Is Intelligent Design a Science Stopper?

By Katie Hulse

It’s commonly said that intelligent design (ID) is a “science stopper.” That is, the idea that there is detectable design in nature impedes scientific progress. Is this true? Or might the alternative be true? Has intelligent design assisted with making advancements in science? 

Let’s take a quick look. 

Intelligent Design’s Effect on Early Science

When we look to the early scientists, we find that they expected regularity and patterns in nature because they believed in a rational designer behind the universe. In C.S. Lewis’s words, “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.”¹ The concept of design helped to inspire scientific investigation. Here, then, intelligent design can be said to be more of a science starter than a science stopper. 

But there’s another important contribution that belief in design made to the scientific enterprise. Design, in comparison with naturalism or materialism, better accounts for humanity’s cognitive abilities. It accounts for our ability to trust our reasoning process. On naturalism, however, this comes into question. 

Here’s how Lewis put it: “If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”² 

In the naturalistic view, we have no confidence that our senses or our thoughts are telling us the truth about the world. But the concept of design gave early scientists such confidence that their scientific pursuits were indeed pursuits of truth and knowledge. 

Intelligent Design’s Effect Today

But what about more recently? Has intelligent design been shown to hinder or encourage scientific progress today?

A popular debate between ID proponents and evolutionary proponents involves “junk DNA.” The main question is whether genomes largely exhibit noncoding DNA that doesn’t have function (i.e., “junk”) or noncoding DNA that does have function. Evolutionary biologists argued the former, while ID proponents predicted the latter. The research, including findings from the ENCODE project, has since shown that the human genome overwhelmingly exhibits function. “Junk DNA” is not junk after all. William Dembski sums this up:

[Intelligent] design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. . . . Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.³

In the case of “junk DNA,” intelligent design encouraged further scientific investigation and inquiry, and it turned out to be correct in its prediction. Perhaps this discovery would have been made sooner, but for the fact that, as on person put it, “the term ‘junk DNA’ for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA.”⁴

ID is encouraging scientific progress in other areas too. For example, in protein science, “ID encourages scientists to do research to test for high levels of complex and specified information in biology in the form of fine-tuning of protein sequences. This has practical implications not just for explaining biological origins, but also for engineering enzymes and anticipating/fighting the future evolution of diseases.”⁵

In the areas of physics and cosmology, 

ID has inspired scientists to seek and find instances of fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics to allow for life, leading to new fine-tuning arguments such as the Galactic Habitable Zone. This has implications for proper cosmological models of the universe, hints at proper avenues for successful “theories of everything” that must accommodate fine-tuning, and other implications for theoretical physics.⁶ 

There are many such examples of how intelligent design has inspired advancements in science today. 

So, rather than being a science stopper, intelligent design is actually beneficial for science, both in grounding our ability to do science in the first place and in making progress in scientific discoveries today. 

Notes

1. C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (HarperCollins, 1947), 169.
2. C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory (Harper Collins, 1976), 139. 
3. William Dembski, “Intelligent Science and Design,” First Things, Vol. 86:21–27 (October 1998), as quoted in Casey Luskin, “The ENCODE Embroilment: Research on ‘Junk DNA’ Verifies Key Predictions of Intelligent Design,” Discovery Institute, October 16, 2021, accessed July 25, 2026, https://www.discovery.org/a/67180/. 
4. Wojciech Makalowski, “Not Junk After All,” Science, 300:1246–1247 (May 23, 2003), as quoted in Luskin, “The ENCODE Embroilment.”
5. Casey Luskin, “What Is the Positive Case for Design?” in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, ed. William Dembski, Casey Luskin, and Joseph Holden (Harvest House, 2021), 188.
6. Luskin, “What Is the Positive Case for Design?” 188.