What is the difference between creationism, intelligent design, and evolution?
Creationism is an idea about the origin of modern organisms which is generally overt about drawing conclusions directly from a religious text, although some proponents may try to find “scientific support” for their conclusion, or claim that there is such support. “Intelligent Design” is a proposed explanation for the forms and processes we see see in modern organisms which attempts to explain itself as being primarily scientific and not religious, even though its basic premise is the existance of a supernatural “designer” and this “designer’s” direct interference with the operation of natural processes, on the grounds of the belief that some mechanisms of life are “too complex” ever to have developed in a naturalistic fashion. Whether this designer is taken to be “God”, “some-metaphysical-power-which-cannot-be-named”, or time-travelling space aliens, the requirement is that this “designer” be able to exist previous to life ever existing, and the nature, method, and intention of this “d
This gets a little tricky. Intelligent Design (ID) can overlap onto either/both Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and Naturalistic Evolution (NE). I hope I may be allowed these abreviations for simpler typing. And I hope I may be allowed these labels for clarity. Not everyone in these camps cares for them, but I think they will serve my purpose here. My conclusion, which is copied here for the convenience of those who haven’t decided to read my entire explanation, is Evolution (naturalistic) attempts to explain the existence of matter, energy, and life without reference to any force or intelligence outside of physics. Intelligent Design insists that physics itself points to some intelligent power or force acting on it from the outside. Creationism attempts to identify that Intelligence in greater detail, usually pointing to the Bible as His authoritative revelation, assured that sound empirical science will be in harmony with it. Extnended discussion: I distinguish YEC from Biblical Creati
Creationism: God made it from nothing, and over only seven days, He created everything that we know as “nature”. Intelligent Design: God created it, but only the very basics. He then stood back and let it grow with only occasional nudges in the direction he wanted it to go. Everything we know, he started and guided as it developed, but didn’t micro-manage. Evolution: There is no God, and everything developed on its own, guided only by random chance and the prevailing environment.
Intelligent Design is Creationism disguised as science; both are a reaction to evolution, a scientific theory which describes the development of Earth’s species over history without mentioning religion or the origins of life. Basically, ID was constructed by some creationists around the argument that Evolution is fatally flawed and should be thrown out, coincidentally making room for Creationism to be introduced to public schools. By looking into the history of the Intelligent Design movement, this will quickly become clear. Creationism in public schools was in effect struck down by a 1987 court case which severely restricted the language that could be used to promote a specific religion in schools. An overview of the case can be found here — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_v._Aguillard The ID movement arose shortly afterwards in order to disguise the same creationist concepts as science, to evade the effects of the Edwards case. The first mention of Intelligent Design as an “ind
Typically… because some who use these words mean different things… Creationism says there is something like a deity that is supernatural and created life and/or the universe by divine power. Most religions that have a “God” are creationist in some sense, but may disagree on all the details. Evolution can mean many things, but in this context I think you mean the position that life “happened” through a random series of chemical events and all life forms have differentiated through a long series of undirected, random mutations and natural selection. Evolution can mean just “change” (which is accepted by pretty much everybody). Intelligent Design (ID) says that statistics and complexity and other analysis indicate that life is not the product of random chance, but shows all the signs of something designed. There is a thought-exercise which asks “if someone who had never seen anything like one finds a fishing pole (or bicycle or car…) one day, what is it about that thing that tells y
