Despite the claims of its critics, Intelligent Design is a scientific theory, just one contradicted by evidence such as the human appendix and the inverted construction of the human retina, both bad design with good evolutionary explanations.

My favorite example of how to explain that evidence away:

… the theory that the universe is run by a single God must be abandoned, and that in place of it we must set up the theory that it is actually run by a board of gods, all of equal puissance and authority. …. We suffer from bad stomachs simply because the god who first proposed making a stomach aroused thereby the ill-nature of those who had not thought of it, and because they proceeded instantly to wreak that ill-nature upon him by improving, i.e., botching, his work. We must reproduce our species in the familiar arduous, uneconomic, indecent and almost pathological manner because the god who devised the excellent process prevailing among the protozoa had to be put in his place when he proposed to extend it to the Primates. (Mencken, H.L., Prejudices: Fourth Series)

Intelligent Design is a theory we have good reasons to reject on evidence. Another and perhaps more fundamental problem with it is that its supporters are driven by religious, not scientific, motives; their objective is not to learn the truth but to produce arguments in support of what they already believe. Somewhere in the world there may exist someone who was persuaded of the truth of intelligent design by scientific arguments — in the past, before Darwin offered an alternative theory consistent with more of the evidence, there must have been many such people — but looking at current arguments for the theory makes it clear that they were generated by people who knew what conclusion they wanted and were doing their best to fudge up reasons to believe it. A familiar example on a smaller scale: scientific claims in advertisements.

For a more respectable case of faith based science consider Nuclear Winter. Its scientific credentials were a good deal better than those of Intelligent Design but it was clear from the sales campaign, at a point when the scientific basis was still very shaky, that it was a theory propounded by its supporters for a non-scientific motive. The campaign for nuclear disarmament had gotten a lot of mileage out of the claim, almost certainly false, that fallout from a nuclear war would wipe out life on earth, or at least human life. Nuclear Winter provided a new argument designed to reach the same conclusion. The argument might be true but the motives of its salesmen were a good reason to be suspicious of it.

Quite a lot of environmentalism fits the same pattern. The economic, biological and climatological arguments about global warming, species extinction, pollution, and the like are sometimes right, sometimes wrong. But the driving force, for a lot of those making those arguments, is the essentially religious belief that natural is good.

As evidence, consider how few in the environmental movement are willing to support nuclear power. Nuclear reactors are the one source of power that provides a plausible alternative to fossil fuels, a way of generating electricity almost anywhere at any time without producing CO₂ or consuming fossil fuels, at a cost not wildly higher than the cost of coal fueled generators. They thus provide at least a partial solution to what environmentalists claim are two of the big problems, depletable resources and global warming.

A few environmentalists accept that argument; most, by casual observation, don’t. The reason is clear. Nuclear reactors are as unnatural as you can get, a symbol of the evils of high technology, used as such for decades by many of the same people pushing environmentalism.

Cartoon Evidence

One way of recognizing belief in a real scientific theory, in the broad sense in which neo-classical economics or evolutionary biology or physics can be thought of as a single theory, is by its inconsistency with other theories. If a particular point of view is merely a smokescreen for Catholic, Muslim, right wing or left wing views, it will conveniently produce arguments all of which support the same side. If it is a real theory, an internally consistent body of ideas for making sense of the world, it is almost certain to clash with other ways of making sense of the world. Republican arguments for tariffs mostly depend on what a competent economist will view as economic errors; so do Democratic arguments for minimum wage laws or price controls. There would be no clash between theories both of which were entirely true, but that is not likely to be an exception of much real world significance.

My standard example of evidence that a theory fails that test is this cartoon, demonstrating that the things people want to do to slow climate change just happen to all be things they want to do for other reasons. It could all be true, but it is a reason not to trust their arguments.

For the same issue in the context not of science but of political philosophy see my arguments with the Bleeding Heart Libertarians, initially on a Cato Unbound forum, continued on my old blog (and theirs) and summarized in a post here.

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