Intelligent Design
Goeth on four feet or six feet? I know everything, but I can't be bothered with details!
Fifty-two percent of Americans believe in astrology, but that is no reason to teach astrology alongside astronomy in science classes. The same reasoning applies to "Intelligent Design" (ID). Science classes ought to teach the consensus of evolutionary biologists, among whom there is no controversy. They agree, among other things, that all animals descended from a common ancestor.
In the court case, Kitzmiller v Dover, proponents of ID got exactly the fair public debate they had been clamoring for. Yet they failed miserably to provide evidence for ID, even with the help of their foremost biochemist, Michael Behe, who testified that ID has no serious scientific work or progress on complex biochemical systems like the flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system. Judge John E. Jones III, a conservative Republican appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that ID is an "untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion."
When the Plaintiffs' attorneys presented Behe with dozens of peer-reviewed books and journal articles about the evolution of such systems, he admitted that he had read virtually none of them. Although he had written that ID theory focuses exclusively on proposed mechanisms of how complex biological structures arose, during cross examination he couldn't identify any of those alleged mechanisms. Moreover, he admitted that his definition of "theory" was so broad it would also include the pseudoscience of astrology.
A credible "scientific theory of creation" must explain how intelligent design occurred. Timothy Wallace claims to have such a theory, yet he ironically insists that man is not entitled to know how anything was intelligently designed:
Frankly, the evolution of Man from inorganic matter is incredible! The first man simply arose instantaneously from dust with a word from God!
In humans and other primates, the Creator made a mistake in the gene that synthesizes the last of four enzymes needed to produce vitamin C - a mistake that appears in exactly the same relative location in both chimpanzees and humans. However, cows, horses, dogs, cats, and most other animals (and plants) can manufacture vitamin C. They make much more of it when suffering from stress, fatigue, or infections, but humans often suffer from subclinical scurvy caused by insufficient vitamin C. Although ID can't explain this mistake, evolutionary theory can by postulating that a mutation occurred in this gene when ancient humans had access to plentiful amounts of vitamin C in the wild foods they ate.
Such examples are exactly what one expects of evolution, which produces solutions that either work (without being necessarily optimal or esthetic) or are non-functional, as are nipples on male mammals.
When the ark lands, don't expect to get back to farming any time soon! The eight of us will have our hands full building the Egyptian pyramids!
A true scientist never stops searching for a natural explanation of a phenomenon. However, if an ID pseudoscientist concludes that a phenomenon is the product of a supernatural designer, then he has no reason to find out how it was designed. Phillip E. Johnson, leading defender of ID, recognized its inadequacy when he said: