Teaching Evolution and the Challenge of Intelligent Design: A Symposium‪.‬

ABSTRACT A symposium titled "Teaching Evolution and the Challenge of Intelligent Design" was presented at the 66th annual meeting of the Southeastern Society of Biologists, University of North Alabama, Florence, AL, April 16, 2005. The symposium was arranged, introduced and moderated by John V. Aliff. The advent of a "scientific theory of intelligent design" has created conflict in religious denominations, public school educators, and within the community of scientists who are being threatened by the imposition of a specific religious view. Intelligent Design theory is a new form of creationism that abandons the biblical inerrancy of the older scientific creationism in favor of a neutral position on the age of the earth. Intelligent Design theory is not a valid scientific theory for these reasons: 1.) Its hypothetical, intuitive and religious assumption of the intelligent design of complex systems is not testable or falsifiable using the scientific method, 2.) ID "theory" cannot develop hypotheses, and 3.) ID theory does not predict new discoveries as a true scientific theory does. More simply put, ID cannot explain natural phenomena beyond the intuitive and religious assumption that "God did it." The participants in the symposium--Barbara Forrest, Massimo Pigliucci, Taner Edis and Keith Miller--have written and edited leading papers and books on the challenges of creationism to the teaching and practice of science. The author lists 14 deceptions commonly used by scientific creationists and ID creationists in their propaganda.