, Oklahoma Baptist University science professor and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, in an article from the institute’s website titled “The Meaning of Evolution.”
“[F]or believers to access God’s mind rationally ? should also be construed as a lifelong faith venture, something far more significant than a hastily drawn, connect-the-dots theology of expedience, however artfully penned some novice theologians may consider their scribblings to date to be. In other words, thinking God’s thoughts after him, level by graduated level, is just plain hard to do.”
?Hal Ostrander, religion and philosophy chair at Brewton Parker College in Georgia, quoted in 2001 while serving at Southern Seminary’s Boyce College of the Bible.
