Intelligent Design may well be a sub-element of the universe, but it is terribly inefficient; or possibly, more like Plato’s Demiurge working feverishly to rectify the sprawling mistakes of itself, which relegates so much of the universe’s labor to chance and apparent necessity working in mysteriously destructive ways. Why could not the Big Bang be an Instant Epiphany wherein consciousness took hold of its own direction, rather than being left to disorderly debris on chance of evolving into a system of laws laboriously governing the path of chemistry and biology to forge itself in the smithy of human intelligence? — a most unreliable agent?

Of course, “Intelligent Design” is but a euphemism for the “Mind of God” or an “Omniscient Divinity,” — but symbolic phrasing — the aim of which is to assuage the fear of being thoroughly mortal, alone and without purpose. The concept of a “Heavenly Father” renders the illusion that we are not orphans in a cruel Dickensonian world. To be sure there is much good in the world as there is bad; but belief in the divine does not effectively curtail humanity’s inhumanity — as history and recent events indicate all too clearly.

Nor does the concept of Intelligent Design necessarily bring hope to humanity: al Qaeda has intelligence that is designed to do horrendous harm to civilization; religious or ideological freaks invent their own intelligent design to immortalize iconic self-righteousness and hatred; the current highway sniper calls upon perverted intelligence to strike fear into drivers; next there will be some nut who will target SUVs; the serial rapist distorts his given intelligence to yield to a run-away Id; the murderer crowds out the empathy element of intelligence to rob a life.

The gift of intelligence, whether enshrined in the universe or the individual, does nothing to instruct politics to keep its eye on common sense and the common good; the fame of celebrities and pompous, self-serving authors are but ego boosters, yet subject the masses to the fate of lemmings; health care has become a money machine; communications has been reduced to frivolity; the automobile has reverted to the gas-guzzling fifties; no one cares about the minimum wage anymore in this “let them eat cake” era.

So what is all the fuss over “Intelligent Design” versus a free-wheeling Evolution? Either way, it is muddling through a very callous, imperfect existence.


“A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”


© ‘03, rrk Copyright © 2003 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 10, 2003.