Let's start by separating intelligent design theory from the views of many activists advocating it. ID, as it's often called, has indeed become a cause celebre for religious conservatives, some of whom would be happier actually teaching creationism--the actual claims in the Bible.
So it's not surprising that ID has been labeled "creationism lite" by critics.
But "pure" intelligent design theory does not go that far. It basically says that Darwinian evolution does not describe everything and that the complexity of biological design indicates that a "designer" helped create it, rather than a random process. This is not so far off from what Thomas Jefferson or other deists might have advocated. They believed that the Creator designed the laws of nature and let them run--but there was never any question that the scientific laws had a designer. I suspect that like modern-day intelligent design advocates, people like Jefferson--enlightenment thinkers with a scientific bent--would be irritated with the Darwinian assumption that God played no role.
Conversely, there's nothing in intelligent design that requires one to believe the world was created in six 24-hour days. In fact, it may come as a shock to some religious Christians that ID's leading advocate, William Dembski, doesn't believe in the scientific validity of key parts of the Bible.
"The evidence of cosmology and geology strongly confirms a universe that is not thousands but rather billions of years old," William Dembski writes in a new article. "Intelligent design should be understood as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in Scripture."
Still, religious activists have a lot to lose by pushing intelligent design into the schools in hopes of pointing people to God--though they may not realize it.
Why? They may squander a victory they've been winning in the court of public opinion. 54% of those surveyed in June did not believe humans developed from earlier species. The poll also said 64% said we were "created directly by God," while only 10% seemed to take the intelligent design view that "human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them."
Let's take a hard, scientific look at Adam's rib.
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