Introduction
Intelligent design is so ass backwards when it comes to science it’s not even wrong. First it’s not even a hypothesis because even those are designed to be testes, yet the proponents of ID have yet to theorize a experiment to test it, let alone publish a paper on the subject that has passed the peer review process.
It’s not that ID advocates are being intellectually dishonest by not claim who the designer(s) because they know saying God is an instant game over. It’s they refuse to propose an alternative mechanism by which the diversity of life came about. The majority of ID is spent trying to poke holes in evolution without ever making the case for a viable alternative.
Irreducible Complexity
The lynchpin of ID centers around what biochemist Michael Behe calls irreducible complexity. The notion that organic structures are too complex to have arisen by natural processes and thus had to be designed. How did Behe come up with this idea?
Was it through rigorous analysis of cell biology and chemist, or mountains of data gained from thousands of experiments? Nope. One day he was looking at a picture of a bacterium flagellum and noticed, “Hey that looks like an outboard motor. It must be designed.”
The Watchmaker Fallacy
Behe relates this story with pride in “ A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus.” He and other ID proponents fail to realize is simply because a system is complex does not mean it was designed. Snowflakes have complex structures but we know they come about via natural process.
This is the old watchmaker fallacy redressed. The argument goes if you find a watch or other object on the beach you would ask who made it and then tries to apply this to living things and assert there is a god. However the reason why we know watches and other objects are designed is there is no evidence of them occurring by natural processes. And we can deduce who the designer was by employing the scientific method.
The concept of irreducible complexity has been thoroughly debunked ad nauseum, most famously in the Dover, Kansas trial at the climax of “A Flock of Dodos.” Kenieth Miller dismantled Behe and the IDers’ case by showing if you remove several proteins from the flagellum it still has function as the injection system for the Bubonic Plague.
He also showed evolution sufficiently explained the development of the human immune system and the clotting of blood, whereas the ID side shrugged their shoulders as to how these things came about.
The Origins
Intelligent Design didn’t spring ex nihilo, it was initially thought up in the 1970s by UFO nuts who believed the Intelligent Designers were aliens. They were laughed out of the scientific community much the way modern ID proponents are. It wasn’t until the late ’90s that the religious right latched on to this term and refashioned it as creationism 2.0.
The Wedge Strategy
The reason the modern incarnation of ID has succeed is due to religious fundamentalists getting on school boards and pushing this cargo cult science. To aid them they came up with the wedge strategy, where by claiming because evolution is “just a theory,” then the ID theory should taught too.
Moreover they manufactured a controversy about how scientists are in conflict over evolutionary theory. They’re not, there is wide consensus on the theory as a whole. What there is debate about is the specifics of how and why the diversity of life came about.
Teach the Controversy
Using this as their rallying cry, ID proponents have been able to get disclaimers about the validity of evolutionary theory into to text books and push for both to be taught and let students decide. They’ve also begun campaigns to redefine science to include supernatural explanations.
The problem with this is several fold. As pointed out in the Dover case opening up science to supernatural explanations would mean having to teach all competing ideas about natural phenomena which would waste time and money.
It would mean things like tarot cards, alchemy, palmistry, and astrology would now be considered science even though they have been proven to be wrong, hold zero predictive power, and explain nothing.
Conclusions
ID isn’t even a hypothesis because it’s not falsifiable. I wouldn’t have problem with it being taught in schools as part of a philosophy or comparative religion course. But its proponent don’t want that. They only want their brand of religious dogma taught as the Gospel truth and never questioned. Sorry but everything is questioned in science. That’s how we’ve been able to make so much progress.