The new creationism

"Thunder? It's so loud and fearsome! There is simply no way something this weird can naturally happen! Only Zeus, who throws his lightning bolts from Mount Olympus, could be responsible for such a racket." \nOr so thought the ancient Greeks who attributed a natural event to a god. Following in the woeful tradition of substituting faith for science to explain the material world, today we have intelligent design.\nPresident Bush recently embraced ID and declared it fit to be taught in science classrooms as an alternative to evolution. On the local government level, many state school boards are currently changing their curricula to incorporate ID into biology courses.\nSo what does the increasingly popular ID camp claim? Michael Behe wrote a critical text on the subject in his 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box." He claims the biochemical systems that comprise life are too "irreducibly complex" to be products of evolution. \nHe likens these systems to a mousetrap -- a machine in which all components must work together and the removal of any one piece eliminates the object's function. Such an object, he reasons, implies an intelligent designer. Interestingly, ID supporters rarely state explicitly who this intelligent designer may be, as though that could erase any doubt that ID is grounded in religion.\nBiochemical pathways and organs consist of numerous steps and parts that intricately combine to produce function. Understanding biochemistry is remarkable because one must appreciate the precision and coordination all forms of life must exhibit. We constantly carry out complex yet mundane functions without which life would not be possible. \nYet rather than investigating to answer the tough questions, ID boils down to: "The eye? Wow! It is so complex, with all its different parts that work together perfectly! There is simply no way evolution could produce something so awesome! God did it."\nWhile there are many reasons to doubt ID, I oppose its inclusion in science curricula for the simple reason it does not qualify as science. ID fails the fundamental definition of what constitutes a "theory." To label evolution as "only a theory" is dishonest, since even gravity is only a theory as well, and that one seems to work pretty well. \nTo qualify as a scientific theory, it must be possible to design an experiment that can prove the proposed theory false. Since the core of ID is the existence of an intelligent designer (i.e. God), it will not be possible to disprove the ID "theory" as long as we are unable to prove whether God exists (which I am pretty sure will be forever.) Any concept that can never be disproved can never be science.\nPresident Bush said alternative theories to evolution should be included in biology curricula "so people can understand what the debate is about." If school districts wish to educate their students in ID, so be it, but do it in a comparative religious studies course. Or philosophy, or ethics and morals. Such fundamentally flawed pseudoscience should never be dressed up as "theory" and paraded in any science class.