It’s no secret that critics of intelligent design desperately want to link design theory with religion. The critics know how guilt-by-association will make it much easier to simply ignore and marginalize the actual arguments. A recent AP article in the Hawk Eye about the treatment of Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University highlights two common variants of this guilt-by-religion fallacy. Gonzalez is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and co-author of book, The Privileged Planet. The AP article highlighted how Gonzalez has been treated with hostility by fellow Iowa State University professors since he became involved with intelligent design. The article presents a good example of the fallacy of characterizing intelligent design as merely religious.

It appears that evolution is not as popular as many would expect in Darwin’s home country. The BBC reports, Britons unconvinced on evolution. Less than half responded that evolution best described their view on the origin of life. Furthermore, more than 40 percent believe that intelligent design should be included in science lessons. While not directly relevant to the debate over intelligent design in the United States, the results are interesting, and came as a surprise to many scientists in Briton, including the President of the Royal Society.

Bob Murphy at LewRockwell.com, a prominent libertarian website, examines many of the common objections to ID and finds them unpersuasive in Typical Objections to Intelligent Design. Murphy takes the role of argument analyzer and examines the common objections of credibility, lack of peer-reviewed publications, ID as not scientific, and accusations that ID is an argument from ignorance. After analyzing these common arguments, Murphy finds that “the ID people are on to something, while the proponents of Darwinian evolution are missing the point.”