Whats wrong with intelligent design?
I testified against it because, first of all, teaching it in public schools is a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. There is something irremediably religious about the idea. Try to deny it though they might, advocates of intelligent design are really proposing a kind of watered-down version of natural theology. That’s the attempt to explain what’s going on in nature’s order and design by appealing to a nonnatural source. So it’s not science. I agree with all the scientists who say intelligent design should not be made part of science. It’s not a valid scientific alternative to Darwinian ideas. It should not be taught in classrooms and public schools. It’s also extremely poor theology. What intelligent design tries to do — and the great theologians have always resisted this idea — is to place the divine, the Creator, within the continuum of natural causes. And this amounts to an extreme demotion of the transcendence of God, by making God just one cause in a
