Intelligent Design

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"[But] intelligent design is not science, it has no testable hypotheses, no proposed methodologies, no research data.
It is derived from its own claims. Its philosophical arguments have been rejected by the science community."
--Jack Krebs, vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science

In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

--Bruce Alberts President National Academy of Sciences

The creationists' fondness for "gaps" in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God's gift to Kansas.

--Richard Dawkins, FRS. Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. Taken from his essay Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant

Intelligent design is nothing more than creationism dressed in a cheap tuxedo.
--Leonard Krishtalka

Intelligent Design is lipstick on the pig of Creationism.
--Dan Neil, In God and Darwin we Trust, Los Angeles Times, November 27 2005

Why would an omnipotent, omnipresent, all-knowing God create the human shin bone at the level of a tow bar?
--Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Adelaide

It now seems unlikely that a theory will ever emerge which could completely replace Darwin's theory of evolution. But should that happen, scientists would be committed to investigating it fully. Intelligent design is emphatically not that theory, as it has systematically failed to stand up to any scrutiny. But, like a turd in the
u-bend, it just won't go away.
--Adam Rutherford, The Guardian
   

Funky Winkerbean  (off site)

Short-circuiting science, short-changing our kids
Kenneth R. Miller, Professor of Biology, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Design on the Defensive (off site)
Kenneth R. Miller

Finding Darwin's God: The New Battle Over Evolution  (off site)

Intelligent Design
Humans, Cockroaches, and the Laws of Physics
(off site)
Victor J Stenger

God, the Universe and Evolution: A Conversation with a Creationist.
Kevin L. O'Brien

Intelligent Design: Constant Tampering by the Designer (off site)
Joe Meert

Life's Grand Design (off site)
Kenneth R. Miller

The Meaning of Life to an Armadillo
"Gandalf"

Comments on W.A. Dembski's Press Release of 2002/01/08  (off site)
Wesley R. Elsberry 

Is the Complement System Irreducibly Complex? (off site)
Mike Coon

Behe's Criticism of Evolution in Biochemistry Textbooks  (off site)
Laurence A. Moran

The Evolution of Improved Fitness
by random mutation plus selection
  (off site)
Edward E. Max, M.D., Ph.D.

Michael Behe's New Mexico Blitz... (off site)

The Truth about the "SantorumAmendment" Language on Evolution (off site)
Kenneth R. Miller

A reducibly complex mousetrap  (off site)
John McDonald

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Intelligent Design Bibliography Misleading
National Center for Science Education


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Articles About Intelligent Design

National Center for Science Education

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Unlocking the Mystery of Illustra Media

 National Center for Science Education

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Project Steve
Humorous Testing of the Scientific Attitudes Toward "Intelligent Design" Via Scientists Named "Steve"
National Center for Science Education

Who will be Steve #1000?
1000th Steve to be crowned at AAAS press conference
 

Steve Darwin is Steve #1000
"It was nip and tuck, but when the dust settled, Dr. Steve Darwin was named the 1000th Steve in NCSE's Project Steve."

The C-Files: William Dembski  (off site)

Intelligent Design - The Prostate (off site)

Intelligent Design?   (off site)
A special report reprinted from Natural History magazine

Not the whole truth   (off site)
"As a threat to Darwinism, it's [the film Icons of Evolution] reminiscent of a woodpecker trying to bring down a sequoia."
Roger Downey

Evidence for Jury-Rigged Design in Nature  (off site)

E. Coli at the No Free Lunchroom  (off site)
Howard J. Van Till

Intelligent Design ... Is It Science?
Here's what some IDers say...
  (off site)
New Mexicans for Science and Reason

"The Quixotic Message", or "No Free Hunch"  (off site)

Metaphors on Trial
or, How did the Groundhog Cross the Road?
(off site)
John Pieret

The C-Files: THE SMOKING GUN - "Intelligent Design" IS Creationism! (off site)

Darwin in Mind: Intelligent Design Meets Artificial Intelligence (off site)
Taner Edis

Talkdesign.org  (off site)

Intelligent Design? When the Shark Bites with His Teeth, Dear,
Remember That it's all for the Best
(off site)

Nature's Design an Indication of Intelligent Design?  I Think Not!  (off site)

Robert Weitzel: Theory puts a serpent in the garden of education  (off site)

A Critique of Phillip E. Johnson's "How Can We Tell Science From Religion?"
Roland Watts

The Advantage of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance (off site)

Finally, a Response on Intelligent Design Polling (off site)

The Wedge at Work: How Intelligent Design Creationism Is Wedging Its
Way into the Cultural and Academic Mainstream 
(off site)
Barbara Forrest, Ph.D.

Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design  (off site)
Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross

Intelligent Design: Creationism's Trojan Horse  (off site)
A Conversation With Barbara Forrest

New Work Documents the Evolution of
Irreducibly Complex Structures
 (off site)
Dave Thomas

Critical analysis ... of intelligent design  (off site)
Nick Matzke

Leaders and Followers in the Intelligent-Design Movement  (off site)
Jason Rosenhouse
Jason's
experiences at an Intelligent-Design conference

Kansas Evolves Back  (off site)

Master Planned  (off site)
H. Allen Orr
Why intelligent design isn't

Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant  (off site)
Richard Dawkins,  May 21 2005

Behe's meaningless complexity (off site)

Review of The Privileged Planet  (off site)
William H. Jefferys, The University of Texas at Austin

DARWIN ON TRIAL: A Review (off site)
Eugenie C. Scott

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth?  (off site)
Brian Spitzer
"Why Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial and the "Intelligent Design" movement
are neither science—nor Christian"

The "Intelligent Design" Hoax  (off site)
William J. Bennetta

Designer Science At a High Price
Lionel Tiger

"Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross recently have, in response to the anti-evolution program, produced a work, 'Creationism's Trojan Horse'... What Ms Forrest and Mr Gross describe as 'The Wedge' of the Dembski adventure is nothing less than a lavishly funded program to embargo a lot of books because they challenge the assertions in one book, the Bible. This is just silly."
 

And Now a Word From the Astronomers.... (off site)
Carl Zimmer
"...
an open letter to President Bush just released [August 5 2005] by the American Astronomical Society's
president, Prof. Robert Kirschner..."

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Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (off site)
Legal documents, trial materials, updates
National Center for Science Education

 

Waterloo In Dover: The Kitzmiller v. DASD Case (off site)
The Panda's Thumb

Move over Jon Stewart: The Discovery Institute issues own "fake news" (off site)
The Panda's Thumb

Why didn't they tell us?  (off site)
The Panda's Thumb

The Kitzmiller Decision  (off site)
Dawkins, Dennett, Kurtz, Jones, Ridley, Forrest

The Evolution of Creationism  (off site)
Victor J. Stenger

Creationism Is Evolving.... It Has No Choice  (off site)
Max Borders

Intelligent Design in Australia
Correspondence from concerned Australians

 

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster  (off site)
" ...what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."

 

 

An intelligent design of the times  (off site)
"Juliette Hughes examines the boundaries between religion and science"

The Brontosaurus  (off site)
Monty Python's flying creationism.

William Saletan

Phoney Theory, False Conflict  (off site)
""Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith"
Charles Krauthammer

"Intelligent Design" is Not About Science, It's About Putting God Into the Classroom  (off site)
Andrew Bard Schmookler

Shaking the Foundation of Faith  (off site)
Scott M. Liell

Intelligent Design  (off site)
The Skeptic's Dictionary

The Dead ID Sketch

Dover, Darwin, and Design: One Chimp's Opinion (off site)
Myriam Miedzian

"Intelligent design" equal to giving up
Joe Meert

Eloquent Dover Plaintiff's Trial Summation  (off site)
Mike the mad biologist

Bombardier Beetles and the Argument of Design  (off site)
Mark Isaak

Life on Mars? The real lesson from Lowell  (off site)
The Panda's Thumb

Evolution Of Irreducible Complexity Explained  (off site)

Intelligent Judging - Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom (off site)
George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H.

"Religious arguments have permeated debates on the role of the law in medical practice at the beginning and the end of life. But nowhere has religion played so prominent a role as in the century-old quest to banish or marginalize the teaching of evolution in science classes."

Intelligent Design and Unintelligent People  (off site)
"If there's no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?"

Intelligent Design  (off site)
A special report reprinted from
Natural History magazine

Irriducable Complexity as an Evolutionary Prediction  (off site)
Chris Ho-Stuart

Ministers to ban creationist teaching aids in science lessons  (off site)
James Randerson, Guardian science correspondent
Thursday December 7, 2006

The Intelligent Design Stump  (off site)

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Selman v. Cobb County settled: Stickers stay out! (off site)
National Center for Science Education

 

Intelligent Design: The New Polytheism  (off site)
Joe Meert

The Two Faces of Dr. Ross  (off site)
Joe Meert

Dembski and the ID folk are confused   (off site)
Joe Meert
 

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Not in our classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is wrong for our schools
A review of the book by Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch
by the National Center for Science and Education

Irreducible Complexity as an Evolutionary Prediction  (off site)
Talk Origins Post of the Month: September 2006
Chris Ho-Stuart

The Discovery Institute Quote Mines Judge Jones  (off site)
 John Pieret

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Meet Padian's critters!  (off site)
National Center for Science Education

 

Expensive intelligent design movie uses Borat tactics (off site)
The Lippard Blog

The evolution of creationism (off site)
After their notorious legal defeat, intelligent design proponents are resurfacing with insidious new assaults on science.

The Edge of Creationism (off site)
A review of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution by Nick Matzke

The testimony of Kevin Padian in Kitzmiller v. Dover  (off site)
Edited by Nick Matzke, National Center for Science Education

The Mullerian Two-Step: Add a part, make it necessary (off site)
... or, Why Behe's "Irreducible Complexity" is silly

Douglas Theobald, Ph.D.

Devoid of intelligence (off site)
Adam Rutherford, from his weblog in The Guardian
April 15, 2008
"It now seems unlikely that a theory will ever emerge which could completely replace Darwin's theory of evolution. But should that happen, scientists would be committed to investigating it fully. Intelligent design is emphatically not that theory, as it has systematically failed to stand up to any scrutiny. But, like a turd in the u-bend, it just won't go away."

Expelled exposed (off site)
National Center for Science Education

Expelled! (off site)
Pz Myers' "Pharyngula"

Expelled: Now with added anti-Semitism  (off site)
John Lynch's "Stranger Fruit"

Two (Opposable) Thumbs Down: Skip Ben Stein's Movie And Check Out 'Expelled: Exposed' Instead (off site)
Rob Boston, Americans United for Church and State

Expelled Exposed, Part 1: Ben Stein's Blunder  (off site)

Expelled Exposed, Part 2: The Richard Sternberg Affair
(off site)
eSKEPTIC, the email newsletter of the Skeptics Society

Expelled flunks the test  (off site)
National Center for Science Education

Expelled's intelligent design theory - this IS your daddy's creationism (Parts I and II) (off site)
From Troy Britain's weblog "Playing Chess with Pigeons"

Florida: Open Letter on Learning from History (off site)
The Austringer, The Weblog of Wesley R. Elsberry

And the award for most hysterical antievolutionist nonsense of the week goes to.… (off site)
From Troy Britain's weblog Playing Chess with Pigeons, 28 April 2008

Ben Stein Is an IDiot (off site)

The Discovery Institute, the LA Family Forum, and the "LA Science Education Act"  (off site)
"The Discovery Institute has teamed up with the LA Family Forum, the Louisiana affiliate of Focus on the Family, to promote a stealth creationism bill in the guise of 'academic freedom' legislation."
Barbara Forrest, 26 June 2008

Origin of the specious  (off site)
AC Grayling

"It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible, like Dissent over Descent, the latest book from Steve Fuller, are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism."

Probability, Statistics, Evolution, and Intelligent Design  (off Site)
Peter Olofsson

Taken to School: An Interview with the Honorable Judge John E. Jones, III  (off site)
Jane Gitschier, December 5, 2008

"Cdesign Proponentsists"For years, 'intelligent design' (ID) proponents denied that ID is just a new label for creationism. However, it is now well-known that the first intelligent design 'textbook', Of Pandas and People, is just a revised version of a classic 'two-model' creationism vs. evolution book named Creation Biology."

The two faces of intelligent design creationism (off site)
From Playing Chess with Pigeons
"Over at Uncommen Descent they are taking advantage of the brouhaha over the New York Post's 'gunned-down chimp' cartoon (which many have taken as a racist slur against President Obama) to take their own pot-shots at evolution and in the process they have served up another example of the two faces of intelligent design."