The most insidious problem with the debate between intelligent design and evolution is that “intelligent design” means different things to different people, as does “evolution.” To some people, the word “evolution” is short for “evolutionary development,” and so when intelligent design challenges evolution, it is challenging the notion that species A descended from species B over millions of years, and so on. Many ID advocates and opponents alike believe that this is the debate. As evidence of this, I hear evolutionists say things like, “But the fossil record indicates that species A is 56,000,000 years old…” This, however, is not what the two main proponents of the ID movement – Michael Behe and William Dembski – believe. I went to hear both of them speak, and they both started their lectures by saying, “I believe that all life descended from a one-celled organism over billions of years…” So it is both true and false that intelligent design is challenging the very notion of evolutionary development.
Second, “evolution” also means “Darwinian evolution” to some people. This is evident when the debate starts being directed toward natural selection, or another of Darwin’s doctrines. Third, some people, both atheists and theists, think that “evolution” is the doctrine that the world evolved by a series of accidents, and that any intentionality or purpose had nothing to do with our universe. Indeed, many of the top evolutionists believe this. Richard Dawkins and Gary Marcus, for instance, both believe that the scientific theory of evolution supports atheism.
So what is intelligent design, and what it evolution? Well, they are three things at once. Sometimes, evolution is the doctrine that the world evolved in a slow process over long periods of time; sometimes, it is specifically used as Darwin’s version of this doctrine (they are many besides his!), and sometimes it is an essentially atheistic account of the universe. Because both evolution and its ID are three things at once, the debate between them is hopelessly confused. It would be like if my word for a baseball bat was “house,” and your word for baseball bat was “car.” We could stand there for hours looking at a baseball bat arguing about whether it was a house or a car. It doesn’t matter how long we argue! The only two things that will happen as a result of our “debate” are 1) we will get angry at each other at a personal level, and 2) we will get further away from resolving our dispute. This silly picture is an accurate analogy of what is happening with the ID/evolution debate.
