Is intelligent design scientific?
Is intelligent design scientific?
Intelligent design is a hypothesis. If intelligent means intelligence as we know it, then intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis. Evidence against this hypothesis is strong and continues to accumulate.
What's the evidence against ID? - The best evidence is nucleotide sequences. Comparing nucleotide sequences of two organisms (e.g. humans vs. chimpanzees) shows that they differ largely by random mutations, preferentially in less functional areas of genes (functional changes are selected against). ID predicts useful, directed changes, not random, nonfunctional changes.
Promoters of ID state that random processes do not produce information. In fact the immune system creates information by random processes continually and on a massive scale.
If ID refers to unknowable intelligence it is metaphysical speculation which is not science.
Most arguments for intelligent design are rationalizing (which is not scientific.)
Regardless of how one views ID, it has contributed nothing to development of modern biology. Scientific databases (e.g. Science Citation Index) show that ID is more legitimately an engineering concept than a biological concept.
Intelligent design, as it's currently used, is almost exclusively a promotion of the Discovery Institute.