Touchstone: Intelligent Design

Touchstone Magazine is reprising their special issue devoted to the Intelligent Design alternative to Darwinism. The first such special issue was July/August 1999. I personally lean more toward a specifically young earth model than most of the authors cited, but their views are certainly consistent with the traditional view. (And, of course, Augustine did not hold to a strict six-day model, so there is room for debate on what the traditional model actually is.)

Returning to a theme first raised five years ago, the July/August issue of Touchstone will present the Intelligent Design movement and its critique of Darwinism and the naturalistic (or secular) approach to science and society.

Intelligent Design (or ID) theory argues that science itself reveals that the cosmos and plant and animal life were designed and did not arise and develop accidentally as evolutionary theory claims. In fact, ID theorists argue that they could not have arisen in the way evolutionary theory claims.

These theorists — most of whom are Christians, but some of whom are not religious at all — also argue that mainstream evolutionary scientists refuse to see the evidence because they have defined science in a way that unscientifically excludes consideration of design. The philosophy of “naturalism” is imposed upon the evidence so that the authority of science is invoked for a secular view of the world. Some in the ID movement have gone on to expose and critique the effect of naturalism in other human enterprises, including ethics, art, and politics.