here is a paper i wrote last year on the subject
Intelligent design: Creationism, with ‘Sky-Yance’
There is a war going on, the war between two world views, what will be taught in our science classrooms. This war is over the origins, the origins of life, the world, and the universe. Many school districts battle over what should be taught in their science classes, on one side is evolution, on the other is “intelligent design,” so much so that the ACLU has been brought into to sue the state to have “intelligent design” removed from the classroom, because they claim, it is not a science, but religion masquerading as science.
So what is “Intelligent Design?” “Intelligent design” started in the early 1990’s with a resurgence of creationism, also known as neo-creationism. This resurgence believes that the universe and its contents are too complex to have arisen without an intelligent creator. The main driving force behind the “intelligent design” movement is the Discovery Institute, and one of their many facets is Center for Science and Culture. Their website defines “intelligent design” this way: “The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” Now, they don’t go out and say it, but this ‘intelligent designer’ is a god or a facsimile there of; but god can’t exist within science; it just does not work. Science must be verifiable, and many intelligent designers conveniently forget this, or flat out don’t know. Because there is no way to test the validity of a god, god is based off of faith, and faith cannot be tested by science. It is perfectly acceptable to believe in a god, or a creator, but they cannot exist in the realm of science; this is not to say that there is no god, just that science can not prove or disprove a god. Many real scientists believe in a god, but they realize that it is unverifiable and must be left out of scientific theories.
Dwain Gish senior vice president for the Institute for Creation Research said on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (14:27):
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What I would like to see done in our schools is to have all of the scientific evidence that evolutionist believe can be used to support evolution, have that presented to our students and at the same time have all the evidence that creation scientist believe would support creation would actually demand creation have the students exposed to that evidence have the students look at the evidence on both sides challenge them to make critical to use thinking and consider alternatives.
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He goes on to say:
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What we want is to us to bring into the schools the scientific evidence that supports a theistic supernatural origin as apposed to the theory of evolution, let the students decide for themselves which they think is more reasonable more scientifically possible creation or evolution.
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Somehow, he must have thought we would not notice the words ‘theistic supernatural,’ theology and the supernatural is not science. ‘Theistic’ is the belief of god(s) and has no room in science because it has no way of being verified by science, further, supernatural is defined as: “not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws” and is clearly not science. These people are trying to push their religion into public schools. And they are succeeding, in 2002; Cobb County was pressured into placing warning stickers into their biology text books, stating:
[quoteThis textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origins of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.[/quote]
This stems from the lack of understanding that intelligent designers have for science lexicon.
The biggest rift between real scientist and the supporters of “intelligent design” is the lexicon they use, or in the case of intelligent designers misuse. It is this fundamental misunderstanding of scientific terms, mainly the word “Theory,” that the supporters of “intelligent design” grasp at to contradict evolution. Since it is so misunderstood, here are the definitions of three very misunderstood scientific words: Hypothesis--a hypothesis is an educated guess based upon observation, used to explain an event that has not yet been explained, hypothesizes are later supported or discredited with further experimentation and observation. Theory--a theory is a way to explain a set of related observations or events based on proven hypothesizes and verified by multiple scientist multiple times, and never disproved but it also must be falsifiable, it must make claims that if found to be false at a later date can be used to disprove it self. Scientific Law--a scientific law is beyond a theory, it is a statement of fact, usually mathematical, where it has always been proven true and is simple enough to always hold true(“Theory” Wikipedia). A theory is a way of modeling how the world works, and the theory holds until it is disproved, and at that time it is taken back to hypothesis and verified, until theory status can be re-obtained. Theories are not rigid; they change as new information is learned. We can never know all there is to know, and as such we can never truly explain everything there is to explain, but we can try and that is what a theory is. It is an attempt to explain the universe. When new evidence is uncovered that disproves a theory, the theory is scrapped back to a new hypothesis, tested, and worked back to a theory. Intelligent designers have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word theory, in a scientific context; this is due to their lack of scientific knowledge, and they believe that a theory is just a guess, where it is so much more, some examples of this can be found in the previously mention episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (4:20), “Evolution has not met the test and deserves only to be treated as theory” and “Darwin considered it a theory, it is still a theory, it has never been proven, and never will be.” Both dead wrong, the speakers, who were unnamed in the program, don’t grasp the word theory, a theory will never be proven as fact. Even the theory of gravity, is still, just a theory. Gravity has been shown to be consistent time and time again, it has never been falsified but it can be. Evolution has met the test; it is shown time and time again with asexual microorganisms and can be observed in fast breeding sexual organism. Now that the lexicon is taken care of we can start to explore why “intelligent design” is not a science.
Scientist as a group are not committed to a single hypothesis; they must change their minds as the evidence grows, and revise there theories. As newer and newer fossils are uncovered, the scientific views of the dinosaurs are altered and changed to fit the new evidence, but it always conforms to all the current evidence, and is the best guess as an explanation of the observations. Science is constantly changing in this way, some theories are changed slightly, when new evidence is discovered, others are completely overhauled, such as plate tectonics in the 1950’s. “intelligent design” is just the opposite; it is rigid and unchanging, it is based off of ideas, not facts, or observations, it is not tested, it is not changed when parts are found to be untrue; therefore, it is not a science.
Many people just don’t understand how science works, Chuck Colson makes this very clear in his book, Answers to Your Kids’ Questions, he states:
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Many scientist do believe that the universe is self-existent—that god is not necessary—and that life is a result of a chance occurrence. They believe this not for a scientific reason but for philosophical ones. They are committed to a philosophy called naturalism. Naturalism seeks to understand the world and life itself through natural causes and effects alone. In fact , naturalism argues that only things that can be empirically verified—known with the 5 senses—are real (Colson 35).
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He misses the point entirely; he forgets that what is beyond the 5 senses is not science, in the realm of science, there is nothing beyond the 5 senses. If something cannot be tested and verified it can’t be science, and that is exactly why “intelligent design” is not science, because it cannot be empirically verified anything. Further, good science is not dependant on the scientist philosophy, it is dependant on that scientist ability to separate their philosophical views from the science and just base their research on empirical observation, wherein theology has no place; because the core beliefs of “intelligent design” can not be empirically verified it doest not belong in science Even the Vatican denounces intelligent design, Reverend George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, has said that teaching “intelligent design” along with Evolution in a science class is wrong, like mixing apples and oranges; he went as far as saying “intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be.”(Vatican MSNBC) So if even the Vatican thinks “intelligent design” isn’t a science, why is it so prevalent?
Lies, deceit, and faith. “intelligent design” and creationism exist at best in the fringes of science, along the fuzzy edge; they exist by there shear determination to be heard, even though they are not truly a science, by distorting the evidence they stay afloat, and in some cases flat out lie. An example of this can be found on the Institute For Creation Research’s web page, a large proponent of “intelligent design” in a publication called Acts and Facts; we can find gems like “creation is at least as scientific as evolution, and that evolution is at least as religious as creation,”(Dr. Henry Morris III) a blatant lie, creation may in their eye be a science, but evolution is by no means a religion, it is based solely in the realm of science, and even they must know that. Also in this article, they try to dispel a common problem with creationism, the age of the earth according to the decay of radioactive elements, a rate that is constant, and has never shown to be other than constant. We can judge the age of the earth to several billion years, due to this steady rate of decay, but in accordance with their faith, the earth can only be a few thousand years old, so instead of revising their theory to this evidence, they create a theory of why the evidence is wrong.
Enter Accelerated decay ‘theory.’ It is quoted because this is the laymen’s lexicon for theory not the scientific lexicon; this ‘theory’ does not deserve scientific recognition because it is so badly postulated and full of gaping holes, that even a high schools level of scientific knowledge can debunk. The theory states that the speed at which radioactive isotopes have been decaying has decreased over time, at the earliest, the rates being around a billion times faster than there current rates (Vardiman 333). They, then, come to the ‘logical’ conclusion that the radiological dating of rocks is wrong because the speed of decay has slowed down, making rocks appear much older than they really are, on the order of magnitude of thousands of years old rather than billions, unfortunately, this ‘theory’ originated without any form of real research, or fact finding of any kind, it was just made up. If decay sped up a billion times, the world would not be a happy place. Let us delve quickly into radioactive decay. We are all aware of Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, and radioactive decay; as matter decays it releases energy, in the form of light and heat, mostly heat. The energy contained within matter is equal to the mass times the speed of light squared. Let’s take for example a small amount of nuclear material, 1 kg of uranium. Now, normally the half life of uranium is about 4.5 billion years during that time half of it, will transform into lead, the mass lost in this decay is converted to energy, this can be calculated by comparing the start and end weight of the material, uranium has an atomic weight of 238 amu , where lead has an atomic weight of 207 amu, since half is converted, effectively half of the uranium becomes lead, lead weighs approximately 14% less than uranium, since half is converted that is about is 7%, the mass being lost over the 4.5 billion years. Since matter cannot be created or destroyed, it is converted to energy, using Einstein’s equation properly, 1 kg of any material breaks down into 89,875,517,873,681,764 joules (E=MC2 Wikipedia). The 7% lost of that mass is 6,291,286,251,157,723 joules over 4.5 billion years. According to the theory, this would happen 1 billion times faster, so over the course of 4.5 years, that energy would be released, or 6,291,286,251,157,723 joules, converting from years to seconds, this boils down to 44,332,306 joules per second, crunching the numbers further, and to better understand the vast amount of energy being release so quickly it would be the equivalent of setting off a ton of TNT every five seconds, nearly all in the form of heat. In other words, the amount of energy being released all over the earth would literally boil the oceans, and melt the earth, and soon vaporize it. To finally put things in perspective, this one kg of uranium is a sphere 2.25 cm in radius, This little amount of uranium causes huge problems with this ‘theory’ so much so that it become a mute point, this explanation has a gaping hole; it cannot contend with the amount of energy being released by all the decaying elements.
There are many other examples of intelligent designers and creationist getting the science wrong due to the intelligent designers and creationists misunderstanding of science. This is due to the ‘cherry picking’ approach that some intelligent designers and creationist take to finding holes with evolution; they scan the scientific literature and find small points that in their eyes go against evolution, and, then they claim to have defeated evolution, never really understanding what they really read. One that is often cited as definitive proof that evolution does not work is the second law of thermal dynamics. The second law of thermal dynamics, is quite broad and complex, these creationists are only focusing on one small part of it, the part that says the total entropy of a closed system increases over time (Second law), i.e., a closed system gets more disorganized over time (Entropy), i.e. evolution is order, so evolution can’t take place due to this increasing disorder. In their minds, the earth is a closed system. And, thus, it cannot become more organized over time. This is wrong on two fronts; it is a complete misunderstanding of the second law of thermal dynamics, on multiple levels. First, the earth is not a closed system; there is this giant ball of burning gas in the sky called the sun; this sun gives energy into the earth, and as such, the earth is not a closed system. Furthermore, the second law of thermal dynamics states that the overall entropy of a closed system increases, but small subsections of this closed system can increase and decrease in entropy, as long as the total entropy increases in other words, if you have a large closed system, the total entropy of this system will increase overtime, but may decrease in some sections of this system.
What is the big deal then? Those that believe in creationism are trying to pass this creationism off as science, in public schools. This is in effect teaching religion in a public school, not just religion, but a specific religion. Since our schools are run by the state, they are subject to the rules of the state, which are not allowed to endorse a specific religion. Creationism was already removed from the schools for this reason; all “intelligent design” is, is just a repackaging of creation, with pseudo science. The most damning evidence has to be put forth by Barbara Forrest, a professor of Philosophy at South East Louisiana University, she testified in a court case involving the teaching of “intelligent design” in schools that the proposed science textbook, Of Pandas and People, was nothing more than a previous revision from 1987 that’s only real change was that all references to creation were replaced with intelligent design. (Martha). "Of Pandas and People” is a textbook pushed by the supporters of “intelligent design” as a science textbook that gives equal time to both sides, but this textbook is lacking. Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at brown university wrote “Of Pandas and People a Brief Critique” describing how Of Pandas and People misrepresents science, is badly outdated and ignores important parts of teaching natural history (Miller). The book completely ignores the age of the earth, neither mentioning the scientific view point or the creationist viewpoint, the age is simply omitted. Next, the book seriously misrepresents fossil records. Such as the transitional fossils between land mammals and whales, this gives credence to Barbara Forrest, the 3 transitional fossils omitted were discovered after 1986, to late to be enter into the original printing of Of Pandas and People in 1987 but should have been included in the recent printing, unless they really did just replace creation with intelligent design, with out actually updating anything. Miller writes:
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Pandas mis-states evolutionary theory, skims over the enormous wealth of the fossil record, and ignores the sophistication of radiometric dating, How sad it would be, given the need to improve the content and rigor of science instruction in this country, for this book to be offered as part of the educational solution. There is a great deal that we do not know about the origin of life on this planet, but that does not mean that science is obliged to pretend that it knows nothing, or to engage in a kind of scientific relativism, pretending that all speculations about the origin of our species are equally correct. The most compelling reason to keep this book out of the biology classroom is that it is bad science, pure and simple.
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Clearly, “intelligent design” is not a science, it is a strategy, to destroy science from the inside, by corrupting science in the classroom, and they can push their views onto impressionable kids. The creationists fight so hard to make “intelligent design” look like a science, but it isn’t. They use pseudo science, bad science and bold face lies to make it sound credible. “Intelligent design” is not based in science, it is rigid, they don’t keep reexamining the evidence and revising there theories as new evidence is available, they stick with their original theory and try to make the new evidence fit it, with bogus science like with the Accelerated decay ‘theory’ or just plain ignore it. They fight so hard, because they feel there way of life is in danger, they equate the moral decay in our country to the teaching of evolution and other non god centric views. In their eyes, with out a belief in a god, there is no source of morals. They ask “where is god’s place, if everything has a natural cause?” That is a difficult question, with an answer that can take many years of soul searching to find, but finding gods place is not with in the realm of science, that is religions roll, “intelligent design” is nothing more than a repackaging of creationism, theology is not science; it needs to stay out of the science classrooms.
Works Cited
Center for Science and Culture. Top Questions. 19 Nov. 2005. <http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php>.
Colson, Chuck. Answers to Your Kids’ Questions. Wheaton Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 2000.
“Creationism.” Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. Host Penn Jillette and Teller. Dir. Star Price. Show Time. 14 March 2003.
Dr. Henry Morris III. “Radio Log” Acts & Facts Oct 2005. 29 Nov. 2005 <http://www.icr.org/pdf/af/af0510.pdf>.
Entropy. 19 Nov. 2005. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy >.
E=mc². 29 Nov. 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%3Dmc2>.
Miller, Kenneth R. “Of Pandas and People A Brief Critique.” Kansas Citizens for Science. 9 Dec. 2005 <http://www.kcfs.org/pandas.html>.
Raffaele, Martha. “Witness: 'Design' Replaced 'Creation'” Abcnews. 5 Oct. 2005 29 Nov 2005 <http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1187731>.
Second Law of Thermodynamics. 4 Dec. 2005. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...thermodynamics >.
Theory. 19 Nov. 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory>.
Vardiman, Larry, ed., Andrew A. Snelling, ed., Eugene F. Chaffin, ed. Radioisotopes And The Age Of The Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. El Cajon California: Institute for Creation Research. 2000.
“Vatican Astronomer Joins Evolution Debate.” MSNBC. 6:12 p.m. ET 18 Nov. 2005 MSNBC. 29 Nov 2005 < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10101394/>.