Dr Ray Scott Percival’s essay on Popper clearly helps inform one of the laughbable nature of the “science” behind “Intelligent Design” and “Creationism.”

…Thus the term “immunizing stratagem” arose in connection with Popper’s attempt to solve the problem of distinguishing scientific from pseudo-scientific theories – the so-called demarcation problem. Popper’s solution was the methodological rule to allow into science only empirically falsifiable hypotheses, and subject these to severe criticism. In addition, theory development was to proceed from less to more testable, i.e., more informative theories. If a theory is refuted and an alternative sought, it had to be more testable, not less, and the more testable the better. For to reduce testability is to reduce knowledge, but in science we desire the growth of knowledge. An immunizing stratagem is a development in theory that reduces testability.

In other words, ID and Creationism invoke “God” to systematically plug up their untestable logical and theoretical holes, which are all over their ideas; this invoking of God to replace testable (and hence possibly refutable) ideas is clearly an example of Popper’s idea of an immunizing stratagem.

Any scientist worth his or her salt knows and understands this basic epistemological principle of science that Popper proposed, and THIS is why ID and Creationsim are a joke the scientific community.

Perhaps our sceince education is failing us all if fully grown and educated–even at university level–adults do not understand the epistemological limits and differences between science and metaphysics.

Furthermore IDers MUST believe every word of their religious teachings. Selecting from the menu is not allowed and the Pope reiterated that point this week.

So from the IDers point of view science is a RELIGION that believes in the senses, observations, data, logical conclusions and theories. They see it as a false religion and one to be destroyed at all costs. This is what you (and I) are up against. It’s just one battle of a war that has been raging since long before the time of Roger Bacon. It is just one consequence of the concept of monotheism which has combined a belief in a greater authority and wonder of the natural world with political and economic power.

Perhaps Kenneth Chang might find it fruitful to see some of the comments in http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/08/02/how-are-we-to-make-progress-with-w/

There, Doug points to a pre-print “General relativity resolves galactic rotation without exotic dark matter” (http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507619). This would be a highly interesting paper if it were correct. Sean replied “Sorry, I meant to reply to this. I haven’t read the paper (astro-ph/0507619) in detail, but there are enough warning signs that I won’t bother. ” Anyway, someone else did look at it (http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508377) and found the mistake in the paper; it is not a mistake in the math. it turns out, it is a mistake of interpretation.

Now, the authors of the original pre-print are not crackpots; they simply made an error. To a working scientist in the same field, this was not worth more than ten minutes of time, once the symptoms of being wrong were detected. ID as science is even less worth a few minutes of a scientist’s time. Why are so many working scientists (e.g here and on pharyngula.org) then writing so much about ID? Because it is a politically motivated attack on the entire enterprise of science; the pre-print with the error, cited above, is of infinitely more scientific interest than ID, and the authors of the pre-print are committed to the scientific method.

It bears repeating: ID is of ZERO intrinsic scientific interest. There is no debate on ID as science except that created by the Discovery Institute. As a well-funded and politically backed movement, ID is a danger to the scientific temper of this nation (not of other nations, even in fundamentalist Middle Eastern countries, I doubt there is an attack on science of this sophistication). And that is the only reason scientists are talking about it.

The article could have started off with “A search through the program of (pick your favorite biology conference) for sessions on ‘Intelligent Design’ reveals an interesting fact — there aren’t any.” The article could then have describe the attempts of IDers to get their ideas taken seriously as science, and their utter failure on that score, and the telling strategy of working through school boards rather than conventional scientific channels. It would have been strictly factual, non-judgemental, and given the right impression. That’s why so many people feel disappointed.

What’s frustrating is that this is a common feature of mainstream journalism, at least in the US — the feeling that journalists should simply present both sides, leaving it to the readers to make up their minds. How many times have we read sentences like “Republicans claim that their new plan will lower taxes on most Americans, while Democrats say that it will actually raise their taxes”? Well, which is it? This is a factual question, which should be in the power of a report to actually answer. In this case, simply presenting the IDers view of the biology, and countering with the actual biologists’ view, leads to a dramatically misleading conclusion: that there is a real scientific controversy going on.

You see, that is not at the heart of the debate. The relevant debate is “Should the content of high-school science courses be decided by scientists, or by religiously-motivated public-relations campaigns?”

I think this is science’s problem in this culture war — you’re not framing the debate properly. We can all agree that ID is not science. It’s not a model, it makes no predictions, and it’s not verifiable. It is certainly a religiously-motivated public relation campaign. By teaching ID in a science classroom, we are teaching our children, our future, that science is not necessarily a worthwhile enterprise. By science here, I don’t mean ‘evolution’ but rather the scientific method. Once we start saying, “hmm… maybe science isn’t right,” we start down a slippery slope where we very quickly reach the conclusion that we shouldn’t fund medical research. Hence, teaching ID leads to no cure for cancer.

Now, surely a better expositor than myself can phrase this better. I’ve certainly seen parts of this more or less said lots of places. But it should be explicitly laid out: teaching ID to your children means you die earlier than you should because there will be no cure for cancer (or AIDS, or old age, or whatever). That statement resonates more with the average Joe than, “don’t teach ID in science class b/c it’s not science” or “don’t teach ID in science class b/c it’s a religiously-motivated public-relations campaign” does. Sad, but true.

But even so, as I said at Pharyngula, I don’t think the casual reader will conclude from the article that evolution and I.D. are on equal footing. I don’t think it needs that close of a reading. It’s not like I surrepticiously snuck in a few caveats. It’s literally half of the story.

I’ve had one person email me saying he was confused by the story, that it seemed to give equal weight to both sides. This person said he’s been debating more evangelical friends and reading a lot about I.D. The rest of the feedback has ranged from “Great story” to “I don’t think it was as awful as all those people said it was” to “What an awful story.”

You wouldn’t know from the article that ID enjoys the same level of support among biologists as the flat-Earth theory does among astronomers.

Exactly!