Why do evolutionists attack Intelligent Design so vehemently?

In my previous post, The World Turned Upside Down Part 2, I mentioned that scientists, teachers, and professors were being fired or dismissed because of their mere mention of Intelligent Design.  (See Ben Stein’s documentary http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed/.)  Why such a strong reaction?  When searching under “intelligent design” on the internet, you will find volumes of articles, books, blog posts, and the like all debunking the Theory of Intelligent Design.   It is actually hard to find an article or post which explains Intelligent Design from the position of support.  Articles supporting Intelligent Design are simply overwhelmed by the volume of articles against it.  The level of disgust towards Intelligent Design by evolutionists is extremely virulent.   If people are losing their jobs for just mentioning these two words, “intelligent design,” one can assume there will be less mention and support in print.  My question is why such poisonous reactions to a scientific theory?

You see, these two theories, and they are just theories, do not oppose each other, but rather can be quite complimentary.  Evolution is a theory about how life evolved through natural selection.  Intelligent Design is a theory about how life originated in the first place.  In fairness I have to say that Intelligent Design proponents do theorize that some things are too complex to have developed by the evolution process alone, such as the human eye which has “7 million cone cells for color assessment, 125 million rod cells for adaptation to the dark, and 1.2 million nerve cells that collect billions of bits of information!”  (http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=95 )

Intelligent Design Theory does not dispute the Theory of Evolution; it simply says there may be more to life than the Theory of Evolution can explain on its own.  Yet the evolutionists fight furiously against Intelligent Design.  Why?  From a strictly scientific viewpoint there would be no real reason.  Evolution has no answer to how life first started, although they keep trying to find one.  First theory proposed was the Big Bang Theory, which remains unproven.   Even if proven no one can explain where the elements that caused the big bang came from.  Now, some are proposing an advanced alien population sent a specially prepared molecule, cell, or something to earth in order to start life here.  (Please see the documentary by Ben Stein, referenced above, to listen to his interview with a prominent atheist and major supporter of Evolution.)  Please help me understand why any intelligent person would believe this is how life started?  Where did the aliens, the earth, the sky, the universe, and all the pieces and parts necessary for them to send anything anywhere come from?  We are talking about the START of life, not what is done with life once it exists.  Please people, get a grip.

To get a sense of core of their distress, we need to look at two major problems the evolutionists have. The first of two big problems is the initial origin of life, no matter how small that first bit of life was.   Imagine for a moment that you would like to make a loaf of bread.  So you walk into your kitchen, open the pantry door and discover it empty.  You turn to the refrigerator and find it empty.  You have nothing at all to make that loaf of bread. Certainly, if you just had a little flour, a few drops of water, some yeast and other primary ingredients, you could bake it and watch as it evolves from sticky, unappetizing dough into warm fragrant bread.  But how would you do it if you have no flour, no yeast, no salt, no water, nothing?  That is the problem evolutionists have.

Personally, I believe the bigger of their two problems is that over time evolutionists have begun to believe there is no God, no Creator.  They believe that everything evolved, and they have chosen to remain as silent as possible about the problem of the origin of life.  Intelligent Design brings to light the origin of life issue and makes evolutionists face that problem squarely.   The Theory of Evolution, I believe, is not a theory to evolutionists, but their own religion.  There is no other way to explain their adamant insistence that there can be no other theories considered; even ones that would not dispel the process of evolution, but would actually clear up the problem of the origin of life.  You see an intelligent designer would open up the probability of God.  The scientists who have proposed Intelligent Design do not consider it anything more than just that – there must have been intelligence which originated life.  This has the evolutionists in angry contortions.  They have based their lives on the Theory of Evolution coupled with the absence of any Creator, and that could be toppled by the Intelligent Design Theory.  Since evolutionists fear Intelligent Design is a back door into Creationism (the belief in the Biblical story of creation), there is a strong opposition to Intelligent Design being considered by schools as a second scientific theory to be taught.  Certainly Intelligent Design does espouse an intelligent designer, but it leaves to the learner the decision on who that designer is and how that designer created life.  All they are proposing is that 1) complexities in some things, like the human eye, throw doubt that Evolution can account for everything, 2) that Evolution cannot account for the starting point of its own theory of evolution, and 3) therefore there must have been an intelligent designer behind some parts of life and its creation.

How sad that we have allowed science to wander off the path of open search and discovery.  How sad indeed.