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In response to S Werdna's discussion of Intelligent Design (ID) being taught in schools alongside evolution I was motivated to do a little research so that I could attempt to form a well-reasoned opinion rather than my knee-jerk opinion. I have read about the recent controversies about this intelligent design on CNN and automatically asumed it was indeed a "back-door" for religion to enter public schools- which I htink is wrong. Public school is neither a place to promote or denounce religion (I always skipped the words "under god" in the pledge of alleigance for this and other reasons). That being said, I wanted to be respectful of religion and not just assume that this was a "back-door" as I initially did. Another knee-jerk reaction I had as to why I wouldn't want this taught in a public school regardless of the religious affiliation is that, to me, all of these theories are not science, and hence should not be taught in a science class. So I did a google search and found the Intelligent Design Network. I read this paper so i could actually understand what the "other side" was supporting becasue the two sentences about it on CNN.com were both incomplete and biased toward evolution.
To begin, this paper is very much biased toward ID in many ways. It chooses to define words used to support evolution in a misinformative way. Furthermore, where I feel they need to define their own ambiguous terms, they do not. For example they talk about how Darwin was inspired to coin the term "natural" selection by looking at "artificial" selection (i.e. breeding of animals especially fancy pidgeons). Next to the word "selection" there is a footnote:

Selection is a term that implies the making of a choice, a decision. Synonyms include picking out, choosing, and preferring. A mindless process cannot “select” in this sense. A river does not choose to follow the path of least resistance; sodium and chloride ions do not choose to form a salt crystal; gasoline, oxygen, and a spark do not choose to explode; and a colander does not choose to retain noodles. The term “natural selection” is an oxymoron and its widespread use contributes to the pervasive confusion so characteristic of this topic.

Now this bothers me because it states that a mindless entity cannot select. This is just wrong. Yes a synonym for "select" is "choose" but it is not the only synonym, and it most defnintely is not the full, complete definition, nor the only definition. This explanation then goes on to use the word "choose" to mean select to imply a greater need of a mind to make the choice. Thier point is really of little consequence to their argument too (which you may think this point I am making is also irrelevant to my argument, but I promise I'm getting to the significance of my point). They are trying to say that by using the term selection, "natural selection" misleads people ito thinking that there COULD be a higher power DOiING the selecting and hence religion and evolution are compatible, which they say is not true. But all I have to say is this: does not a collander select? But that is created by humans to select, so then thats not a very good example. Fine. Point taken. BUT I have seen twigs caught on a few well "placed" rocks in a stream "selecting" a few leaves and twigs while letting the rest pass by. Also the atmosphere, because of its physical/chemical properties, filters out a large part the UV radiation reaching the surface of the earth. If that is not selection, then I must be confused as to what selection is. Okay, so whats the point. I already said that this point of theirs is of little relevance to their entire argument. But, to me, this one instance, is quite indicative of the entire paper- they select, pun intended, the little pieces of scientific evidence and information available ot suit their needs and ignore obvious data to pass ID off as science.
I would like to go through this entire paper and tear it apart, which I feel is not a very difficult task. They do make some good points scattered throughout the document, but they are few and far between. I do feel scientists treat religion in a very poor manner. In many cases, this is because of most scientists' views about religion are negative. Just because one's philosophy does not agree with another's does not mean it is any less valid. I believe the reason scientists should avoid religion is becasue sciecne and religion, in my opinion, are not mutually exclusive. One has nothing to do with the other. And this is where I truly feel that intelligent design is wrong. Intelligent design purports that the complexity of life could not have come from a random "wandering" of matter in the universe to finally create what we observe today. It goes on to say that design can be empirically tested and thus there is a way to prove that there is design at work in biology. My favorite part of this paper is hte section on how to test for design. The example of the word "DESIGN" is used to test whether there is evidence for design:

With the use of statistical calculations we can predict the likelihood that a given event will occur although we cannot know for certain when or where it will occur. For example, how likely would it be that we could spell the word “DESIGN” by blindly pulling Scrabble tiles out of a bag of twenty-six tiles (one for each letter of the English alphabet that is replaced after each drawing)? This can be calculated. The chance of pulling the D is 1 in 26; the chance of pulling D and E in sequence is 1/26^2 which is 1 in 676. Thus, the chance of spelling D-E-S-I-G-N out of the bag is 1/26^6 or one chance in 308,915,776 (or 10^8.5). Stated more simply (but less precisely), it would take us nearly 309 million cycles of pulling six tiles out of the bag to be sure we would assemble the word DESIGN at least once. This is only a six-letter pattern; if we wanted to spell “HAMBURGERS,” it would take 141 million million cycles (i.e., the chances are 1 in 10^14 that you could obtain this pattern on the first try). Clearly, as the complexity of the pattern increases, the probability that it was “caused” by chance decreases exponentially. Most scientists would acknowledge that any event having a probability of occurring that is less than 1 in 10^150 is virtually impossible.35

This is one of the silliest things I have read in a while. because hamburger is a longer word it somehow makes it more likely that it was "designed." I do not understand this reasoning. So if I win the California state lottery we can call that chance, but if I win it twice, well then there was design in that. NO!!!!! False. Incorrect. If I win it then Jack Black wins it, that is just as likely as if I won it twice in a row. Now I do not think the men that wrote this are that ignorant, but that they know the people they want to convince of this are. And yes I would say that something that would happen less than once in 10^150 trials is virutually impossible- based on my own limitations of conception of very large numbers. To me 10^150 might as well be one billion or a google^google. I cannot actually conceptualize probabilities like that, and neither can most people. On another note, yes the word hamburger, is a very unlikely occasion. But this disregards the heart of the matter. That the word hamburger exists in all its unlikelyhood, based on my opinion of how all this hsit went down, is itself a product of even more unlikely events, but not improbable. So if there is something so improbable that is seems nearly impossible to occur, then how can I think it is true? Well, given that life started in the ocean, which is billions upon billions of cubic meters of water (1.4 x 10^9 cubic km, which is literally a billion billion meters -10^18 cubic m) and that the radius of an atom is on the order of 10^-10 m (giving a volume on the order of 10^-30m), then every second there are an equally innumerable number of atoms/molecules/ions colliding and interacting in the ocean. Granted, most of those atoms/molecules/ions are just water, but that still does not make this an environment where apparently unlikely things can happen. Experiments have been conducted that try to simulate early earth environments in order to create prebiotic molecules. In these experiments amino acids and nucleic acids are formed. What's more amazing, is that the amino acids that are formed are a subset of the twenty amino acids used by organisms to make proteins.
Okay, one last thing. later in the paper, the authors discuss the impossibility that genetic information represents. Because the random sequences of DNA are far too unlikely to have formed the DNA they claim is neccessary to have formed the first lifeform (300 genes, a gene does not presuppose a certain length of DNA). They are probably right, but no sane evolutionary biologist will claim that life started as a conglomeration of random molecules that came together at that moment to form life. The way, as I understand it, that most believe life came about is like this:
RNA world: RNA was the first "information carrier" (like DNA today) and the first functional unit (like proteins today). This means that the first step toward life were selfreplicating RNA molecules. The functional part of the Ribosome (the organelle resposible for translating RNA into protein) is made of RNA not amino acids. This is the next step. Amino acids are far more variable and stable than RNA as a functional unit, but they are not as good for information storage because of the base pairing nature of nucleic acids. Then RNA eventually lost favor to DNA as the information storage molecule becasue DNA is more stable than RNA. But RNA is still used as an intermediate between DNA and protein becasue teh machinery was already in place. Oh, I forgot, this all takes energy. But one of the molecules formed in those experiements I mentioned earleir is ATP, what they call the "energy currency" of the cell. So there would be an energy source for all of this.
Thats enough of that. I hope I explained this all well enough to understand why I think ID is silly and, as presented, has no place in a science curriculum, because it is not science. Please comment/criticize/etc.