"Intelligent Design" isn't

The Ohio State Board of education just voted 13 to 5 to include "Intelligent Design" as an approved curriculum option for public schools in that state. The essence of I.D. is that human beings and some other life-forms are too complex to have evolved naturally, without the intervention of an Intelligent Designer.

First, a disclaimer: If folks choose to give religious faith precedence over reason and evidence in their lives, and believe in Divine creation because of that faith, I'm fine with that. Your choice, man. When somebody comes along and slaps a new label on it ("Intelligent Design"), starts calling it science, and wants to teach it in tax-funded schools, I draw the line.

I.D. is not science. It has no explanatory power whatsoever. If you postulate an Intelligent Designer to explain the origin of humanity, you have not answered the question, you have simply replaced it with a new one: what is the origin of your Designer? In addition to having zero explanatory power, I.D. cannot be falsified by any conceivable piece of evidence--a requirement of all scientific theories.

I.D. can therefore not be reasonably construed as a scientific theory, and has no place in any science class that I would care to subsidize. And there's the rub. Thirteen out of eighteen Ohio School Board members disagree with me. If we had a real system of educational choice, such as the one I outlined here or here, there wouldn't be a problem. Everybody could get the kind of schooling they want for their children and no one would have to subsidize schooling they were ardently opposed to.

But we don't have such a system. Each state has a single public school system that is an official organ of the government, so no matter what curricula it adopts, it is sure to generate conflict due to our religiously and culturally diverse society. School choice programs such as I link to above would avoid the endless and often bitterly divisive culture wars that surround our official government schools. Think about it.