In Monday’s New York Times: The Case for Intelligent Design as a Theory for the Origin of Life

A guest commentary by Center for Science and Culture Senior Fellow Michael Behe appears on today’s New York Times op-ed page. Behe, also a professor of biology at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, advocates and explains the theory of “Intelligent Design” in a piece titled The Basis for a Design Theory of Origins.

“Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time,” Behe writes. “Many people, however, think the Darwinists’ confidence is unjustified. They note that, although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.”

Intelligent design theory holds that certain features of living systems — such as the miniature machines, complex circuits and digital information found in cells — are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random.

“The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it’s a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it’s so obvious,” Behe writes.

Behe’s commentary comes in the midst of a national debate about the theory of intelligent design and how to teach evolution. It also comes amidst a controversy involving evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg — formerly the managing editor of a prominent biology journal published out of the Smithsonian — who is under attack for allowing publication of a scientific paper making the case for theory of intelligent design by Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.