Are evolution and intelligent design mutually exclusive?

Answer 1

Yes. Evolution is science. Intelligent Design is dogma that contradicts the evidence found by science.

Answer

It could be argued that evolution and intelligent design (ID) are not competing ideas, or it could be argued that they are mutually exclusive. Let's look at both sides of the equation and attempt to puzzle it out.

Evolution is represented by modern evolutionary synthesis (MES), the current "state of the art" model of evolution. MES looks at the big picture as regards life on earth and the changes it has undergone in the eons since it arose here. MES is not science that is "scrambling" for facts to support it as some supporters of creation theory might suggest. Rather, MES explains the facts. It is fact. Life has been here a long, long time. And it has taken many forms. Changes in its forms are evolutionary developments. The paleontological record, backed up by the geological record, could not be plainer in demonstrating this. But MES has no facts to offer as regards the origin of life. Only theories. Intelligent design (ID) is another theory about how life began. ID suggests that an intelligent designer (God) created life. There is no conflict between the theoretical concepts of ID and the idea that life arose spontaneously on earth or was transported here. Certainly MES and evolutionists can't say that God didn't create life. Evolution and ID are not at odds in agenesis, are not mutually exclusive. All ideas of agenesis are just factless competing theories. Only that. But the problem is that ID doesn't stop there. Nor shall we. Let's look at "the rest" of ID.

ID as it was put forth basically says that life arose by the hand of an intelligent designer. And this intelligent designer is God (though it is not so stated by them). ID theorists are starting to group together under the banner of "creation science" to further their agenda. The problem is that creation science is an oxymoron. If there was any real scientific evidence to "creation science" it could then puff out its chest and strut around as "regular science" and the scientific community as a whole would have to take it seriously. But ID is not supported by any scientific facts whatsoever. ID uses legitimate scientific facts, discovered and proved by others, selectively in an attempt to validate it's existence as a legitimate theory which could be used to explain the massive improbabilities and inconsistencies in The Bible. Do you see the problem? Evolution and ID are mutually exclusive here. Evolution is science. Real science with a massive body of peer reviewed evidence, accumulated over hundreds of years, to support it. Evolution is supported by the Fossil Record, by hard, physical evidence. ID is without any factual support, and that makes it "wanna be" science. ID is actually a political and social tool. And other questions under the heading of Creation in WikiAnswers deal with this in more detail. Further reading is strongly suggested, and links are provided.

Answer

You'd need to define evolution and intelligent design. If take evolution to merely mean common descent, an old earth, etc, and intelligent design to be ID, the modern resurrection of Paley's watchmaker argument + some BS, they are not incompatible. This compatibility doesn't indicate that it's in any way scientific, since we've used a weird version of evolution.

Now, if we take modern evolutionary theory, it is like oil and water. Evolution is science, the ID misrepresents itself as science. Evolution makes specific predictions, follows direct empirical evidence, and is well-established (evolutionary theory). The other, Intelligent Design, is muddled with a complete lack of explanation, baseless claims, very obvious fallacies, outright dishonesty, and arose fairly recently out of antiscience initiatives (the desire to change the methodology/philosophy of science). Not only this, but ID proponents directly oppose and slander modern evolutionary theory, often using dishonest polemic (like Dembski). Biological scientists as well as many other scientists criticize ID fairly heavily whenever the topic arises, given its many faults (it's nothing *but* faults, really).

Unlike what was written above, however, ID proponents do not put themselves under the "creation science" banner, although it's an offshoot from the same general movement: antievolution, antiscience, pro-deity. It's an attempt to wrap a scientific (pseudoscientific) veneer around a group of "intellectuals"' theological ideologies. You can find this is Meyers' writings, Dembski's writings, Wells' writings: a prior commitment to a specific antiscience or antievolution goal that is not to be concerned with petty things like facts, hypotheses, or acadmic honesty.

Answer:

Intelligent design and evolution are absolutely mutually exclusive. Many people believe that God created humanity through the physical process of evolution. It is logically possible to be a Bible believing Christian and still accept evolution. The creation account in Genesis is Hebrew poetry, not modern history. It was never meant by the author to be a literal account of the creation of the world. It therefore, expresses theological not scientific truth. This leaves plenty of room for evolution or any other scientific theory of origins. The creation stories use beautiful stories to teach relationships and responsibilities, but not to teach science (how God created).

Answer:

Yes they are. To be 'one of the same', intelligent design would have to undergo the same rigorous peer review that evolution is subjected to. Intelligent design is not a theory, because it cannot be tested by experiment or observation, evolution can. There is no evidence that some things were designed, rather than evolving from another organism. Also, having organisms that were designed among other organisms would ruin the process of evolution, as the 'face of change' would become so great, so quickly, that there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity for the organism to survive. If you are talking about whether an intelligent designer could have started evolution, it would raise the questions:

1) does it matter?

2) why would they bother doing it this way?(remember they are omnipotent and omniscient and know how they will evolve - assuming there was a designer)

So they do not fit together, ID should not be taught in the Biology classroom, it has no more place there than the stork theory does in sexual education.

ANSWER

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but science and intelligent design are. I think the most important answer to your question is that evolution in no way attempts to explain the origin of the universe and life in it, and in no way seeks to invalidate anyone's religious belief. The problem creationists have with evolution is that they themselves see it as a threat to their belief system, because evolution naturally invalidates many of the claims in the Bible, though that is not its purpose. The creationists seem to think scientists and others who believe in evolution are attempting to disprove creationist (normally Christian) religion, when in actuality the only problem evolutionists have with creationists is the fact that they seek to impose the religious viewpoint called "intelligent design" on others by calling it science. Many, if not all of the great scientists of the past were religious people, and all the scientists I know are religious (though not all Christian). The only thing that keeps certain religious fundamentalists from accepting evolution is their belief in the absolute literalness of their holy books. They limit God's communications by not being open to analogy, metaphor, and myth being used to help the books' intended audience (ancient desert nomads) understand the spiritual matters the books' authors sought to explain. They do not believe in proper exegesis of religious texts, or really even in theology, because theology, as a science, must consider other viewpoints.

Short version:

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. But science and intelligent design are mutually exclusive.

Answer

Micheal Behe, one of the ID movements most avid speakers, accepts evolution as a source of the biodiversity on earth today, he simply feels (quite without evidence, but we'll ignore that for now) it isn't enough to fully explain it all. So he favors a combination of the two.

Answer:

Some ask, "How can any designed living being [Example: Camouflage in various animals] arise all by itself out of chance?"

Natural selection has nothing to do with chance. It is a non-random selection process.

The chemical process of cell reproduction due to it's almost infinite occurrences carries with it a chance that a mistake is made when copying data from one cell to another. You might say a cell making a mistake when copying is a 1 in a zillion. Yet the event has occurred much more than a zillion times!

Are you seriously suggesting if I asked you to copy out The Bible a zillion times every copy would be perfect, letter for letter? No. Even if you were the best typist on earth, there would be a chance you would make a mistake, and so it is with cells who are 99.999999+% accurate - there is still a chance a mistake can be made.

This 'mutation' causes the new being to be slightly different to it's predecessor, sometimes in a positive and sometimes in a negative way. But it will be ever-so slight. Let's look at your example of camouflage.

Say we had a bunch of horses, all brown, living in tall grassland. After generations and generations of reproduction (and therefore cell copying) a number of errors are thrown up, which lead to slight variations in the horses. Nature will 'select' the strongest, so only variants which had advantageous mutations survive. Small flecks in the hide enable one horse to hide better attract a mate quicker, eat for longer - whatever; it doesn't matter how tiny the advantage is, the advantage builds up over time) so his instructions get copied more often generation from generation until eventually the discolouration is the horse population standard, all the while carrying the same chance these 'new' instructions become corrupted in reproduction. Again, anything positive thrown up by mutation is going to lead to the population swinging towards that 'design' by the sheer fact it has an advantage over those who were unaffected (or affected by a different, negative) mutation. So 'more flecks' is advantageous over 'some flecks'. Follow this through more generations and generations (remember we are dealing with unfathomable amounts of time) and you have evolution of camouflage; the non-random process of natural selection bias towards the more successful variant of a chance mutation, occurring a billion times over.

The notion that 'suddenly' animals had camouflage is not an argument any evolutionist is putting forward - evolution of any 'design' was reached by a process of tiny baby steps. Anyone who wants to deny evolution, had better turn away every time they walk past dogs who through forced human selection have evolved rapidly into variations very different from each other. The only difference here is that the notion of "strongest" is not in facing the forces of nature, but the whims of human desire. Breed small dog with small dog, get smaller dog - breed smaller dog with small dog, get tiny dog, breed tiny dog with smaller dog get a plaything for Paris Hilton.

All evolution is saying is that an animal with advantage is more likely to survive and reproduce than an animal without, and therefore more of that animal and it's traits are going to exist. Mutation, errors in cell copying lead to slight variations, which can turn out to be just those advantages. It's been proved, we have even made it happen ourselves with domestic animals, and there is nothing wrong with the theory other than the fact it discounts the need for a 'designer' which worries people who have wasted their time and money pandering to a non-existent and now redundant deity.

Answer 2

First of all, evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive. Consider the position of the Catholic Church, among others:

Pope Pius XII stated in his encyclical Humani Generis (1950) that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith and that he considered the doctrine of "evolutionism" a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis; Pope John Paul II, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1996), said that new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis; Pope Benedict has refused to endorse "intelligent design" theories, instead backing "theistic evolution" which considers that God created life through evolution with no clash between religion and science.

On the other hand, so-called intelligent design and evolution are mutually exclusive because intelligent design supposes that God made all animals, plants, even viruses and bacterii exactly as they exist now. This places intelligent design in opposition to some world religious leaders who are increasingly aligning their views to evolution.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 3

Though one can claim to believe in Divinely-guided evolution, this is often not the case. The general paradigm in which Evolution is taught, is one of mere natural causes. This may then be taken as an implicit excuse for hedonism, as few people want "bothersome" rules, or limitations to their personal pleasure. Lack of self-discipline has led to epidemic obesity, drunkenness, divorce rates, violence etc.
Many think that science, and specifically Evolution, have proved that there is no God. They don't comprehend that even if Evolution was an unquestionable fact, it would not automatically follow that God isn't there. They also seem unaware that there are some highly-qualified scientists who do not believe in Evolution.

Those wishing to look for further evidence may find these links useful:See also:

Is there evidence against Evolution?

God's wisdom seen in His creations

Can you show that God exists?