With about 70 billion stars and as many as 100 million life forms (at least here on Earth), the universe is a stunningly complex place. Did all of this matter evolve independently, or was it guided by a larger force – as proponents of intelligent design believe? With the debate raging in living rooms, classrooms and courtrooms, the stakes are high when it comes to determining intelligent design’s merit.
"Intelligent Design" stands on extremely shaky scientific grounds. Its advocates seem unable to get their ideas published in peer-reviewed journals, so they've been mounting PR campaigns in the popular media. That's now how real science works. If the IDers have evidence, let's see it.
But aside from that, it's simply unconstitutional to teach ID in public schools. Why? ID's genesis, so to speak, comes from religious concepts. ID holds that some type of higher intelligence designed humans and other living things. ID proponents usually refrain from calling this force "God," but other than space aliens, they have no other suspects. (And they aren't serious about the space aliens.)
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III exposed the unconstitutionality of Intelligent Design in his well-reasoned Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling. In promoting ID, the Dover board, Jones wrote, "consciously chose to change Dover’s
biology curriculum to advance Religion. We have been presented with a wealth of evidence which reveals that
the District’s purpose was to advance creationism, an inherently
religious view, both by introducing it directly under the label ID and
by disparaging the scientific theory of evolution, so that creationism
would gain credence by default as the only apparent alternative to
evolution….”
Faced with Jones' devastating opinion, how did the pro-ID Discovery Institute react? Unable to respond to his powerful opinion, the group accused Jones of plagiarizing portions of the ruling! It was a shameful low blow and not a scientific argument, to say the least.
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