In an old post I argued that Inteligent Design really is science, just very bad science. Since then several people have suggested that the scientific theory that humans were designed by intelligent beings doesn’t count as intelligent design and that intelligent design is an inherently more religious theory. However, seeing this interview with Michael Behe on the Colbert report reminded me why I never found this response that compelling.

While people like Behe clearly defend Intelligent Design for religious or spiritual motives this doesn’t change the fact that the thesis he advanced in this video and (at least according to wikipedia) the one he advanced in his book are ultimately a purely secular argument that is fully consistent with the conclusion that aliens made human beings in an irreducibly complex fashion. Since we obviously could get evidence for such a conclusion¹ what Behe is presenting is a scientific theory whatever his motives², just a very bad one.

But the portrayal of Behe in the media makes it clear that Behe’s proposal of irreducible counts as Intelligent Design, at least in the public’s understanding of these terms. Therefore to insist on saying intelligent design isn’t science is at best extremely misleading. Yes, intelligent design is just a cover for the teaching of religious beliefs in school but it is a cover not those beliefs itself. Of course teaching even Behe’s scientific theory to school children in a science class would falsely suggest that the biblical account of creation had scientific plausibility and that would violate the separation of church and state. However, it’s pretty swallow that most people would understand the claim “Intelligent Design isn’t science,” in this fashion. Now maybe this technically false claims is a necessary Machiavellian counter to the Discovery Institute’s schemes but it is still false and I worry that it will ultimately do more harm than good.

More on this subject and why the National Academy of Science’s definition of a scientific theory is misleading after the break.

One reason I worry the claim “Intelligent Design isn’t science,” will backfire is that scientists continue to present arguments like the following to the public.

It seems to me problematic for scientists to simultaneously present certain experiments that might have falsified³ evolution and highlight the results as proof of evolutions truth while essentially trying to argue that any alternative theory isn’t testable. I mean in it’s broadest terms evolution is really the theory that people are the result of random chemical/physical reactions that somehow engage in self-organizing behavior. If we really falsified that theory it seems the next best one would be that we were designed rather than the result of random chance.

Besides this furthers the absurd and misleading idea that there are two separate and disjoint realms, science and religion. Once again this may be a useful social fiction but it just isn’t true. If the world had turned out to be populated with angels and demons and prayer occasionally effected verifiable miracles people would no doubt put the same kind of rational analysis we do in physics today into discovering the nature of the angelic realm or using statistical analysis to discover what variables affected the efficacy of prayer. Maybe there is a small core of religious belief that deals with in principle untestable assertions but most religious beliefs are no different than highly theoretical scientific theories. We can rationally infer certain things about the probabilities of future observations from many religious dogmas (be these observations about historical digs in Jerusalem or the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent) making these testable theories no different than string theory. Well except for the fact that string theory has a small bit of (indirect) empirical support while almost every religious belief has a mountain of evidence a mile high arrayed against it. Obviously I don’t think it makes for good PR to tell people science and religion are in direct conflict but I do think we ought to avoid the issue rather than drawing attention to it with shaky claims about Intelligent Design not being a scientific theory.

Now I’ve been using the term ‘scientific theory’ throughout this post as a synonym for an empirically testable proposition that some possible experimental outcomes might make you rationally accept. Not everyone defines the term this way. It turns out that the National Academy of Sciences defines a scientific theory this way:

Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

Obviously under this definition Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory because it isn’t ‘well-substantiated’ and while this is a reasonable definition it is misleading to use it in the intelligent design debate. Sure on their definition Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory but it is a scientific hypothesis:

Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world⁴ leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, it becomes more probable that the hypothesis is correct. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis can be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.

Since the statement “Intelligent Design isn’t science” and “Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory” are used virtually synonymously it would be downright deceptive to say, “Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory,” when you mean it’s only a hypothesis. Besides, the reason people are trying to deny that Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory is to avoid the debate about whether it is likely to be true. So if you agreed that some versions of Intelligent Design are composed of testable statements about the natural world and wanted to be understood why wouldn’t you just say that Intelligent Design is a bad scientific hypothesis and avoid the whole theory argument all together?

Perhaps it’s a bit silly of me to press so hard on such a minor point but I remember being a smart little kid and it was exactly the presence of little logical contradictions like this in religion that eroded my faith. I worry that their are reasonably smart young children out there in the hinterlands who are right now feeling smug and superior for having dissected the evolutionists contradictory arguments and becoming that much less likely to ever accept evolution or major in science. Besides I wanted to try embedding videos in my blog.