Recently, I have participated in many discussions regarding the current controversies surrounding "evolution vs. Intelligent design." As I have read, replied and stood back from the discussion to simply observe, I have noticed some interesting things.

Confusion of Terms

On both sides of the issue, there are severe misunderstandings about the terms and definitions which the other side employs. For example, many antagonists of intelligent design (ID) wrongly conflate the same with a rigid, literalistic 6-day, 24-hour interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts. While ID is championed by many who also affirm the literalistic interpretation of Genesis, ID itself cannot be reduced to this. Rather, ID merely states that the complexity of the physical universe which we inhabit is such that it must have been designed by an "intelligent" power, force, etc. However, the identity of this "intelligence" is not necessarily identified, and could range anywhere from an advanced alien intelligence from another universe to a supernatural sweet potato.

Equally, proponents of ID and creationism often make a similar mistake by equating big bang cosmology and biological evolutionary theory with atheism. This, of course, is not surprising, as many of those sympathetic to ID locate the identity of the intelligence More >