Is Intelligent Design science?

Few topics get my dander up more than the assertion that Intelligent Design (ID) should be taught in the public schools as a scientific theory. There is too much evidence to indicate that ID is not science, although Gregory A. Forbes PhD presents one of the most articulate arguments. While his paper on this topic is available in its entirety, I would like to share the following condensed version:

Ever since Charles Darwin introduced the world to the evolution of life forms by means of natural selection, debate has centered upon the perceived challenge to one’s faith by the theory of evolution. Now the debate has expanded to the public school classroom where religious fundamentalists advocate that “alternative theories to evolution” be taught. The candidate usually proposed for such “alternatives” is intelligent design creationism, albeit the term creationism is usually omitted from the moniker by its proponents so as to avoid challenging the Establishment Clause of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The basic tenant of Intelligent Design is that some biological structures (e.g., the vertebrate eye, the bacterial flagellum, bird’s wings) or some biological processes (e.g., blood clotting mechanisms, cellular replication) are too complex to have been produced by natural processes (natural selection) alone; therefore, these structures must have been “intelligently designed.” Although ID supporters ultimately have to acknowledge that to be intelligently designed, there must be an intelligent “designer.” And that this too represents a challenge to the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. So strategically, most ID advocates cautiously avoid such obvious extensions of their claim.

So is ID an alternative scientific theory to evolution? No! Theories are “…in science, well-substantiated explanations of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate tested facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” (National Academy of Sciences, 1998) And, ID proponents provide no testable hypotheses to substantiate their claims nor do they provide a model that meets the stringent criteria of scientific theory. Therefore, calling ID (creationism) a theory is inappropriate, as it doesn’t begin to approach the robustness of scientific theory. Furthermore, cloaking ID in the language of science by using “theory” does not make it scientific; science has higher standards than mere assertion.

ID has as its basic tenant, a fallacy of false alternative; that those biological structures and processes that science hasn’t been able to adequately explain must be the result of a supernatural intelligent design force or agent (designer). What ID proponents fail to recognize is that currently unexplained does not mean always inexplicable. Science is dynamic and answers may be on the horizon for those questions that remain unanswered. By the very nature of science, there will always be questions that remain unanswered because in the process of answering a question or solving a problem, more questions arise. This is the very nature and a most admirable quality of science. New questions will always be formulated.

If ID proponents want to present their ideas in the science classroom, they must first submit testable hypotheses to the scientific community for evaluation and validation, or, per a contemporary version of Francis Bacon’s quote: “Scientific validation must precede what is taught in the science classroom; we do not teach as science what we hope will be validated in the future.”

Here is a video of Dr. Forbes lecture on “Intelligent Design.” It is long, so clear your schedule, but it is very interesting and well presented.

[Photo credits: "Baby World" photo by Felix Atsoram, Argentina; "3D Earth" graphic by Jamie Woods, Brisbane, Australia]