ID's most significant failing is that it is not falsifiable. But unfalsifiable does not equate to the notion that it never happened (nor does it mean that it did, actually).
ID's most significant failing is that it DELIBERATELY DOES NOT SPECIFY any intelligent designer, and is therefore not only not falsifiable, it's so meaningless as a "hypothesis" in the first place that it doesn't really even warrant the nomenclature in the first place. All it posits is "life is just so complicated, something even cleverer must have done all this, life can't have just happened".
The reason it doesn't specify an intelligent designer is of course purely political and utterly disingenuous for it —if the majority of people who want to push intelligent design as a hypothesis actually put their cards on the table and posited their favoured specific brand of intelligent designer (to whit, one JHVH), it would not be able to be taught in US public schools due to restrictions on the separation of superstition and state.
And even if it could, said JHVH is subject to exactly the same ID problem —"JHVH is just so complicated something cleverer must have done all this, JHVH can't have just happened", to infinite regress.
Now many will try to point out that ID doesn't necessarily posit JHVH —but that's because it is framed in a deliberately vague and disingenuous way by the JHVH supporters to obfuscate the whole affair. So that exobiogenesis etc people will sign up to it to obscure the real point of it. It's why the hypothesis is non falsifiable — there's absolutely no agent specified, ergo no real hypothesis, to falsify. It also makes no real attempt to explain why life can't have "just happened", and indeed most proponents are comfortable in asserting that said JHVH definitely did just happened, despite the rather hypocritical contradiction to their supposedly closely held ID tenet that amazingly complicated things can't just happen.
So ID is deliberately designed to make no actual hypothesis for fear of invalidating itself from being taught for political reasons, and it hopes that no one will notice it is a paradox that leads to infinite regress. All it's really aimed at doing is getting bible studies to be taught as having equivalence to science. Which is frankly preposterous.
If they really want to teach an actual extant controversy involving JHVH they should start from here: christianity is a minority superstition in a sea of thousands of equally valid superstitions. Discuss.
Intelligent design is not an oxymoron, it is a tautology
Intelligent design is really a self-referential infinite regression.
The argument being that because life is so complex it can't have just happened and therefore must have been designed by a higher intelligence, by its own logic then forces the proponent to assume that anything that can design life must be so complex that it, in turn, can't have just happened and therefore must must have been designed by a higher intelligence, which of course would be so complex that it would have had to have been designed by a higher intelligence.... etc. etc. ad infinitum.
It's turtles, turtles, turtles all the way down... (to quote another scientific *ahem* "controversy" they'll no doubt soon be teaching in Missouri).
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ID's most significant failing is that it is not falsifiable. But unfalsifiable does not equate to the notion that it never happened (nor does it mean that it did, actually).
ID's most significant failing is that it DELIBERATELY DOES NOT SPECIFY any intelligent designer, and is therefore not only not falsifiable, it's so meaningless as a "hypothesis" in the first place that it doesn't really even warrant the nomenclature in the first place. All it posits is "life is just so complicated, something even cleverer must have done all this, life can't have just happened".
The reason it doesn't specify an intelligent designer is of course purely political and utterly disingenuous for it —if the majority of people who want to push intelligent design as a hypothesis actually put their cards on the table and posited their favoured specific brand of intelligent designer (to whit, one JHVH), it would not be able to be taught in US public schools due to restrictions on the separation of superstition and state.
And even if it could, said JHVH is subject to exactly the same ID problem —"JHVH is just so complicated something cleverer must have done all this, JHVH can't have just happened", to infinite regress.
Now many will try to point out that ID doesn't necessarily posit JHVH —but that's because it is framed in a deliberately vague and disingenuous way by the JHVH supporters to obfuscate the whole affair. So that exobiogenesis etc people will sign up to it to obscure the real point of it. It's why the hypothesis is non falsifiable — there's absolutely no agent specified, ergo no real hypothesis, to falsify. It also makes no real attempt to explain why life can't have "just happened", and indeed most proponents are comfortable in asserting that said JHVH definitely did just happened, despite the rather hypocritical contradiction to their supposedly closely held ID tenet that amazingly complicated things can't just happen.
So ID is deliberately designed to make no actual hypothesis for fear of invalidating itself from being taught for political reasons, and it hopes that no one will notice it is a paradox that leads to infinite regress. All it's really aimed at doing is getting bible studies to be taught as having equivalence to science. Which is frankly preposterous.
If they really want to teach an actual extant controversy involving JHVH they should start from here: christianity is a minority superstition in a sea of thousands of equally valid superstitions. Discuss.
[evil calvin grin] ...it's wrong to even momentarily hope it hits the intelligent design legislation idiots in Missouri?[/evil calvin grin]
Intelligent design is not an oxymoron, it is a tautology
Intelligent design is really a self-referential infinite regression.
The argument being that because life is so complex it can't have just happened and therefore must have been designed by a higher intelligence, by its own logic then forces the proponent to assume that anything that can design life must be so complex that it, in turn, can't have just happened and therefore must must have been designed by a higher intelligence, which of course would be so complex that it would have had to have been designed by a higher intelligence.... etc. etc. ad infinitum.
It's turtles, turtles, turtles all the way down... (to quote another scientific *ahem* "controversy" they'll no doubt soon be teaching in Missouri).