Preface

This book and the articles I have published on intelligent design (ID) did not begin as a research project aimed at demonstrating the scientific, philosophical, and legal problems with treating ID as science. For years, I, along with many other people, have been fascinated by the debate over evolution. From my vantage point, I never saw any inherent inconsistency between scientific evidence that overwhelmingly supports evolution and my faith. With the caveats set forth later in this book, I still do not. Yet I initially wondered if ID would be a plausible alternative to traditional evolutionary biology.

After reading much of what ID advocates have written, I realized that ID is not a plausible alternative to evolution, at least not a scientifically plausible alternative. In fact, the more ID material I read (i.e., material written by ID advocates), the more convinced I became that ID is a marketing strategy based on religious apologetics and not truly a scientific approach. This realization had the potential to disappoint, but, in the process, I gained a better understanding of my own religious commitments and the relationship between these commitments and science. For me, however, ID has no role in either. After all, it is hard to base one's faith or one's understanding of the natural world on a marketing strategy, albeit an exceptionally well-designed marketing strategy.