I hear a lot about “intelligent design.” Has this now proven God and falsified evolution?

No on both counts, and it is worth saying that plainly before defending anything: intelligent design has not proven God, and it has not falsified evolution. What it has done is raise a narrower and more interesting question.

1. Design is an inference, not a proof. The claim is modest: some features of nature are better explained by a mind than by an undirected process. We reason this way in archaeology, arson investigation, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial life. The inference can be strong without being deductive, and demanding proof sets a bar no historical or origins science meets.

2. It does not identify the designer. Design arguments get you to a designing intelligence. They do not get you to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and ID proponents generally say so. Christians believe the designer is God, but that identification comes from revelation and from the resurrection, not from the bacterial flagellum.

3. Evolution is not one claim. There is a difference between change over time, common descent, and the sufficiency of unguided mutation and selection. The first is observed, the second is well supported, and the third is the actual dispute. Saying "evolution is a fact" usually slides between all three without noticing.

4. The molecular case is the serious one. Michael Behe's argument in Darwin's Black Box is that some systems require multiple parts before they do anything at all, and gradual selection has trouble building toward a function that isn't there yet. Stephen Meyer's argument in Signature in the Cell is different and arguably deeper: DNA carries information, and no known chemical process generates specified sequences. Both are arguments from data, and both have been answered — but answered is not the same as dissolved. The psalmist's line is the right posture here: "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

5. The gaps charge runs both ways. "We don't know, therefore God" is bad reasoning, and Christians should refuse it. But "we don't know, therefore an undirected process did it" is the same move with a different noun. The honest position is to weigh which explanation fits the evidence better, including the evidence we don't have yet.

6. Not every critic is a creationist. The atheist philosopher Bradley Monton argued in Seeking God in Science that ID deserves serious scientific consideration while remaining unconvinced by it. That matters, because it shows the design inference is not a religious commitment wearing a lab coat. A non-Christian can find the argument worth taking seriously without converting.

7. Much of the public fight is about something else. The courtroom battles of the 2000s were largely about what gets taught in public schools, which is a policy question, not a scientific one. Conflating ID with young-earth creationism, or with a political program, lets people dismiss the argument without ever engaging it. Judge the inference on its merits.

8. Scripture does not promise proof. Paul says God's existence is "clearly perceived" in what has been made (Romans 1:20), and the psalmist says the heavens declare God's glory (Psalm 19:1). But the same Bible says that knowing about God and trusting him are different things. Evidence can establish that a maker exists; it cannot make a person love him.

9. What is actually at stake. The real question is whether nature is the product of mind or of blind matter, and that question is philosophical as much as biological. Neither side can settle it with a fossil or a flagellum alone. What each side can do is state its case and let the evidence be examined, which is all this answer asks.

ID is a genuine argument that has been oversold by its friends and caricatured by its critics. It does not prove Christianity, and it does not need to. It only needs to show that the materialist's confidence is a philosophical commitment rather than a lab result — and that much, it shows.

Sources: Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box; Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell; William Dembski; Bradley Monton, Seeking God in Science.

Related challenges:
• IF God exists, He’s maniacal. If He WANTED to forgive sin, He’s 'all-powerful' and 'all-loving' – He could just, SHAZAM, forgive sin. Instead, He sends down His only Son to be slaughtered and murdered to take care of the sin problem. Now THAT’S evil!
• How would you respond to Victor Stenger’s stinging assertion that religious argument leads universally to dismal failure and untold suffering?
• Can we really be certain that God exists? If there is one thing that’s obvious, it is that the existence of God is NOT obvious.