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Good points, Prof. Swan. I think you and Prof. Okimoto are allowing that ID could very well be true but that it shouldn't be in the curriculum since we have utterly no practical idea of how to research the question of whether it is true. On your view, I think ID would indeed deserve a couple of pages in a college biology book, saying, "Here is a perfectly live option: ID, but we have not devised any tests for it yet." We would have wanted flat earthers to put the round earth hypothesis into their geology books long ago, too. For science seeks the truth, and if a hypothesis might be true, science shouldn't forget that but should keep ID in the curriculum. I think ID has been tested and falsified. I'm not sure why you and Prof. Okimoto don't share that belief, but rather share Prof. Moody's view that it has not been falsified (and is not meaningless).

In short, I hold that opponents of ID can't argue against it on the grounds that it's untestable unless they mean fully untestable, i.e., meaningless (in the way "imperceptible shnorbles float about at noon" is untestable and meaningless). To argue that ID is merely practically untestable at the moment is no argument against ID at all but only an indictment of our ingenuity in thinking up tests.

: -- Jim Ryan, philosophy prof., Huron College (posted 2/14, 1:45 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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