1. ID claims to be an alternative way of doing science.
Mainstream science restricts its investigation to the natural world—and the world of modern biology is a world of evolutionary processes. However, IDers insist that certain biological structures are better explained scientifically by referring to intelligent design than to blind, random evolutionary processes. The clash over these two approaches to science has been at the heart of recent academic debates, cultural divides, and court cases. In their crusade against establishment biology, IDers style themselves as the oppressed minority who cannot get a fair hearing. Ben Stein took up their cause in the recent film Expelled. (I have to admit that I strongly dislike this film: both its logical fallacies and its convenient editing that makes some experts who were interviewed seem to support ID although they are on record in many other venues criticizing it.) Also, the Discovery Institute, established in Seattle in 1990, supports, among other projects, intelligent design research that challenges the accepted Darwinian -approach. So far, the Institute has made no groundbreaking discoveries or overturned any widely accepted biological explanations.
