Dear Editor:

Hendrik van der Breggen (Second Opinion, August 23 2005) claims that
intelligent design is a valid part of science.  It's not; it is simply
religion masquerading as science, intelligently designed to get around
the US's separation of church and state.

Van der Breggen erects several straw men and proceeds to knock them
down.  What he doesn't do, however, is address the real objections to
intelligent design.

First: the claims of intelligent design are simply wrong.  For
example, I dissected William Dembski's mathematical claims in a review
published in the journal _BioSystems_.  I concluded that he made
fundamental mathematical errors that invalidated his arguments.
Dembski has not addressed these errors.

Second: even if correct, intelligent design offers nothing
to science.  It makes no predictions and suggests no experiments.
Like Van der Breggen himself, those actively supporting
intelligent design are typically not involved in laboratory
research, but rather ensconced in philosophy departments, usually
at religious schools.

Third: separating "intelligence" from the rest of nature is a
conceptual error.  We know no example of a disembodied intelligence;
all intelligences we know are located in biological systems that have
evolved.  Appealing to some magical "intelligence" to explain biology,
therefore, is not based on any evidence.

Jeffrey Shallit