Destin Log columnist Fraser Sherman offers a useful suggestion to Sen. Wise to help him get intelligent design creationism into the classroom: Do some actual science.
The reason we know evolution is science is because it makes a number of predictions regarding natural selection, intermediate fossils, genetics and other things that have been born out. It can be tested, and it can be disproved: As scientist J.B.S. Haldane put it, if someone finds fossilized rabbits in billion-year-old rocks, evolution is done for.
If creationists/IDers want some scientific respect, that’s all they have to do: Make a prediction about what we would discover if — and only if — creationism/ID were true, then go out and find proof the prediction holds up. Do that, and creationism will start getting some scientific respect.
So what Wise should do is take all that money the state will have to spend defending his creationist bill and put it into a grant for serious ID research (he could even invite the Discovery Institute to kick in, instead of spending all its money on news releases). If any scientific breakthroughs result, Wise will look like a visionary.
Now why didn’t the intelligent design creationism folks think of that?
Problem is, the Creationist/ID lobby have tried to promote their agenda using this “scientific” angle and (predictably) abused the methods and terminologies to extreme degrees in order to support the predetermined “conclusion” that they never had any intention of abandoning, regardless of whatever experimental data they obtain. Even when entrusting the experimental work to actual scientists using actual scientific methods, they have been (repeatedly) caught editing/twisting the final results and quotes of the reputable researchers to (again) favor their supernatural conclusions.
It’s like instructing a raging pyromaniac to light some candles with a book of matches and hoping that he will indeed light only the candles and not the table cloth, curtains, cabinets, the whole house, etc…
Remember that the Wedge Document and other writings of the Discovery Institute (DI) fellows predicted some thirty books and over a hundred scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals supporting ID by 2003! Seems their scientific output is experiencing a significant lag despite the low-level thrashings of Behe, Dembski and West. (Yeah, kind of hard to pin down God as an independent variable; they should have seen that coming!) It also appears they are not using some version of a Gant chart to keep their activities in synch, such that failure to achieve some major milestone (like the science they so fondly claim to adhere to) affects the schedule of the subsequent actions of the rest of the minions. Apparently, the PR parts of the DI didn’t see that memo.