Creator God

Abstract

This chapter considers debates over “intelligent design”, the theory that the universe is too complex a place to be accounted for by an appeal to natural selection and the random processes of evolution—that some kind of overarching intellect must have been at work in the design of the natural order. Advocates of intelligent design claim that the theory is religion-neutral and does not violate the non-establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. After all, intelligent design does not identify the intelligent designer as the God of any particular religion. But whether they like it or not, what they have offered is a form of natural theology. Leaving God unnamed does not make their argument any less theological, especially when they claim that the elements of complex design they have observed in nature are present because of the activity of their unnamed intelligent designer.