The New York Times has started running some articles on the so-called "debate" between evolution and "intelligent design." Today's article is a load of crap. It's long, and if you read it carefully enough there's enough information there to tell you that "intelligent design" is a crock of shit, but they give undeserved respect to the viewpoints of Michael Behe and William Dembski. Neither Behe nor Dembski's arguments can withstand even a mild examination of the facts combined with logic. PZ Myers is also understandably miffed.

Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world.

In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.

This is a ridiculous argument. One, here is an example of a how a mousetrap could be "reducibly complex." Two, evolution provides a method for the development of highly complex biological structures that cannot function with the removal of a single piece.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that the NY Times piece gives "intelligent design" an air of credibility that it doesn't deserve. Like I've said before, and will probably end up saying a million times over again, "intelligent design" is not science. There are no experiments that you can design that can disprove the existence of an "intelligent designer," which is the very definition of science - can you formulate an experiment that would provide evidence to contradict your hypothesis? If you're going to do what the ID movement does, then you're not doing science. Some of them claim that evolutionary processes like mutation and selection were "designed by a higher power." Well, if you're going to admit that those processes work, why do you need a higher power? I don't, and you can't design an experiment to test it, either. Ridiculous.