It may not be long before your local Home Depot carries self-cleaning windows, and if it happens, the credit should go—in part—to the amazing lotus blossom. People have wondered for years why lotus blossoms are always clean; nothing—not dust nor smog nor debris—dirties these bright white flowers. Engineers studying the flower’s surface have found that its petals are covered with a microscopic texture in a pattern that makes the petals self-cleaning. Anything that lands on the flower simply slides off.

With that knowledge, engineers have created plate glass windows that share the lotus blossom’s microscopic pattern and its special characteristic: nothing sticks to them. And while today the price is exorbitant, we may soon be looking through inexpensive, self-cleaning windows.

Ah, concluded a recent European TV program, the wonders of evolution to produce such design and elegance, such perfection. The lotus, it said, is a triumph of natural selection and the evolutionary process and now its secret has been discovered and copied by humans, the pinnacle of that evolution here on Earth.

And yet, scientists have in the past not seen the wonders of nature exemplified by the lotus flower as evidence for impersonal forces of nature, but for a designer. If there is order, coherence, and design, people reason, there must be an Intelligent Designer behind it all.

Biology and the Appearance of Purpose

“Intelligent Design” has moved from being an alternative to evolution mostly debated within the confines of the Christian community to a prominent place in the news, on the op-ed pages, in the funny papers, occasionally in classrooms, in legislatures, Congress, and the courts. The teaching of Intelligent Design—or even hinting at Intelligent Design—is a controversial issue that is being debated all over the country (most recently in Dover, Pennsylvania) and now finally in the halls of the academy.

Intelligent Design (ID) is an alternative to Darwin and evolution when trying to answer the question of “origins”: How did we get here and how did things turn out as they are? Intelligent Design is the scientific theory that observes the natural world and concludes that the diversity and complexity of life on Earth can only be rationally explained by positing a thinking mind behind it all.

Darwinist Richard Dawkins wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose.” Intelligent Design theorists respond that this appearance is reality. Complicated biological things “give the appearance of being designed for a purpose” because they were designed for a purpose. This is a possibility that Dawkins and other evolutionists cannot admit—not for scientific reasons—but for philosophical and religious reasons. Evolution and Intelligent Design represent two radically different worldviews and the clash between those two worldviews, not simply a disagreement over scientific evidence, is at the heart of the current conflict and explains the passion on both sides.

Evolutionists believe that the universe and everything in it is the result of blind and purposeless forces. It is, at its core, naturalistic and materialistic. That is, it excludes anything that could be termed supernatural or spiritual. As Carl Sagan repeated in his long-running PBS program “Cosmos,” “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” The similarity of this statement to the Christian affirmation, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit ... as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end,” is probably more than coincidental. It is also illustrative. For the intellectual descendents of Charles Darwin, the Cosmos has been substituted for God in their thinking as well as in their creeds.

Intelligent Design looks at the evidence of nature and insists that no natural processes could possibly, even given billions and billions of years, have brought about the diversity and stability of life as we know it on Earth. Rather than being constricted by naturalism and materialism, Intelligent Design advocates argue that the only explanation for all that exists is a supernatural designer.

Creationism by Another Name?

That is not to say that supporters of Intelligent Design are all creationists—or even Christians, for that matter. Intelligent Design is not focused on the mechanisms of creation. It does not address the question of whether the designer simply spoke all things into being, creating by divine fiat or whether the designer created natural processes or whether the designer is the universe and is thus designing itself. While perhaps the majority of Intelligent Design advocates are Christians, the claim that Intelligent Design is merely creationism by another name, and that the purpose is to sneak fundamental Christianity into the public schools is spurious at best.

Even the Dalai Lama has weighed in on the side of Design. In his recent book The Universe in a Single Atom, the Buddhist monk warns that viewing people as “the product of pure change in the random combination of genes” is “an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty.” Philosopher and mathematician William Dembski, author of numerous books on Intelligent Design, has often spoken to Hindu and other pantheistic groups who view Intelligent Design as the god who is all things creating itself.

Similarly, Chuck Colson tells of meeting Anthony Flew. This preeminent atheistic philosopher at Oxford used to debate C.S. Lewis over the existence of God. Lewis never convinced him and Flew staunchly maintained his atheism—until last year. Flew, who is by his own admission not a Christian, points to what we have learned in recent years about DNA and concludes that this “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved.” Flew moved from atheism to a modern-day deism because of the evidence of design.

This is part of a pattern. Gregg Easterbrook, writing for Wired, comments: “As recently as the '70s, intellectuals assumed that hard science was on track to resolve the two Really Big Questions: why life exists, and how the universe began. What’s more, both Really Big Questions were assumed to involve strictly deterministic forces. But things haven’t worked out that way. Instead, the more scientists have learned, the more mysterious the Really Big Questions have become.”

To solve the question of how the universe began, cosmologists and theologians gathered to discuss the issue. The Big Bang theory, Easterbrook writes, posits that the universe with its more than 50 billion galaxies began in a split second from a single point. All of this something came out of . . . nothing. “ It’s this realization,” Easterbrook says, “that something transcendent started it all—which has hard-science types… using terms like ‘miracle.’” This is not to say that all cosmologists agree. Naturalistic counter theories remain, but there appears to be a solid foothold for design theory among those asking how the universe began.

Biology is the Battlefield

This is not so in the field of biology. In this discipline, the question of how life began and developed is the place where the controversy is hottest. It’s here that the textbook battles and lawsuits are being waged.

The biologists’ scientific orthodoxy has been and continues to be evolution defined as an entirely natural, unguided process. How did life begin? In the primordial ooze where the right chemicals got together under the right conditions. How did creatures develop, leave the ooze, and fill the dry land with cows and squirrels, wildebeests and humans? Small mutations occurring over a long period of time and an indeterminate number of intermediate forms now lost to modern study. It’s all there in high school textbooks throughout the country.

What the textbooks leave out, however, is the recognition that evolution doesn’t even begin to have the answers it claims. As Nancy Pearcey points out in her book Total Truth, “evolution is, as the title of one influential book puts it, A Theory in Crisis.”

One of the contributors to the crisis is biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University. Behe points out that some things could never have evolved because they are “irreducibly complex.” A cell, says Behe, is as irreducibly complex as the humble mousetrap.

The mousetrap comprises five parts: a base, a spring, a strike bar, a trigger, and a latch to hold the trigger until the unfortunate mouse trips it. Take away any one part and there is no mousetrap. Mutate any piece—weaken the spring, for example or twist the trigger—and the mousetrap no longer functions.

Cells, Behe argues, are like that mousetrap except that they have many more parts that must all function properly. While a human can live without an arm or a leg or a spleen, cells are irreducibly complex. Take away or mutate any one component and the cell dies. Even if someone thinks that gradual evolution over time can explain a human, it cannot explain how the cells that make up that human ever came to be. Cells are an all-or-nothing proposition. Either every part is present and working properly or there is no cell. The cell could never gradually evolve. It had to be created by design and that requires an Intelligent Designer.

A God of the Gaps?

An objection is that this is nothing but a primitive “god of the gaps” theory, but that is not the case.

To the ancients, observable phenomenon that could not be explained were attributed to the gods. The sun rises daily in the east and sets in the west. How can that happen? The answer was that a god—in this case Apollo—loaded the sun in his chariot and drove it across the sky from east to west every day, returning each night to the east by some unknown route. And so columnist Charles Krauthammer, citing the teaching of Intelligent Design in Kansas, argued in the Washington Post that Intelligent Design “is a self-enclosed, tautological ‘theory’ whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge—in this case evolution—they are to be filled by God.”

This is an important objection and should not be treated lightly. After all, if the only response to “Why when it gets warm does the snow go away and water appear?” was, “Because the god of things that fall from the sky, wet with rain, collects the snow for next year and leaves a puddle,” we could have no science at all. Nonetheless, Krauthammer says that his biggest objection to Intelligent Design is that in allowing the teaching of Intelligent Design, Kansas redefines science “dropping the words 'natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us,’ thus unmistakably implying… that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This,” he concludes, “is an insult to both religion and science.”

Interestingly, the new Kansas definition is only now consistent with every other state in the union.

From Empiricism to Imperialism

Greg Koukl of “Stand to Reason” [a ministry that equips Christians to defend the faith in the public square] argues that a definition of science that insists on natural explanations for the world at the exclusion of all others is a modern corruption of the classical understanding of science. “The older tradition,” he writes, “had one aim: to identify ideas worth believing” in every arena of human knowledge. Over time, however, science shifted “from a general methodology aimed at determining truth to one that was solely empirical.” After that, “scientific empiricism became scientific imperialism: science as the final measure of all truth.”

Thus, rather than positing a god-of-the-gaps, Intelligent Design asks, “What is the best available explanation for the facts about life on Earth?” while the evolutionist asks, “What is the best available naturalistic explanation for the facts about life on Earth?” Evolutionist have simply decided ahead of time that they will reject certain answers, not because of science, but because of a philosophical commitment to naturalism and rejection of supernaturalism.

This has been nowhere more clearly stated than by science writer Richard Dawkins: “Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory… we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.” Why? Because the divine has been ruled out ahead of time.

Ramifications for Everyday Life

To some, this may seem an interesting matter for debate and speculation, but little else. After all, what bearing does it have on everyday life? Nancy Pearcey notes: “As one historian [Edward A. Purcell, Jr.] explains, Darwinism led to a naturalistic view of knowledge in which ‘theological dogmas and philosophical absolutes were at worst fraudulent and at best merely symbolic of deep human aspirations.’ Let’s unpack that phrase: If Darwinism is true, then both religion and philosophical absolutes (like Goodness, Truth, and Beauty) are strictly speaking false or ‘fraudulent.’” This represents the triumph of a naturalistic and materialistic view of life and the exclusion of all religious points of view from meaningful participation in the culture, the classroom, and the public square. The stakes in this debate are extremely high.

That’s why so many were disappointed by the recently-decided case in Dover, Pennsylvania. In this case the school board, despite what were probably good intentions, overstepped what was legally possible by mandating the study of Intelligent Design in science classrooms. The judge ruled that Intelligent Design “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents,” was therefore religious in nature, and thus cannot be required for science classes. Most observers, aware of the current state of Establishment clause jurisprudence, were not surprised. This case, however, is certainly not the last word on the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. It may take a while, but new cases will come up and will eventually be won.

Evolution of an Idea

After all, someone has said that critics of any new idea go through four distinct stages:
1. “That’s a silly idea.”

2. “That’s a silly and dangerous idea.”

3. “The idea may have some merit.”

4. “That’s what I’ve been saying all my life.”

The debate over Intelligent Design is somewhere between stages two and three. While it’s popularly portrayed as silly and dangerous, last year two secular university presses published books about the controversy over design. The conversion of atheist Anthony Flew and others to a belief in an Intelligent Designer has had a positive influence. And the controversy that rages in school boards, legislatures, and courtrooms, provides public forums for Intelligent Design advocates to make the case again that natural wonders like the petals of the lotus flower did not just happen, but were the result of intent and design.

Because the debate is in large part taking place on a local level, informed, thoughtful Christians can make a difference. Now is a time to act. Intelligent Design is not just a major shift in the way we think about the particulars of cosmology and biology. It is a major shift in the way we think about all of life and in the way we live life as individuals and as a culture. It is a debate in which we all have a major stake.