Why Intelligent Design is not Science
Not everyone I speak to is familiar with the notion of ‘Intelligent Design’. When asked, I often cut to the chase and say that Intelligent Design (ID) is just another form of Creationism but in disguise. Or in other words, ID omits the Biblical story of Creation and asserts that a Designer created life. Proponents of ID, however, say that their theory is not another form of Creationism for several reasons. Here are some of the main differences:
Creationism holds that the Earth was created about 6000 years ago, whereas ID proponents accept that the Earth is at least many millions of years old.
ID proponents accept that species do undergo a small number of changes, whereas Creationism holds that all life on Earth was created in their current form.
Most crucially, and to avoid ID being immediately classed as a purely religious idea, ID does not name the Intelligent Designer. The Intelligent Designer is not for discussion; all that the theory proposes is that there is intelligent design going on.
For any theory to be considered science it has to hold up to the scrutiny of scientific method.
The classic view of how science operates is that discoveries are made based on observation. For example, a scientist may be working out in the field researching the nature of swans. He observes all the swans that he can find and notes that each swan is white. He does this for several years and comes to the conclusion that all swans are white. In philosophical terms this type of method is known as induction. Inductive reasoning has been the bedrock for many scientific discoveries since at least Ancient Greece. In fact, without induction, we wouldn’t get very far. Continue Reading »