Does LA County Natural History Museum Scientist Kirk Fitzhugh Oppose “Freedom of Thought” for Intelligent Design?
In my prior post, I explained that Kirk Fitzhugh, a scientist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), wrongly claims that intelligent design (ID) is not testable. Fitzhugh’s error that ID is “immune to testing” is important. While he should have the academic freedom to believe and contend that ID is “immune to testing” and not scientific, he uses his claim that ID is not testable to justify suppressing ID. He anticipates this deficiency in his position, and thus writes: First, there’s the claim that science precludes expression of thought. In the context of ID, such a claim of overt suppression is inaccurate. Science is a process of acquiring ever-increasing causal understanding, and such a process has as its hallmark the continual critical evaluation of the theories and hypotheses we claim lead to such understanding. It cannot be overemphasized that ID is a theory that is not amenable to being tested. Science is not able to evaluate the supernatural. A theory tha
