Friday, January 27, 2006

Intelligent Design

There is one field where Intelligent Design actually is being considered as an approach to life. It's the field of synthetic biology, where intelligent beings are attempting to design new life forms, or new functions in existing life forms.

A different sort of designer is working in the nascent filed of synthetic biology. These scientists generate novel biological functions through the design and construction of living systems.

So what methods do these designers use?

Synthetic biologists use evolution as a method. That seems pretty intelligent.

The final paragraph in this op-ed is worth reading:

The real worry, though, is about the future of science. Children educated in a system in which untestable statements of faith are treated as privileged hypotheses are hardly prepared to face a world in which evolution is a fact of life. The next generation of scientists will face the rapid evolution of viruses and the implications of decreasing diversity in animals. We cannot afford to raise a generation of doctors who believe that drug-resistant bacteria are a punishment from God rather than an evolutionary process induced by the misuse of antibiotics. Whomever or whatever created the universe, let's hope they wanted us to be intelligent, too.

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