That is especially true of the living world. The more that geneticists and biologists study, the more it is seen that the living world exists with amazing complexity and sophistication.
The cell is a perfect example. In Darwin's time, scientists thought cells were quite simple -- only blobs of protoplasm. In fact, it has only been a few decades since biologists have recognized just how complex these small entities are. Bruce Alberts of the National Academy of Sciences, has said: "We have always underestimated cells. Undoubtedly we still do today. But at least we are no longer as naive as we were when I was a graduate student in the 1960s.... The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines."
According to Darwinism, undirected natural causes are solely responsible for the origin and development of life. In particular, Darwinism rules out the possibility of any guiding intelligence playing a role in life's origin and development. The very existence of the unexplained and the complex intelligibility on Earth raises questions that science cannot address and that point beyond the world. Intelligent Design shows there are indeed reasons for not believing that natural selection has all the answers.
THE CASE for NATURAL SELECTION
Intelligent Design theory, although around for thousands of years, offers no more concrete answers today than in the past. and, this is exactly what natural selection does offer -- as a science, it provides a method of learning about the physical universe by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable and repeatable ways.
The major arguments of Intelligent Design theorists are neither new...
In fact, these individuals are just an updated version of creationists. It is simply not true that science does not address all Aristotelian causes, whenever design needs to be explained. Further, while irreducible complexity is indeed a valid criterion to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent design, there exist other possibilities, and living organisms are not irreducibly complex. The complexity-specification criterion is actually met by natural selection and thus cannot offer a means to distinguish intelligent from non-intelligent design.
In addition, if supernatural design exists at all, and where is the logical evidence, it is certainly not of the kind to which most religionists would likely subscribe, and it cannot be distinguished from the technology of a very advanced civilization. Therefore, the suggestions by ID supporters such as Behe and Dembski that science should be opened to supernatural explanations and that these should be allowed in public school curricula are not relevant. It has already been clearly decided that only theories based on scientific fact and not belief in a supernatural being can be taught in schools. Anything else would be a complete throwback in modern-day advances and intellect.
References
Dembski, William. The Design Inference. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Edis, Taner. "Intelligent Design Meets Artificial Intelligence." Skeptical Inquirer. 25.2 (March/April 2001). 56.
Mayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Orr, H. Allen. "Darwin v. Intelligent Design (again)." Boston Review 21.6 (December/January). 35.
Pennock, Robert. Tower of Babel. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
Wells, Jonathan. Icons of Evolution. New York: Regnery Publishing, 2000.
Zimmer, Carl. Evolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
