"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc." (Of Pandas and People, pages 99-100). And, according to Ben Stein, intelligent design is the "hypothesis" that an "all-powerful designer" created the ancestors of the forms of life that exist today, and that those ancestors were not significantly different from their living descendants. (See "a discussion between R.C. Sproul & Ben Stein about evolution, and the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4609561480192587449&q=Expelled%3A+No+Intelligence&ei=-csSSNigCZDCqAP65aDFBA )

Mr. Stein believes that the all-powerful designer is the god of The Holy Bible. By this belief, he has transformed his god into an untestable hypothesis. God is no longer something to have faith in; God is now a hypothesis that cannot be proved to be true.

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute asserts that intelligent design is a "scientific theory." Mr. Luskin is wrong. The intelligent design hypothesis cannot be tested, cannot be proved to be true, and cannot become a scientific theory.

Ben and Casey should take note of the fact that, under the rules of science, a miracle cannot be included a scientific theory. They should also note that putting a miracle into a hypothesis renders that hypothesis untestable.