Intelligent Design is Not Science

“Intelligent Design” (ID) is in no way scientific. ID is not science, it’s a political movement, and it’s actually anti-science.
Science is a tool used to describe our world, to understand why the world is the way it is, and to predict what the outcome of a mixture of characteristics may be. Science attempts to do this by studying only phenomena that are “material,” meaning countable, measurable, visible, tangible things and by making the fewest assumptions possible. By being this way, scientists hope to eliminate faulty thinking and conclusions due to matters of opinion, professional conflict, personal experience or biased knowledge (among other things).
Scientists approach their work by asking testable questions (hypotheses), running the tests (experiments), and by always providing within the hypothesis some means by which the hypothesis can be unequivocally disproved. Most experiments test the predictive power of the hypothesis: “If I mix chemical A and chemical B, I should get chemical C and a flash of light”, or “People who hate tomatoes also hate ketchup.”
In their experiments, scientists seek to validate their hypotheses — that is, to make observations that support their hypothesis and never once observe the evidence that disproves their hypothesis. If ever, even for a microsecond, that one thing that disproves the hypothesis is observed, then the whole hypothesis has been shown to be false. At this point, the scientist starts over with a new or revised hypothesis.
If a hypothesis is subjected to test after test over many years and by many different people and does not fail, it will most likely be elevated to the level of “Theory.” The term “Theory” is ‘science-ese’ for “we are pretty darn sure this is absolutely true, but since absolute proof is impossible by the nature of science, we’ll just call it something besides ‘absolute truth.’ This is basic scientific honesty; you can’t run every experiment or make every observation.



Can ID be tested? Are there falsifying observations? ID could potentially be disproved by observing a more primitive intermediate form of some part that has been touted as ‘too complex’ to be natural. But then, the individual running the ID experiment can alter his hypothesis to say that this new structure is that which was installed by the Intelligent Designer. Because of this, there is no part of ID that can be unequivocally falsified by material science.
The second part of ID calls for an external Designer. This idea is neither fully supported nor fully falsified by material observation. There is no scientific way to test for the presence or absence of the Designer, as the Designer is defined as unobservable, or at least, only observable by a chosen few. One of the most important characteristics of scientific hypotheses and theories is the predictive power they provide.
ID does not offer any new explanation or observation about these complex structures. The observation that some structures in organisms are too complex to have originated from gradual change will not help scientists to develop a better antibiotic, for example. In fact, the idea that “some things are too complex” is anti-scientific, since it seems to suggest that we shouldn’t try to understand the origins of the complex structures. ID discourages us from looking and asking questions. True science, however, moves on.



Intelligent Design is absurd. The arguments run along the lines of “Because it’s impossible to disprove that someone engineered the Big Bang, well, that’s proof of a designer.” It’s nothing more than a reworking of the creationism story using pseudo-scientific terms. I mean, because certain things are too complex for us to understand at this point in our existence, it does not necessarily mean that they have been created by someone or something.
It’s a funny thing about science. Scientists use evidence to find out what happened in the past, or what may happen when certain conditions are present. Science based on a LACK of evidence was once given a name; faith. By definition, faith is not based on science or evidence. Being a scientist doesn’t mean you can’t believe in God; of course you can. However, what you can’t do is to turn a lack of evidence into proof of something.