Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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I think that casting "intelligent design" as a scientific hypothesis suffers from a major flaw: it isn't.
"Intelligent design" advocates do sometimes, as the prior religious antievolution effort of "creation science" did, offer claims that can be shown to be false. This doesn't make "intelligent design" creationism itself a scientific claim. Anybody can spout ad hoc claims that can be checked against reality. What's at issue in calling "intelligent design" scientific is that there is some link between the specific claims and the general framework, such that the truth value of the specific claims actually impinges upon that framework. This is the case when a framework entails a particular claim.
Philosophically, it makes no sense to say that ID is science when they haven't made even the most rudimentary progress in that direction.
Legally, the more often people mistakenly say that ID is science, the more likely IDC advocates are to be able to erroneously convince someone in the legal system that teaching IDC has a valid secular purpose. Obviously, that consequence has no bearing on the philosophical question, but you may wish to take some notice of it anyway as you advocate saying that IDC is science.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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