Sophisticates Flock to `Intelligent Design'

Insight on the News, May 7, 2001 by John Elvin

Evolutionists, already losing ground in their battle for the exclusive franchise on an official theory of creation, face yet another challenge. According to a report in the New York Times, the newcomer is the intelligent-design theory -- "a more sophisticated idea" than biblical creationism. The essence of the theory seems to be that, due to the complexity of life, there must be an intelligent designer.

What a novel idea! Sounds as though these sophisticated theorists are getting awfully close to the "G"-word, but they do have their differences with creationists. They go along with the Darwinian notion that the development of life took place over billions of years. Evolutionists give them begrudging credit for "an effort to get rid of some of the blatantly fundamentalist elements of creationism," as one critic it.

But evolutionists are not about to back off. Intelligent-design theory "has an appeal to intellectuals who don't know anything about evolutionary biology, first because proponents have Ph.D.'s and second because it's not written in the sort of populist, folksy, anti-intellectual style," according to Jerry Coyne, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. Ah, yes, best to avoid that "populist, folksy" sort of language: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."