A bevy of Nobel prize winners has sent a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education, to plead the case for not teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in schools. Now I think that the claims of ID proponents can be usefully defeated on the field of science, to the benefit (at least) of science. But in a peculiar way the letter writers choose to leave the field of science, and make other kinds of claim, and this needs attention:

Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.

The first phrase here is a strange way to word the results of using the scientific method: Did Darwin "logically derive" his theory? It's better described as an induction by him. For example, Darwin lacked any evidence for the kind of genetic inheritance necessary to support his theory — and one cannot derive anything from what doesn't exist.

And is the possession of confirmable evidence something necessary in order to have a useful science, so that it can be usefully taught? Not at all. For example, string theory provides little confirmable evidence for some of its applications, but is still usefully teachable. And Darwin's Origin of Species was, at the time of its first publication, quite definitely teachable science, even though it lacked any confirmable evidence for the particular kind of genetic inheritance necessary to support the theory. Clearly the goal of the scientific method is to have confirmable evidence, but it is not something that must be possessed at every intermediate point. Teachable science can exist without confirmable evidence.

Move on in the quoted sentence: "evolution is understood to be". I am not sure why is does not simply say "evolution is". Perhaps it sounded too definitive to the writers.

More: "the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection". Unfortunately, it takes a long time to indicate the ways in which this is a greatly misleading statement. It's little appreciated that evolution is the operation of a mathematical algorithm. It's impossible for it to operate in an unguided way — though we should have to carefully understand what kind of "guidance" is necessary. No kind of evolution can operate unless some kind of order is given to it. Ultimately biological evolution relied, and relies, as it mathematically must, on the order present around us in the universe. Saying "evolution is unguided and unplanned" is the same as saying "the universe is unguided and unplanned". And how do the Nobel prize winners know that? Do they have some confirmable evidence for it?

It's most peculiar. In the guise of attacking something they see as not being "logically derived from confirmable evidence", the Nobel laureates themselves leave the field of science and make such statements themselves!

Moving on:

In contrast, intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.

Now here they do not like ID because it relies on the intervention of something supernatural. If they simply attacked ID as a scientific theory, using the methods of science, they would, I am confident, in fact find it easy to defeat. But having moved onto the field of the supernatural, they move onto what is, for them, exceedingly slippery ground. What exactly is it about the scientific method that might rule out its use with the supernatural? I do not see what it is. I do not think science is so weak that it can be so easily rendered inapplicable.

An example: suppose someone claimed they could cause, at will, by some supernatural means, a falling body to repeatedly deviate from its predicted path of motion. Because the claim is made that it is done by a supernatural agency, does it follow that scientists should throw up their hands, and disavow any way of investigating such a claim? Why not still measure the path of the object, its momentum, and search for all possible causes of the effect. Science can happily do this, and happily investigate and test the phenomenon. Of course it can.

Do I think that such a repeatable experimental demonstration of the supernatural is going to take place? No; never. (I do not think the supernatural works that way.) But if it did, I would go right ahead and use the scientific method to investigate it, and I would expect (going with the hypothetical assumption that it is a real supernatural event) that science could prove that it was a supernatural event. I don't see why science should ever give up in the face of the supernatural.

More:

Differences exist between scientific and spiritual world views, but there is no need to blur the distinction between the two. Nor is there need for conflict between the theory of evolution and religious faith. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Neither should feel threatened by the other.

But in what way does an appeal to a supernatural agency "blur" the difference between the different world views? Precisely because science is an autonomous means of investigating the world it is not be necessary have to give up the scientific method in the face of the supernatural. There is no blurring. Even if a scientific claim is from a religious, spiritual, or supernatural point of view, it is still a scientific claim, and subject to science's autonomous methods.

ID is certainly wrong in its scientific claims, and it is science that can show this.