[Editor's note: November 24, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the release of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This excerpt from Dr. Mohler's Blog originally appeared on Christianity.com in 2006 under the title: "Darwin's Dangerous Idea -- No Middle Ground."]

Daniel C. Dennett is one of the world's most influential evolutionary scientists, and unlike many of his colleagues, Dennett doesn't run away from Darwinism's logical conclusions. Instead, he describes Darwin's theory of evolution as a "universal acid" that completely reshapes reality, destroying those truths previously held to be enduring and unchanging.

"Whenever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises, because more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved, or the correct logic of the theory that accounts for those facts," Dennett asserts.

In a recent interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Dennett dismissed the concept of Intelligent Design, arguing that all intelligent persons simply must accept Darwin's theory at face value. Nevertheless, Dennett does understand the logic of Intelligent Design. As he sees it, many persons reject evolution because it "goes right to the heart of the most troubling discovery in science of the last few hundred years." This is "the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll never see a spear making a spear maker. You'll never see a horseshoe making a blacksmith. You'll never see a pot making a potter. It's always the other way around and this is so obvious that it just seems to stand to reason." 

Nevertheless, Dennett believes this reasoning to be profoundly wrong. Interestingly, he suggests that the idea of Intelligent Design, at least in its fundamental form, may be even older than the human species. He offers the suggestion that what he identifies as earlier species of hominids might have created objects and then "had a sense of being more wonderful than their artifacts." Then, Dennett simply suggests that Homo sapiens, capable of creating a seemingly endless array of objects, would assume that they, too, were the products of an intelligent creator.

Amazingly, Dennett, along with his colleague Richard Dawkins, uses the reality of complexity and apparent design to argue against a designer. In one sense, Dennett simply turns the idea of design on its head, arguing that greater design means, in effect, less proof of a designer. As Dennett claims, "not only can you get design from un-designed things, you can even get the evolution of designers from that un-design. You end up with authors and poets and artists and engineers and other designers of things, other creators--very recent fruits of the tree of life. And it challenges people's sense that life has meaning." Well, of course it does.

Dennett does believe that human beings are unique as a species. This special status is essentially a function of linguistics. Dennett, who serves as University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, as well as Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at the university, has devoted himself to the understanding of human consciousness and linguisticality.

The ability to use language, Dennett explains, means that human beings can learn, not only from their own experience, but from others, both living and dead. Thus, "human culture itself becomes a profound evolutionary force. That is what gives us an epistemological horizon which is far, far greater than that of any other species. We are the only species that knows who we are, that knows that we have evolved. Our songs, art, books and religious beliefs are all ultimately a product of evolutionary algorithms. Some find that thrilling, others depressing."