FFS are we still doing this nonsense?

The answer to that is “yes”, we really are. This rubber duck of religious lunacy will inevitably keep popping up.

So who is now doing this and what are they proposing?

The same gang of whacky religious fanatics in North Dakota that very recently created House Concurrent Resolution 3020 to “acknowledge the Kingship of Jesus Christ over all the world,” did not just stop with that, but they also created Bill 2355 on Jan 24, 2025 just a couple of weeks ago…

It is basically a mandate that this pseudoscientific religious fantasy is to be promoted in all schools as “science” from Aug 2027 onwards.

“Intelligent Design” is not science

A scientific hypothesis must be not only testable but also subject to falsification. It fails at doing even that.

“No wait“, you might quip, “There is no mention of a God, it is just a documented observation by scientists“.

Actually no.

Let’s unpack this. Yes, I’ve covered all this before, so here we go again.

You will no doubt be familiar with the term “Creationism”. As you are no doubt most probably aware, that is a religious claim that asserts, on the basis of exactly zero credible evidence, that the ultimate and final explanation for everything is “A God did it all by magic”.

I wrote “A God”, because it is not just a Christian belief, other belief systems are into it as well. For Christians it is the book of Genesis in the Bible that contains several creation myths, hence for those that embrace that specific text as “historical literal truth”, it is believed.

One generic size does not fit all. It comes in a vast array of multiple flavours that ranges from old-earth creationism all the way through to young earth creationism. The former is of course an attempt to come to terms with the age of the earth being what it is and suggests that the days of Genesis are symbolic of geological ages, while the later is a belief that planet earth and the entire universe suddenly appeared 6,000 years ago.

We are apparently supposed to believe that God not only magicked it all, but also pranked us by included lots of dinosaur bones, geological strata, and even tossed in some rather pissed off Sumerians who were rather annoyed about their day being interrupted by creation. When you challenge those that really do believe it all with the evidence that conflicts with the belief, you will be advised that it was done like this as a faith “test”.

If there is a god running tests like this then I can only conclude that it’s a gullibility test, and so those that are stupid enough to reject well-established empirical facts have failed the test.

“well yes“, you might wonder, “where does Intelligent design come into play?”

Roughly about the mid 1980’s the “Intelligent Design” movement emerged and gained traction amongst evangelical fundamentalists as a means to present creationism, not as religious but rather as supposedly scientific. It is in essence creationism with all the religious jargon stripped away. Not even God gets a mention, instead we have an “intelligent agent”.

The Key Moment in History for Intelligent Design was 2005

For those wondering why I wrote within the opening above “FFS are we still doing this nonsense?“, then here is the deja vu bit.

There was an attempt over twenty years ago within the Dover Area School District of Pennsylvania to mandate intelligent design.

It ended up being legally tested in the now famous “Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District” trial.

That was a trial where 11 parents of students sued the Dover Area School District over the school board’s mandate that Intelligent Design must be taught as fact.

Not a first, because that was of course the famous Monkey Trial back in 1925.

In 2005 it gained a lot of national attention and so all the big Intelligent Design “experts” rolled up to present their solid “proof”.

For example Michael Behe, Steve Fuller, and many others. Bless their cotton socks, but they did their very best. It’s also the reason the actual trial ran for 40 days. This was their moment, the golden opportunity to make their case.

Side note: Behe, now 73, was at that time the professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University. His own university considered him to be a nutter. The university website had the following very explicit disclaimer …

The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.

The trial did not go well for the intelligent designers. Having no credible evidence tends to make that outcome rather inevitable.

It concluded as follows …

On December 20, 2005, Judge Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision ruling that the Dover mandate requiring the statement to be read in class was unconstitutional. The ruling concluded that intelligent design is not science, and permanently barred the board from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring ID to be taught as an alternative theory

Net Impact — not only is it a scientific fact that “intelligent design” is pseudoscientific bullshit, but it was firmly established in a federal court as a legal fact as well.

Well done intelligent design guys, we thank you for your service.

Yes, but what is the harm?

You might hold this thought, “It’s just an alternative way of looking at things, so what harm does it do to present it, just live with it“.

My strong pushback is that it was, and still is, being pushed as scientific fact – the proposed legislation mandates that teachers must knowingly lie to students.

Having it in a class that covers mythology would be fine, but promoting it as fact is grossly dishonest.

The claim that ID is “scientific” was addressed during the trial by Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor from Brown University. He testified as an expert witness that …

“Intelligent design is not a testable theory and as such is not generally accepted by the scientific community.” He said that the idea of intelligent design was not subject to falsification, and demonstrated that many claims made by intelligent-design advocates against evolution were invalid.

When asked what the harm was in reading the statement, Miller gave a two-fold response.

1) “[I]t falsely undermines the scientific status of evolutionary theory and gives students a false understanding of what theory actually means.”

And

2) “As a person of faith who was blessed with two daughters, who raised both of my daughters in the church, and had they been given an education in which they were explicitly or implicitly forced to choose between God and science, I would have been furious, because I want my children to keep their religious faith.”

That truly does nail it and clearly explains the pseudoscience designation that this supposed “science” attempts to masquerade with.

It is more or less the twenty year anniversary of that famous trial, and so here we are, apparently eager to do it all again.

Pro Tip: Supernatural entities doing stuff via “Magic” has never been the right answer for anything … ever.

Mandating it will not in any way alter that reality.

One last Thought — It’s not a binary choice.

It really is not a binary choice between science and religion.

Most people who identify with a religious tradition have also made peace with the prevailing scientific reality. Facts are facts, and the multiple lines of evidence are abundantly clear, so they accept evolutionary biology. To retain their religious tradition they also take the stance, “Evolution is how God did it”.

For clarity, I’m not making that last bit up, that is the official Catholic position, a denomination the represents the largest group of Christians on the planet.

It tends to only be the biblical literalists who reject our well-established evidence-based understanding and instead seek to impose myths as fact by force.

Unfortunately for us, when they gain access to positions of responsibility they also tend to see it as an opportunity to attempt to impost their mythology as historical “science”. We might indeed live within a society where we have freedom of religion and so if people wish to believe BS then that’s their call. However, what they don’t get to do is to impose their superstitious palaeolithic thinking upon the rest of us.

In other words, Freedom of Religion also means Freedom from Religion as well.

So round the loop we all go on this one once again.