Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the idea that the universe is not simple enough to be made by nature. Instead, people who believe Intelligent Design think that a smart being must have made everything. It is a kind of creationism, but it does not say who the designer is.[1] Intelligent Design is the idea that the types of plants and animals around us were not made using evolution. Some scientists do not think that there are good reasons to believe Intelligent Design. In 2005, in the Dover trial, a United States judge ruled that Intelligent Design was a kind of creationism, so that it violated the First Amendment.[2]
Most scientists think intelligent design is not real science. They think it is a religious idea which should not be called scientific.
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[change] The Complexity of Life
Intelligent design suggests that life is too complex. Scientists have discovered that even a single cell is complex. The genes in a cell code for a huge amount of information. Creationists say that information, like computer programming, has to come from an intelligent source and cannot be made randomly.
A famous person, William Paley, said that life is more complicated than a machine (like as a watch.) He thought that just like a watch was made by a smart designer, so (he says) if you see an animal, you should think that it was also designed.
It is often argued that, although an amino acid could be made randomly, a protein is such a precise sequence and structure that it would be impossible to make by chance. Also, a protein or DNA would not do anything by itself; so a whole life form would have to be made all at once.
Scientists say this is not correct. There is evidence that life developed through evolution and no "smart designer" was needed.
[change] Well Designed?
Intelligent design suggests that every part of an animal is useful and there for a reason, showing how smart the designer was. Evolution would suggest that many parts of the same animal should be useless or not very good, because it came from random evolution by trial and error. People have said that many parts of the human body are pointless, but some of these parts were later proved to do important things.
[change] Similarities
Many parts of different animals are very similar. Some people think this is hard evidence of evolution. People who believe in intelligent design say it shows that a common designer used the same good design ideas in many creations.
If creatures have similar parts because they came from a common ancestor, then the genes that code for these parts should also be similar. Sometimes this is true; other times similar structures are coded for by entirely different genes. Because somebody can show lone examples of this kind of data and claim that it proves evolution wrong or right, people argue about this a lot.
[change] Related pages
- Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - A trial that banned the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. It was ruled that this action would defy the First Amemdment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the government may not promote one religion over the other. However, some argue that the ruling itself promotes humanistic/materialistic religions over deistic religions. Notably, intelligent design was not banned due to a lack of evidence.
[change] References
- ↑ Numbers, Ronald L. (2006). The Creationists, Expanded Edition. Harvard University Press. pp. 373, 379–380. ISBN 0674023390.
- ↑ Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 04 cv 2688 (December 20, 2005)., Conclusion of Ruling.
[change] Other Websites
- H. Allen Orr wrote an article for the New Yorker called Devolution: Why intelligent design isn’t. It explains why scientists do not believe intelligent design.
