ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that intelligent design (ID) functions religiously as an inaccessible mystery rather than an empirically specifiable cause. To proponents of ID the many species of life, for example, are too elaborate and too distinct from one another to have come about in a natural, gradual, or step-by-step manner from a primitive common ancestor as Darwinians theorize. Theists consider God to be personal, responsive, liberative, redemptive, infinitely good, powerful, and intelligent. According to Judge Jones’s ruling the Dover School Board’s sponsorship of ID is a violation of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause that, in order to protect the religious freedom of all citizens prohibits a state or nation from making a specific set of religious teachings part of public policy. By carefully distinguishing the divine creative depths from the continuum of natural causes this evolutionary theology prohibits any placing of theological explanations into competition with Darwinian accounts.
