Alien Astronauts from Atlantis…

…or why intelligent design theory should not be taught in science class.

The theory of intelligent design is a theory concerning the origin of the species and is an alternative to the theory of evolution and natural selection. The theory is that an advanced intelligent being (God) or a race of beings has engineered the development of life on earth and perhaps the entire universe. To the proponents of design theory, we are surrounded by such complex natural systems that an intelligent designer is needed to explain them. And if there were an intelligent designer we could understand many things that we currently don't understand like how life first arrived on earth and how humans came to be. The proponents of design theory would also like design theory to be taught along side the theory of evolution in biology class.

Here’s the catch, I think that most reasonable people would agree that to teach a theory in “science” class it should at least be a scientific theory. And for design theory to be a scientific theory, God can't be the designer. God, as well as every other supernatural entity, is specifically excluded from being a scientific explanation for anything. There are two principal reasons for this. First, it’s impossible to test for the presence of the supernatural or lack thereof using natural means. Pick any physical phenomena -- say the structure of DNA -- how would one go about measuring the presence and influence of a supernatural being as an explanation for that phenomena? No amount of ingenious equipment and careful observation is going to do it. Second, if the supernatural were considered a legitimate scientific explanation, then science would be done: simply because everything we don't understand could be explained by simply saying God designed it that way. When would we decide that God is the answer and not an as yet undiscovered natural process? Would we have gotten as far as our understanding of quantum mechanics? Really, I doubt that science would have ever gotten anywhere if people engaged in science hadn't had an instinctual rejection of supernatural explanations.

Science exists to discover and explain the physical nature of existence. What is existence made of? How do the components that make up existence interact with each other? What are the rules of existence? Science is a tool for finding out as much about the answers to these questions as is possible with as much certainty as possible. And the only way to achieve any amount of certainty is to test, repeatedly, any assertions made about existence. And any assertions that can't be tested because they involve elements that are outside of nature can't, by definition, be included in the process of science. As a founding principle, the supernatural is irrelevant to science.

So if we’re going to teach intelligent design theory in “science” class then God can't be the designer and that leaves Alien Astronauts from Atlantis. As silly as this sounds, as least aliens are not a supernatural explanation and are therefor potentially investigatable using scientific means. But this begs the question; just how good should a scientific theory be before it gets to be taught in school -- even with just a mention? How low should we make the bar? Maybe the designers are not aliens but programmers and we’re all just software in a virtual existence. Or maybe the aliens are really time traveling otters from the future. Should we mention those as possibilities as well? And being agnostic about who the designer is doesn't help. Without a stated designer, intelligent design theory is incomplete and really just a set of challenges to the theory of evolution. As a scientific theory intelligent design is at best a crappy theory about aliens and definitely not worth teaching in science class.