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One of my Creationist friends recently questioned my enthusiasm for Ridley Scott’s new film “Prometheus.” He tweeted: Saw Promethus. Tickled that secularists are ok with Panspermia (Aliens) concept of origin of life, but disdain intelligent design.

I tweeted in return: The difference between Panspermia and Intelligent Design is that Panspermia is scientifically possible.

He replied: Purpose is the core of ID. If you can detect a design, infer a designer. Or, an “engineer” in Prometheus. Design is scientific.

Intelligent Design is the disguise by which Creationists are attempting to infiltrate American schoolrooms and textbooks with their theology. I have no problem at all that they believe God created the heavens, earth and Man, and on the seventh day, he rested. They can even believe that this happened around 10,000 years ago, as about 46% of Americans do.

What I object to is the fraudulent “science” by which they attempt to smuggle this religious belief into classrooms. A Biblical explanation for creation no more belongs in a textbook than any other creation myth, such as the Native American belief than we were all given birth by an Earth Mother, with a Spider Women acting as midwife. Now that ID has been thoroughly debunked, the tactic has shifted to: “Teach the controversy.” In science, there is no controversy.

My friend Randy argues, “Purpose is the core of ID. If you can detect design, infer a designer. Or, an ‘engineer’ in Prometheus. Design is scientific.” This is often followed by the parable of a man finding a stopwatch and inferring that it had to have been designed, because it could hardly have assembled itself. From there it is but a short step to assume that the complexities of the human body must have been designed, and that the Designer must have been God.

“This is science,” he assures us. Actually, no, it is a religious belief. There is a scientific hypothesis called the Theory of Evolution that suggests how life might have evolved over an immensity of time into the countless varieties we find on Earth. This hypothesis has been described as the most proven and valuable of all scientific theories, and holds up to the rigor of the Scientific Method. Intelligent Design fails that test.