“Though there is diversity within the group, Intelligent Design proponents generally fail to meet the norms for good scientific behavior in their work on Intelligent Design on several counts. First, few advocates build on existing scientific knowledge. Many misinterpret evolutionary theory and the nature of science, and do not fully understand the current research in an area before launching a critique of it. Perhaps most importantly, because Intelligent Design is untestable, proponents are unable to expose their ideas to testing in a meaningful way and cannot evaluate whether their ideas are supported by evidence.
So far, there are no documented cases of Intelligent Design research contributing to a new scientific discovery. Intelligent Design proponents, of course, continue to write about the idea, but this work is not generative — that is, it tends to repeat itself and does not help build new, more detailed explanations. Intelligent Design proponents instead tend to focus on critiquing specific evolutionary explanations (e.g., for bacterial flagella). Ironically, the misapplication of evolutionary theory and misunderstanding of the nature of science inherent in these critiques has so frustrated evolutionary biologists that they have sometimes increased their research efforts in the areas targeted by Intelligent Design. We now know a lot more about how bacterial flagella evolved than we did ten years ago!“
Challenge to ID believers: do you still consider ID to be science? If so, how? If not, will you then admit that evolution is the only SCIENCE-BASED theory/fact for the manner in which life has come to its present form on this planet?
