Agylen

Scott Adams: “To me, the most fascinating aspect of the debate over Darwinism versus Intelligent Design is that neither side understands the other side’s argument. Better yet, no one seems to understand their own side’s argument. But that doesn’t stop anyone from having a passionate opinion.”

Scott’s blog entry exemplifies some of the most common misconceptions people have regarding the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate.

First misconception: ID and Evolution are somewhat equivalent as “theories” since both have plenty of “holes” in them, so we cannot really decide which one is better at explaining reality and we’d be better teaching them both. There are two errors here. The first one is that ID really has no holes: Whenever someone points out a hole in it, the obvious response is “Someone did it!”, where “someone” is an unnamed, all-powerful designer which the ID-ers, were they not the bunch of hypocritical liars they are, would call “God”.

Second: Of course Evolution theory does not explain everything regarding evolution with 100% certainty. This does not make it less of a scientific theory. All scientific knowledge is tentative, partial and provisional. When a scientist has not enough data to provide a probable explanation, he might put forth a testable hypothesis. An ID-er will just say: “Since my limited imagination cannot understand how this came to being, I will simply postulate that someone did it.” This is not science.

Second misconception: “The Creationists and the Intelligent Design folks have the same target (Darwin), but they don’t have the same argument. The average person who has a strong opinion on this topic doesn’t understand that distinction because the political agenda of the creationists makes things murky.”

Intelligent Design is just creationism in disguise. Maybe not of the young-earth, noah-flood-did-really-happen kind but creationism it is. The political agenda is the same: Discredit Evolution and put back religion in the science classrooms and books. It is just so evident.

In the end, the deciding factor between ID and Evolution is not whether one is “truer” than the other one. For all we know, the truth might be that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world last Thursday, with the appearance of an old, evolved world. You simply cannot test this hypothesis, just like you cannot test ID’s designer. Therefore, it is not science and shouldn’t be taught in a science classroom. Is this so hard to understand?

Update: PZ Myers (a scientist) chides Adams much better than I could ever hope to.