Read this statement:
The measure from Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler would block higher education institutions from discriminating against or penalizing teachers or students based on their research into intelligent design or other theories that disagree with evolution.
Zedler said he filed the bill because of cases in which colleges had been hostile to those who believe that certain features of life-forms are so complex that they must have originated from a higher power. [emphasis mine]
Let’s start with the first phrase I emphasized. What research?
The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.
Of course, the research never appeared. Intelligent Design is about faith, not fact. It is about, as Zedler claims, “those who believe.” For anyone with a basic understanding of science it is a given that disproving something is as important as proving something. Advocates for Intelligent Design have no interest in disproving their beliefs, and given their laziness when it comes to research it seems they have no interest in proving them either.
Here’s another scientific rule: You have to be willing to accept research results that differ from your original hypothesis. Are Intelligent Designers willing to consider the possibility that their “theory” is wrong? Of course not. They’re not even willing to do research.