User:Ed Poor/Religious premises of intelligent design

The religious premises of intelligent design need to be made explicit, so that our readers can decide for themselves whether it is true that intelligent design (ID) takes a purely scientific approach to the topics its treats (as ID proponents claim) - or whether this is clearly false (as its opponents claim). Surely if ID has religious premises, then it is not science. On the other hand, if it does not have religious premises it still might be pseudoscience or pathological science or junk science. It might even be real science, in that it makes falsifiable claims which have been disproved.

So is ID a scientific theory which has been disproved, or does it have religious premises like "creation science"? And how can we as Wikipedia contributors judge this matter?

Nearly every scientific body in the English-speaking world has asserted that ID is "not science" or is "pseudoscience". US courts concur. The collective judgment of the scientific mainstream and the legal world says that ID is a form of Creationism. Surely, they have formed this judgment on the basis of facts.

Now the difference between so-called "scientific creationism" and real science is that creationism begins with religious premises. The cardinal religious premise of creationism is that God created everything in the universe, including the planet Earth and all forms of life upon it, less than 10,000 years ago. Adherents of creationism believe this and maintain this in the face of all contrary evidence. To maintain support of an idea, when all credible evidence is against it, is the very heart of the definition of pseudoscience. That is why "creation science" (like Christian Science) is classified as religious - rather than scientific.

We need to discover and report the religious premise (or premises) of intelligent design, too. Then we (as Wikipedians) will be justified in classifying it as pseudoscience.