Idiocy Evolved

"Intelligent Design" "Theory" has been in the news quite a bit recently, in part because the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, doesn't understand the difference between the terms "hypothesis" and "theory" in scientific discourse, in part because Antony Flew---whom the AP informs me was "one of the world's leading atheists"---has been swayed by a version of metaphysical design theory and adopted a theism. (Pat Robertson was particularly ecstactic over Flew's philosophical shift, not caring, apparently, that Flew's theism has nothing to do with traditional theology.)

The reason not to teach "intelligent design" in biology classes is that it is neither a scientific hypothesis nor a theory. What an intelligent iteration of "intelligent design" (for lack of a better term) gets at is that the theory of evolution is not identical to a unified field theory, and even a successful unified field theory wouldn't render metaphysical questions meaningless. Truth be told, I'm sympathetic to that view. Biased as I obviously am, I don't think it will be possible for science to render philosophy obsolete. But philosophy, or to be precise, speculative metaphysics, is precisely what "intelligent design" is. It's a guess about the nature of ultimate reality, not a paradigm even slightly capable of interpretating data or predicting outputs as a result of evidentiary input. Its claims are neither testable nor falsifiable; they're just a portrait of the way things might be, and if they sound intuititive to you, by all means, embrace them---just don't confuse them with science.

The practical problem with "intelligent design" is that far too many of its proponents are creationist peasants (I don't think there is a fairer term, except maybe boobus americanus) who, like genital herpes, keep popping up at irregular intervals with yet another scheme to insert their religion into biology education. Inevitably, they get frustrated by court rulings that creationism is still creationism even if it's not called "creationism," though I think they should be grateful to the courts for providing new fuel for the persecution complex without which their fundraisers (and recently, GOTV efforts) wouldn't be terribly effective.

If we were to have an honest discourse about "intelligent design"---which might not be possible outside a formal philosophical setting---there would be no controversy about classifying it as a metaphysical hypothesis that neither supports nor disconfirms the theory of evolution, but is utterly indifferent to it. Since our discourse instead is over low-church Protestantism dressed in the garb of science, what we get as a result is what William Saletan described in Slate two years ago:

A theory isn't just a bunch of criticisms, even if they're valid. A theory ties things together. It explains and predicts. Intelligent design does neither. It doesn't explain why part of our history seems intelligently designed and part of it doesn't. Why are our feet and our back muscles poorly designed for walking? Why are we afflicted by lethal viruses? Why have so many females died in childbirth? ID doesn't explain these things. It just shrugs at them. "Design theory seeks to show, based on scientific evidence, that some features of living things may be designed by a mind or some form of intelligence," says one ID proponent. Some? May? Some? What kind of theory is that?...

Darwinian theory makes predictions that can be tested. It predicts that the average difference in size between males and females will correspond to the degree of polygamy in a species, and that in species in which females can reproduce more often than males, females will be more sexually assertive and less discriminating about their sex partners than males will be. These predictions turn out to be true. Darwin claimed that humans had descended from apes. If fossils unearthed since his death had exhibited no such connection, his theory would have been discredited. What empirical predictions does ID make that, if proven untrue, would discredit the theory?...

[Intelligent design] offers no predictions, scope modifiers, or experimental methods of its own. It's a default answer, a shrug, consisting entirely of problems in Darwinism. Those problems should be taught in school, but there's no reason to call them intelligent design. Intelligent design, as defined by its advocates, means nothing. This is the way creationism ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.