I.D. in the News

Since the Kitzmiller decision in Dover, PA the hub-bub over intelligent design has quieted somewhat. It's back in the news today because of primary elections for the Kansas Board of Education. Most recently the board has favored including language (aided by the Discovery Institute) that would call for evidence against evolution to be taught. Although sounding open minded and fair, it is seen by many scientists as just another method to sneak ID into the class. (One ID supporter apparently admitted as much.) Over the years the progression has looked like this in response to court decisions:

creationism --> scientific creationism --> intelligent design --> teach the evidence for and against

[Update: It looks like the ID-friendly board members will now be in the minority.]


So while we're on the topic, I'll just point out a few other things.

1. Barbara Forrest has an online article desribing her experience as an expert witness in the trial last fall.

2. John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, has a post on why I.D. is bad science even on its own terms.

3. A post on The Panda's Thumb announced an upcoming meeting at Cold Spring Harbor called "Engineering Principles in Biological Systems," and rightly pointed out that the I.D. folks ought to be all over a meeting like that--that is, if they are serious about their claims. The post ellicited this comment from someone who claims to be in the field of bio-medical engineering.

The issue is, at least in my undergrad university we were first trained in engineering and biology/medicine seperately, then trained to put the two together. So I learned to think like an engineer before I learned to apply that thinking to biological and medical issues. Engineers are, of course, designers. When looking at anything, we are trained to ask “why is it designed like this”. This becomes extremely frustrating when dealing with biological systems. This question is useful in many instances. But for biolgical systems an annoyingly large amount of the time there is no answer to the question. It is how it is because of some random thing that means it couldn’t have been any other way. It is the exact opposite of human design, and it makes the human designers I know extremely frustrated. It seems very hard for engineers to accept this, it goes against everything I was trained and it appears what others I know were trained as well. But it is painfully obvious when looking at biological systems in any sort of detail, and is something we have all had to come to terms with.