Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design

I think the creationist theory that takes the world as created in six 24-hour days as we understand them, and believes it all happened 6,000 or so years ago, is basically nuts. It is nuts not least because it goes against the Bible. But it surely is not science.

But I also believe the theory of random natural selection is nuts. It really would have us believe, not only that an infinite number of monkeys sitting at typewriters for an infinite time could sooner or later produce the complete works of Shakespeare—which is believable—but that a limited number of monkeys over a limited time actually have. In the end, that makes my sense of probabilities go tilt.

The pure natural selection argument also does not, as Stephen Jay Gould has elegantly pointed out, fit the fossil record. Something like Gould’s “punctuated equilibrium,” it seems to me, must have occurred, and this looks a lot to me like an unseen hand intervening in the process.