Response to an ID Apologist

A fellow posting as "mike" responded to an article at Evolutionblog with some of the typical claims about Intelligent Design "Theory": it's not religious, it's based on science, etc. I posted a response on his weblog, but I thought I'd repeat it here.

Evolutionblog said...

Introducing ID into science classes is purely a device for using the public schools to promote religious propaganda

And mike responded with...

That's a subjective statement. I can also argue that promoting evolution promotes a religion as it is filled with inexplainable holes regarding the origins of life. Are you to believe in evolution in spite of these holes? You may if you have enough "faith" in evolution. And if you do then you can certainly construe it as being just another religious movement.

The claim that ID is just a device for promoting religious ideas in public schools isn't a subjective statement; it's an observation of the facts. Please, mike, name some ID promoters who are not doing it for religious reasons. The Discovery Institute has made their religious motivations plain, as have the pro-ID members of the Dover school board (when they think there aren't any reporters listening).

ID is no way religious. It may be liked by those religous, but that's hardly the same as it promoting a religious view. ID simply proposes that some "intelligent creator" created life. Whether that intelligent creator be something that religious institutions use to their benefit or not is not the fault of the theory of ID itself, but rather of the subjective religious believer.

ID is inherently religious. If you don't agree, please name some people who take it seriously who are not religious; name someone who seriously thinks that life was intelligently designed by someone other than God. ID is just Creationism repackaged to slip past the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and "Intelligent Designer" is just a nudge-nudge, wink-wink reference to God.

The legal issue being adjudicated here is whether the crazy people have managed
to be sufficiently dishonest about their religious motivations. That is all.

If the movement by the school board were truely religiously motivated then it would NOT be ID they'd be promoting here but rather Creationism.

The same people now promoting ID are the people who were trying to push Creationism just a few decades ago. Creationism got shot down by the courts because it was obviously an effort to push religion in the classroom, so they're now trying to disguise the religion enough to get it through by saying "Intelligent Designer" instead of "God".

The only mystery I see is this: How did a school district that managed to elect an anti-science majority to their school board manage to attract such a stellar group of science teachers?

The reason why you have such a "stellar" group of science teachers is because ID makes sense; especially when you compare it to the flawed macroevolutionary theory. The only "anti-science majority" is from those that believe macroevolution occurred by "chance"!

Mike completely missed the point; I'll chalk that up to a simple mis-reading of the statement in Evolutionblog. The science teachers are consistently resisting efforts to make them teach ID as if it were science. It's the school board that's promoting the idea. If ID is science based, then its backers should be making predictions and testing them to build evidence that other scientists will accept instead of trying to peddle the idea to school kids who haven't got enough experience to see through an Appeal to Ignorance fallacy.