intelligent design is creationism

I’ve blogged about intelligent design before (here and here). In recent news, a judge has ruled that intelligent design is “a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory”. More coverage in the CSM and Ars Technica.

I observe the results with satisfaction, although I am a bit perplexed reading this quote:

“The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won’t work,” said Dr. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the leading think tank researching intelligent design. “He has conflated Discovery Institute’s position with that of the Dover school board, and he totally misrepresents intelligent design and the motivations of the scientists who research it.”

The italics are mine. If one of the major planks of the intelligent design platform is that the world is so complex that it must have been created by some unnamed (ha ha, yeah right) creator, then what can there possibly be to research? If you intellectually punt by throwing your hands in the air and saying “geez, this is way too hard to understand; let’s go shopping!”, you’re done! There’s no need to research anything at all!

I wonder if my boss would buy that argument.