Recently I was given an assignment in my English class. I had to right a research paper about any topic that has opposing view points about it, such as abortion, and global warming. I took the opportunity to learn more about a topic I was curious about, Intelligent Design, otherwise known as ID. I think it’s plausible to say it would be agreed that most of our student body has never heard of ID, or know very little about it. I would like to take the opportunity now to be the informer and clear up this confusion.ID is a theory that takes a look at the natural world and sees the explanation for life and matter is an intelligent designer, or a creator. The reason they think that an intelligent designer created life and the cosmos is because of the two concepts of irreducible complexity and specified complexity.
Irreducible complexity is when something is so complex that if you were to remove any part of the system it would cease to function. An analogy of this would a car engine, if you remove a cylinder or a belt or the exhaust the engine would sooner or later break down and need to be repaired. Advocates of intelligent design argue how can natural selection developed an irreducibly complex system if it would only build upon the system one part at a time. For instance, natural selection would have it that the car engine would be built cylinder by cylinder, belt by belt. But, the laws of natural selection would say these spare parts have no benefit to the car so they would be thrown out. Natural selection would not know that these parts are needed for a larger more complicated system, but an intelligent designer would know that because it is intelligent.
Specified complexity is when something is complex and has a certain functioning order. A good analogy for this is a newspaper article. One letter, such as the letter A, is specified because it follows an order of lines, but is not complex. But when you put the letters together to make words it becomes complex because of its length and specified because all of the letters are in a functioning order. In the living world this is something like DNA. How could evolution have come up with something by chance that has commands for everything that an animal or person is?
Intelligent design uses these two concepts to try and prove the existence of a creator, and to discredit evolution.
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I had heard of Itelligent Design before but I never really to the time to understand it. I knew that it was an extremely controversial topic in schools because of the debate on whether teachers should teach it and whether it corresponded with modern sciences. This post cleared things up for me a lot, even though I may not agree with the idea. But it's a great topic nonetheless and I look forward to reading more about the religions that you research and blog about. :)
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