One method that intelligent design advocates use to weaken the case for evolution is to suggest that science itself is a religion, and anyone who refuses to examine critiques to evolution is just as dogmatic as anyone who refuses to examine critiques to religion. The underlying assumptions of this argument are based on either an ignorant misunderstanding of science or a malicious misrepresentation of it.

Syndicated columnist Paul Campos, appearing in the Dec. 29 issue of the Lake County News-Herald, makes the claim that science is just as based in faith as religion is. "A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes 'what every rational person knows to be the case,' or 'simple common sense,' or, more concisely still, 'the truth.'" Campos' suggestion in this opening paragraph is that scientists belief that they are espousing "the truth." As any scientist knows, this statement is a straw man that is patently false. No scientist would ever claim that he or she is espousing "the truth." Only non-scientists would assume that scientists think this. A scientist creates a conclusion based upon the observed data.

Campos misunderstands science and religion. As I have written before in this space, science and religion operate on two mutually exclusive epistemological systems. Science operates on reason, the eighteenth-century epistemology which holds that "truth" is anything that can be empirically proven and supported by logic. What is "true" in the reason system is what can be comprehended by the senses and the mind.

Religion operates on faith, which is necessarily the opposite of reason. Faith precludes the existence of empirical data to support a claim, and in order for a person to believe in a religion, that person must believe in it despite the lack of empirical data. Faith and reason are two different epistemological systems, and it is disingenuous at best to try and evaluate a field of study that uses one system in terms of the other system.

In other words: religion cannot be supported by science, because religion precludes the existence of observable data. You must believe in a religion even though there are no observable data. Likewise, science cannot be proven by faith because its system of epistemology assumes that a dearth of observable data means that a claim is not true.

To use a cliché, you can't compare apples and oranges, which is what intelligent design advocates would like to do. And, by the way, it is only intelligent design advocates who are framing the debate this way. No scientist is suggesting that religion is wrong because it is based in supernatural, unprovable (through reason) evidence. Scientists understand their system better than that and they know that religion is unprovable through a scientific study. And scientists are secure enough in their own epistemology that they don't have to attack other epistemologies.

The problem here is that the official epistemology of the U.S. government is reason, not faith. I refer you to the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Using faith as an epistemological system is the same as respecting an establishment of religion; indeed, it is respecting religion itself, since using faith as an epistemology would mean that Congress supports religion's method of understanding the universe.

As such, Congress cannot endorse intelligent design, which is not only unscientific, but as Judge Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania notes, "intelligent design" is another way for creationists to get their religious, faith-based theory into a public school, where the official epistemology is reason and the official method of understanding the universe is science.

And while Paul Campos does not misrepresent the definition of a "theory," plenty of other intelligent design advocates do. It is a popular practice to claim that scientists claim that a "theory" is a universal truth, when in fact (according to the much more astute ID advocates) they are misrepresenting themselves, and a "theory" is actually not a universal truth. Again, this is the very definition of a straw man. No scientist would ever claim that a "theory" is an absolute truth. A theory means only that the conclusions of the theory have been repeatedly supported by empirical data. It is true that evolution is "just a theory," but this is not a pejorative statement; rather, it means that conclusions of the theory of evolution have been repeatedly supported by empirical data.

Intelligent design is not a theory; indeed, it has no place anywhere in the nomenclature of science because it is not science. Intelligent design predicates itself on an explanation of the unknowable. Its primary tenet is that biological life-forms are so complex that they could not have been formed by so random a process as evolution. There must, therefore, have been a "designer," an anthropomorphic entity who consciously created biological life.

There are four problems with this notion, in terms of a scientific theory. One, it is based on the logical fallacy called "argument from ignorance" (also "argument by lack of imagination") in which an idea is necessarily wrong because the arguer can't explain it or because it hasn’t been proven to the arguer's satisfaction. The fact that natural selection seems far-fetched to some people does not automatically discount it as impossible.

The second problem with "intelligent design" is that it doesn't predict anything. It is a "negative" theory in the sense that it disproves a competing theory but does not advance any new conclusions of its own beyond the existence of a "designer." A theory must be able to predict what will happen under similar circumstances. Dmitri Mendeleev, for example, theorized that elements with similar atomic weights would have similar properties, and using this theory, he correctly predicted the properties of germanium, gallium, and scandium based on the properties of silicon, aluminum, and boron. Without the ability to predict the future, a theory is useless.

The third problem with "intelligent design" is that it cannot be disproved. Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher, famously said that theories could be falsified or disproved. If you can't disprove it, then it's not a theory. "Intelligent design" cannot be disproved using reason; there is no way to disprove the notion that a supernatural force consciously created biological life. Again, science precludes the existence of the supernatural or the use of the supernatural as an explanation for natural phenomena.

The fourth problem with "intelligent design" is that it does not attempt to explain who the designer is. Ostensibly, since intelligent design is an evangelical Protestant movement, the designer is the Christian God, but since intelligent design is asymptotic to religion, it doesn't mention specifically who the designer is.

But the point of ID is not to forward anything resembling a scientific theory. ID proponents know that it is not a scientific theory. ID is a public relations initiative designed to sow doubt in the minds of those who are not entirely convinced of evolution or who believe that the United States has entered an age that is too secular. The Discovery Institute's notorious Wedge Document makes quite clear that the purpose of ID is not to advance a competing scientific theory to natural selection, but rather to "function as a 'wedge' that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points." The "wedge" in this case is intelligent design, and the "trunk" is "scientific materialism." The ultimate goal of the Discovery Institute is not to advance the cause of science but to "defeat materialism," which it sees as a "devastating" force. Its first tactic is to defeat "scientific materialism," which is the epistemology of reason over faith, science over religion. Once it can make Americans doubt science, they will begin to doubt reason and soon return to faith as their preferred epistemological system, with religion as their way of understanding the universe.

Scientists are not threatened by religion. They feel that religion and science can co-exist because they occupy two different spheres of knowledge. They know that they are not asserting absolute knowledge, just knowledge within their sphere. It just so happens that science is the official method of knowledge of the United States government.

Intelligent design is not, and should not regarded as, anything resembling a scientific theory. Do not be fooled: it is a marketing technique that is part of a larger reaction to American secularism and an attempt to return the United States to what it sees as the "good old days" of religion and an epistemology grounded in faith.