I was convinced by Intelligent Design opponents in the media that I.D. was in some way tied into Christian theology, picturing some sort of unholy mish-mosh of Genesis and Darwin that strained credibility as it highlighted the flaws in both. Though I consider myself a religious man I’m not a Christian and believe in a vast and unknowable universe, a true mystery in the esoteric sense of the world. I therefore was suspicious of Intelligent design (and Darwinism to be frank) as I was led to believe both sought to “prove” the Truth of life in the universe, something I would politely call over reaching.

LaShawn Barber however wrote an excellent review of The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine which explained Intelligent Design not as the product of Christian Fundamentalisms but as a philosophical contemplation of the beauty, intricacy and harmony of the living world:

One doesn’t have to believe in the God of the Bible to hold the view that life’s complexity is evidence of an intelligent agent. The idea that an undirected, random series of events caused something as wonderfully complex, specifically magnificent, and infinitely beautiful as life is, to put it mildly, ludicrous. Living things look designed because they were designed.

Contrary to common belief, ID is not a negative argument against naturalistic evolution. It’s a positive argument for an intelligent designer based on observing the same informational properties in nature that are found in human-designed structures.

Put that way, I.D. is no different than many of my own philosophical musings, and fits into almost any religious framework. It has a universality to it that is almost Theosophical yet it is derived from a Aristotelian philosophical framework.

In other words it’s not a crackpot theory that can, or should, be devalued based on trendy anti-Christian sentiment or political bias. Instead it is a philosophical stance on the nature of reality that should be use as a jumping off point for any discussion of Humanity and its place in the universe.

Atheists and Darwinists often argue, for example, for various forms of morality even though from their own world view morality is irrelevant. Since there is no design in the universe no action can be claimed to be inherently good or bad, right or wrong. The introduction of intelligent design into the conversation forces us to confront the possibility of the existence of good and evil actions. This sounds like a great discussion for children preparing to go off to college, one that the people keeping I.D. out of schools don’t want to happen.

I wonder why.