Intelligent Design is an approach to the origins of observed life that does NOT start from the axiom that Genesis is true and accurate, but rather starts with the actual observed facts, and then in an act of philosophical courage, breaks free of the assumption made by Richard Dawkins and Darwin that ONLY material things that we can observe can exist, and that there is no intelligent agent manipulating living matter other than human breeders who do it intentionally, and human land developers, who do it unintentionally by modifying the environment of living species.

There is in fact no scientific reason to insist that there cannot have been an intelligence antecedent to humanity, nor that the intelligence was unable to manipulate living matter. After all, mankind is now cataloguing the individual genes of mankind and other species, and determining their function, and starting to make modifications in order to cure genetic defects that cause disease. In a few hundred years, as any decent science fiction anthology can tell you, we ought to be able to create living things to order, within certain limitations of the existing genes and proteins in living matter.

Since the earth is about 4.2 billion years old, and the universe about 14 billion years old, there is no way to rule out the possibility that a prior intelligence existed that intervened at one or many points in the events that led to the development of life on earth, most of which happened over the last billion years. Such an intelligence would only have to be about as smart as we are, and just a little older in terms of its scientific knowledge. This is the theme of the book and movie "2001".

It is possible that some day mankind could introduce life to the planets Mars or Venus, or moons such as Titan or Europa. Fred Hoyle and other scientists are quite serious in proposing that the essential complex chemical compounds of life get distributed around the galaxy on meteors that have infinite patience until they crash down on a likely world and seed it with life.

ID simply proposes that there are ways to rationally test to see whether evidence for this outside intelligent intervention can be identified in the forms of living molecules now. They look for configurations of molecules in living things that are much more likely to have been created on purpose than by random mutation. Essentially they are making the same argument that an archeologist does when he asserts that a particular flint shard, that is symmetrical and useful, was made for a purpose by an intelligent agent, rather than being a product of natural processes like erosion and seasonal temperature variations. It is the same argument made by a forensic scientist who asserts that the evidence at the scene of a sudden death indicates that the death was caused by a purposive actor, rather than by a random accident. It is the same argument that is made when, after an aircraft rams a building, which could be a highly unlikely but unintentional accident, another plane soon rams into a second building next door, and then a third plane similarly strikes another building hundreds of miles away within an hour. Because these events are very, very unlikely, and their closeness in time is even more unlikely, the most likely and therefore rational explanation for their cause is an intelligent and purposeful, albeit evil, agent as their common cause. As we learn of the communications from passengers in each plane, this direct evidence of hijacking simply confirms what we already have deduced from the closely spaced events themselves.

ID does not attempt to go beyond that to identify characteristics of the intelligent and purposive agent(s) who acted to create certain specific aspects of living things. Those of us who believe in Genesis can start there and accept God's assertion that He is the Creator, which is also confirmed by John 1 and Hebrews 1. We believe the two bodies of knowledge, the Bible and unboxed scientific analysis without the materialistic axiom, logically point to each other, but it is not necessary to accept Genesis before one can accept ID. The vociferous opposition to ID is triggered by its power to persuade people that they don't have to buy into materialism and atheism in order to be, paralleling Dawkins, "a self-respecting scientist."

ID itself does not require the Bible to be true in order to make its assertions and its critique of Darwinism true. The RESULT of ID, as distinguished from its basis and its analysis, is to be open minded about alternatives to the materialist view of creation, which is basically that "stuff happens", without essential cause, in a mystery that is more impenetrable than the mystery of how the Trinity reconciles a unitary, unembodied and passionless God with the Christ who was born, suffered, died, resurrected, and ascended to His father and our Father.

Once a person admits it is possible that all things did not create themselves, then he does not rule out of hand the possibility that the God described in the Old and New Testaments had a hand in the process.

Some Catholic scientists like Kenneth Miller have a very theological view of God as creator, asserting that God put into the first moment of creation, the Big Bang, all of the elements and forces and vectors needed to bring about suns, planets, moons, water, and living plants and animals, and mankind. They also believe that none of the important mutations and selections is truly random, but that God influences the outcome of random events to ensure HIs purposes are fulfilled. Thus they are content to use a narrative that on its surface sounds identical to one written by an atheist, but for them has an extra layer of meaning that affirms God's role as creator.

My personal view is that Genesis, on the one hand, is so short that it seems irrational to assert that this is supposed to be the complete story of creation, either as an observation or an explanation of mechanism or purpose. On the other hand, if one looks at it from the perspective of the specific creation of the earth itself, it matches in major steps the succession of events that the sciences of cosmology, astronomy, geology and finally biology state are the main milestones in the earth's history. It does not correlate so well with the sequence of events that precedes the formation of the solar system and the coalescence of the Milky Way Galaxy. What it seems to offer us is a narrative as if someone is standing off to the side as our own earth and its immediate environs come into being. It is a vision given to Moses by God that Moses then reduces to writing as he writes Genesis.

The insistence by some people that the "day" of Genesis has to be the same as a 24 hour day is not required by the language. The Bible uses the term "day" in all sorts of ways, including referring to entire eras. One variant is to take the verse that says "a day with the Lord is as a thousand years" and then apply that to Genesis and say that the creation took 6,000 years rather than 6 24 hour days, a difference in magnitude of 365,000. When the variation in length of time is that wide, on what basis do we rule out another factor of 1000 or 1,000,000? Somehow God has to work FAST or it's not a miracle? If we note that the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter, and then see the vastness of the universe beyond that, we understand that the physical dimensions of God's creation are virtually unimaginable for humans. The Bible affirms that God is eternal, and will continue into the infinite future, as will mankind, resurrected to a positive or negative situation for eternity. With infinity in time going forward, and infinite extent in the three spatial dimensions, why do we insist that the time dimension backward in time must be so short and disproportionate to the other dimensions of creation? What is a billion years to God?

Another distinction between a Darwinian universe and one that is purposeful is that the vast expanse of creation would not go to waste if God made it. If His purposes are advanced by making this earth and its people, why wouldn't it also be advanced by having the same kind of creation on the multiplicity of planets in the galaxy and universe? The role of randomness in Darwinism and materialism is so pronounced that it is not mathematically possible for many worlds to have separate creations of life that attain intelligence. If we are able to continue our project of finding and then examining planets around other stars, it may be possible to detect signs of intelligent life on them, and if we find it to be relatively abundant, that fact will be a strong argument against Darwinism and a strong argument for purposeful creation. A highly populated universe would be a testament to a God who has joy in and loves his creations, and multiplies them not only on earth but everywhere he can.

The atheist claim that belief in religion violates the “Copernican principle of the mediocrity and ordinariness of the earth” has things backward. It is they, with their insistence that life can come about only by chance, who must insist that earth is unique in the galaxy, if not the universe. Darwin does not claim that life is inevitable, but rather that it is random. Stephen Jay Gould asserted that, if you went back in time and restarted the earth's biological development, the outcome would be totally unpredictable due to these random factors, with no guarantee of intelligent mankind being the result. Thus, most other worlds would fail to produce higher order life, let alone intelligence.

On the other hand, those of us who believe in a God who loves to create have every reason to believe that, for most purposes, the earth is absolutely ordinary in relation to the many worlds God has made in the observable universe. If he thought the earth was "good" at creation, there is every reason he would multiply that goodness by creating other worlds and peopling them as well. So earth with its human civilization is quite unexceptional in God's view.

Why do we insist that God cannot work slowly? He seems content with the slow growth we experience as individuals, and the gradual progress that is made in carrying the gospel around the world, which has gone on for 2000 years and is still going on, with millions out of earshot of the good news. Christ's second coming did not happen in 70 AD, or 100 AD, nor in 2000 AD. God has patience, more than we short-lived humans. How do we get off telling Him the schedule for His own work? We should be humble in our interpretation of the Bible and not insist that it must have originally intended a meaning that we apply to it, as much from our own cultural assumptions as anything. To insist on more precision than Moses' original vision had in it is presumptuous of us. It is clearly a summary. The fact that it does not describe the details of planting trees and installing fish in the seas and birds in the air does not mean that there were no details in the original event, and that they all just popped into existence. We are told only a few of the living things that were created. There is not a total catalogue of all the varieties of fish, insects or mammals.

Why then should we insist that the narrative has to be considered complete and definitive in terms of the events that took place? If the bats were created without being specifically mentioned, the way they were created and distributed is also omitted. This indicates that there are omissions from the process as well. Insisting that only those things specifically described as happening could have occurred is not warranted by the nature of the narrative itself.

The Gospel of John says that if all the things Christ said and did were recorded, the whole earth could not contain the books. This is hyperbole, but the gospels clearly contain only a minute fraction of the ministry of Christ, which lasted three years, but the books can obviously be read in a few hours. 99.9% of Christ's actual teaching and other acts are not in the record.

Why then should we insist that Genesis 1 and 2 have to contain all the essential details of the creation? That there is no part of the story that is not there, when the narrative itself does not say that, and we can hardly assert that the Bible gives 100% of details when it plainly says it does not.