Larson on "Intelligent Design"

Edward J. Larson,"A Natural Selection: Intelligent Design," LA Times, 26 August. The former fellow at the Discovery Institute and distinguished historian of the evolution controversy argues that"intelligent design" is not science. Key graphs:

Intelligent design, despite its proponents' claims to the contrary, isn't modern science. It's part of that rebellion against it. Scientists look for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Their best explanations, if they survive rigorous testing, become scientific theories.
Intelligent design, in contrast, is a critique of all that. Its proponents may challenge the sufficiency of evolutionary explanations for the origin of species but they have not — and cannot — offer testable alternative explanations. The best they can offer is the premise that, if no natural explanation suffices, then God must have done it. Maybe God did do it, but if so, it's beyond science.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for the tip.

But, as Cosma Shalizi and Tim Burke have pointed out, from the point of view of traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a g_d who merely fills diminishing gaps in evolutionary theory as a causative explanation, is not the G_d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, before whom there is no other. ID's g_d of the diminishing gaps is no longer one worthy of worship, but of pity for his increasing irrelevance.