Darwinists were very shrewd to steal the word “evolution” for their exclusive use, an enterprise from which they have enjoyed remarkable success and advantage. Having done so they can portray anyone who doubts their theory as “anti-evolution,” opposed to the evident fact that life has a long history. Sometimes I think we should steal “evolution” back from them — which is why here at ENV we try to be careful in qualifying our approach to Darwinism as a critique of and alternative to Darwinian evolution, not evolution.
Look at this cute kids video about the evolution of life on earth, hardly a minute long.
There’s nothing much I can see to object to there, can you? You have periods of creative dormancy (for example, the long reign of the prokaryotes) and stasis, followed by the sudden appearance of novel forms of life. Where did that stuff come from? Note the dramatic depiction of animal life “erupting in an explosion of inventiveness” — the Cambrian event. Apes may “split” from monkeys, but humans more unaccountably “emerge” — not at all the wrong word if you’ve considered the arguments in Science and Human Origins. But how and from what? By what mechanism? The filmmakers are artfully ambiguous about that, like the scientific evidence itself.
Intelligent design is an explanation, distinct from the Darwinian one, of what lies behind the observed pattern of life’s evolution. This is a video I would show to my kids because, without being “pro-ID,” it implicitly evokes not only wonder, the sensation of mystery, but it prompts important questions that the Darwinian paradigm can’t answer while intelligent design, at least potentially, can.