ID/IOT isn't science

Deinonychus antirrhopus posts this on why Intelligent Design / Intelligent Origin Theory isn't science.

I finally came to this post by David Mobley....

The scientist who believes that we all evolved from a common ancestor believes the proteins are related because they're all derived from a similar protein. The scientist who does not believe we all came from a common ancestor (like me) believes either [1] that the proteins are related because God made creatures with similar molecular machinery to do similar jobs..., or [2] that God made the creatures with identical machinery, which then underwent minor (not affecting function) changes over time throughout history. We can do the same science – because we still believe the proteins are related – but our understanding of why they are related is different.

...we can dispense with the first veiw that God simply made different creatures with similar molecular machines. We can dispense with it because we see that creatures with similar molecular machines do indeed change.

<snip>

Second, the belief in God in the second view is extraneous. Using the Principle of Parsimony we could just as easily do without the belief in God. That is, the second view expressed by Mr. Mobley, "...or that God made the creatures with identical machinery, which then underwent minor (not affecting function) changes over time throughout history," is identical (at least in this limited micro-evolution context) to the evolutionary hypothesis save that there is the additional and irrelevant (from a scientific standpoint) assumption that God created the organism.

Notes added by Karl

It's certainly possible that, as many creationists have asserted, individual organisms were designed, and part of the design spec included a certain amount of adaptability. (It has become impossible to deny that some amount of variation and natural selection happens.) Creationists believe that life can be divided into a number of "created kinds", and no amount of variation can breach the walls between these kinds.

There are two problems with this solution.

Firstly, no one has ever shown or proposed any barrier that keeps variations from accumulating to the point where you have changed from one "created kind" to another.

Secondly, no one has ever come up with any way to define "created kind". It is impossible, without simply listing all "created kinds" and asserting this list is comprehensive, to know how many of these "created kinds" there are.

And as a lagniappe for the second problem, even when creationists have a known list of "kinds" to deal with, it's very hard to find any two who will agree on which "kind" certain critters belong in. For example, Archaeopteryx is considered by evolutionary biologists to be an intermediate between reptiles and birds. It is, indeed, a beautiful example of what an intermediate should look like, incorporating, as it does, distinguishing features of both classes. Creationists, on the other hand, "know" that Archaeopteryx cannot be an intermediate. It must belong to one "kind" or another, either bird or reptile. There is nothing in between. But which is it? Depending on the creationist, it's either definitely a member of the bird "kind" or it's definitely a member of the lizard "kind".

And no, you can't go defining another "kind" that Archaeopteryx occupies by itself, or shares with Protoavis or other creatures. Once you do that, what's your case for not dividing more and more finely, until reptiles and birds (bird + lizard = "blizzard"?) are only one "kind", with a smear of critters bridging the gap from the pure reptile class of "blizzard" to the pure bird class?

It gets even worse in studies of human evolution, when creationists fight over whether any given fossil is a member of the human "kind" or the ape "kind".

So we're left with what amounts to directed evolution.

God, or the magic Intelligent Designer (or maybe the Wizard of ID?) made one or more living things, and then caused them to change over time as needed.

OK, how does this differ from the laws of physics and chemistry making one or more living things, and then causing them to change over time as needed?

To create a bit of perspective, I wrote an essay once on the Intelligent Pilot Theory of Motion. It simply asserts that all motion everywhere, including (especially) that explained by atheistic science using Newton's laws of gravitation and motion, are the result of the action of an intelligent pilot.

In order to promote universal harmony, the intelligent pilot causes everything to move in an orderly fashion. This is not evidence of random purposeless forces, but an expression of intelligent order in the universe.

As David Mobley might have said,

We can do the same science – because we still believe the motions follow Newton's laws – but our understanding of why they do is different.

If our understanding yields the same results, with or without an intelligent entity, why do we need the intelligent entity, except as a salve to our religious sensibilities?