Intelligent design seems to get no respect these days. Universities fire or deny tenure to professors who support intelligent design. College and high school biology text books gloss over the scientific problems associated with the origin of life as trivial, because the publishers can not risk being labeled as creationists. The news media equates intelligent design to young earth creationism. US courts have ruled that intelligent design is not science. So is intelligent design dead? Has Darwin won?

This censorship, misinformation and discrimination arises because most people fail to understand the difference between intelligent design and science. The following definitions may help.

Definition of Science: science is the methodology that mankind uses to explore and describe the universe and everything in it. This methodolgy is based on two assumptions: 1) scientists can accurately observe nature (the observable axiom) and 2) everything that happens, will happen, or has happened can be explained without invoking the supernatural (the naturalistic axiom).

In other words, science assumes that God does not exist and then sets about to prove this assumption. Take evolution for example. Shortly after Darwin, science assumed that evolution happened and then set about to prove how it happened. The naturalistic axiom does no allow science to ask if it can happen or why did it happen? Science cannot ask these questions because science assumes that God does not exist.
Thus, science is limited.

Definition of Intelligent Design: intelligent design is a methodology that some scientists use to explore and describe the universe and everything in it. This methodolgy is based on one assumption: 1) scientists can accurately observe nature (the observable axiom).

Because intelligent design does not assume that God does not exists, it is not science. Intelligent design has more flexibility than science in that it can ask questions that science cannot. Take the origin of life for example. Intelligent design can look at science’s inability to explain this event as evidence supporting the existence of a designer. Scientists who use the intelligent design methodology have and continue to identify problems associated with the origin of life that evolution cannot explain and will likely never explain.

So which is better science or intelligent design? This depends on who is deciding. Many scientists are perfectly happy assuming that God does not exists, so they prefer science to intelligent design. These scientists are not upset by the fact that college textbooks say that life began in the primordial soup as a self replicating RNA molecule when the primary scientific literature (articles in journals like Science, Nature, and the Journal of Molecular Evolution) contradict this scenario. These scientists are not interested in the truth.

Others do care about the truth. These scientists want to understand the universe and everything in it. If God had some part to play in creation, then these scientists would rather not assign His part to the role of some yet unidentified and mysterious naturalistic process. It concerns these scientists that college and high school biology text books are not allowed to present the many unsolved issues with the origin of life that are so plentiful in the primary scientific literature. Most of these scientists do not voice their concerns because if they do, evolutionists will label them creationists. They will then be denied tenure, their papers will not get published, they might be fired and their research grants will probably be denied.

This academic censorship is well documented on other web sites, and for the most part I think it is working. So Darwin wins by intimidation and fear. The darwinian fundamentalists are squashing free speech and free thoughts to assert their world view. And the tragedy here is that these fundamentalists do not even understand that their unwavering believe in evolution is based on nothing more than their faith in the naturalistic axiom.