Evolution (Vs) Intelligent Design

There is a lot of debate on this issue in the western world and of course another hot topic during the elections. The debate seems lop-sided and it is without doubt that human beings have undergone a process of evolution to reach the stage in which we are today. What I want to talk about is how intelligent design is a plausible theory if not to explain the past then atleast to explain the future.

To begin with, what I understand by evolution is simply "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest". And intelligent design is the ability to create something totally new by design only. I will use this as a premise for my arguments.

I work in the flower industry now. In order to gain knowledge in this completely new industry, I obviously attempted to read a few books related to the industry. One of the books read in this process was " Flower Confidential". The book gave a lot of insider details of processes of the flower industry with examples from Colombia, USA, and Holland. What struck me the most in the book was the concept of breeding new varieties of flowers. The breeders strive to create new varieties via cross-pollination and other methods, to achieve strong characteristics of desirable colour, long vase life, and a few other features. However, the quality of scent was missing in the list. I found out there is a trade-off between scent and vase life of a flower and since long vase life is a highly desirable characteristic, breeders have been suppressing the scent in flowers for decades now. As a result, today most professionally grown flowers have lost their scent. Surprised? Why not. It is a reflex action for most people to bury their nose in a bunch of flowers even when there is no scent. Most of us do not even realize the absence of this. And this is the reason you are surprised.

The other extreme in this industry is artificial flowers. I personally have a great dislike for artificial flowers and never want to be around them. But increasingly I have noticed that artificial flowers are beginning to look very natural. There have been times when I have been truly confused whether a flower is artificial or natural. Of course I am a relative novice at this but even speaking from a layman's perspective, the inability to distinguish is unnerving. Then it struck me. Isn't this exactly what breeders are striving for? Artificial flower have an extremely long vase life (almost infinite) and their colour can be of any hue you can imagine. How long will it be before breeders are able to achieve this. And if they do, what difference will remain between artificial flowers and natural ones? This scares me. This seems to me like intelligent design.

Let's take human beings as an example. The past century has seen great advancements in medical science. Virtually every disease has a cure now and we have state of the art research going on to find cures for the remaining ones. New diseases crop up now and then but the lives they claim are fewer. Now, if human beings meddle so much into the process of who survives and who doesn't, where is "natural" selection? We have taken away mother nature's job! I even read a comment recently from scientists that the rate of evolution has slowed down considerably in the past 100 years. !.

Genome mapping is a reality now. I am sure there will quickly come a stage when we will be able to eliminate persons in the womb simply based on their imperfect dna. Or, atleast be able to correct their DNA at a very early stage. To extend this further, we will definitely be able to design the perfect human DNA with all the desired characteristics. Maybe when there is a need to travel in space in search of other planets, we will desire human beings with a long vase life. We will design super humans/alternate beings/species. They will go to another planet and inhabit it and centuries later wonder who made them. Aren't we God then?

It doesn't have to be evolution vs intelligent design, it can also be evolution followed by intelligent design.