[Starboy]

Quote by: Warren Intelligent design is not creationism. Creationism is focused on proving the Genesis account is accurate. Creationism invokes the supernatural. Creationism is anti-evolution. ID is none of that, so it is misleading to call it creationism. The ID critics refer to ID as creationism in order to convince the public that ID proponents want to teach Genesis to schools kids and that ID is anti-evolution and anti-science. None of this is true. The term creationism has come to be identified with right-wing Christian fundamentalism and the ID critics are trying their best to stick that label on ID. This is blatant misrepresentation.

Creationism is any supernatural religious explanations that posit a creator for existence. So many people in the US are so ignorant that it never occurs to them that the Christian account of creation is not the only creation story for existence in the world. There are Hindu creationists, Chinese folklore creationists, and Native American creationists and so on. Of course most people do not consider any of these explanations as credible because we have learned enough about the universe to make it impossible for an educated and intelligent person to think that a giant formed the geology of the earth or that rain comes from a body of liquid water over our heads and on and on. For some strange reason IDiots ignore that positing that existence was designed means that there was a creator. What they lack is simply the narrative story to go with it. But because they do not actually posit an explanation for existence and yet claim it was created they are not actually proffering any kind of an actual explanation no matter how anciently misinformed. Also for some strange reason they want ID taught as an opposing explanation to the theory of evolution even though ID doesn't explain anything about how life on the planet came to be. So what they are doing is religion since in order for their base idea to be considered to be scientific they will be forced to produce the creator or at least the creator’s plans and yet they will be the first to tell you that producing god or its plans is impossible.

If some creationists are trying to bring religious creationism back into public school science classes under the guise of intelligent design then the courts won't buy it. Just calling creationism by another name isn't going to fool anyone. As soon as the creationists spell out exactly what they plan to teach the jig will be up.

Not sure that the courts will rule one way or the other. You saw what they did with the Ten Commandments and it looks like the courts will become more conservative.

So what is intelligent design? Basically it a teleological perspective that generates testable hypotheses that help us better understand the natural world. For those not familar with the terms "teleology" and "teleological" they refer to purposefulness or goal-directedness. The opposite of purposeful or goal-directed is ateleology.

Politics has a purpose but no one would mistake it for science. The issue is not that ID has a purpose; the issue is that it has no scientific purpose. Its purpose is obviously religious.

Atheist Richard Dawkins begins his book "The Blind Watchmaker" with the observation that "biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." ID proponents simply take the inference of design in nature and use it as a guide for scientific research. There is no reason why a methodology that doesn't a priori reject teleology cannot employ an experimental, inductive approach to the world. As Del Ratzsch puts it: "If things in nature can appear designed, if nature can produce things that are as if designed, if results of natural selection function as if designed, then doing science as if nature was designed - methodological designism - might be a productive, rational strategy."

Saying that the universe was "designed for a purpose" is a claim. The only way to test that claim is to know the purpose. If you look at the universe it may have a purpose but it is hard to see how it has anything at all to do with mankind and his concocted creators.

Is mainstream biological research devoid of design-type thinking? Not according to Michael Ruse. He says: “Both history and present Darwinian evolutionary practice have shown us that design-type thinking is involved in the adaptationist paradigm. We treat organisms –the parts at least --as if they were manufactured, as if they were designed, and then we try to work out their functions. End-directed thinking – teleological thinking – is appropriate in biology because, and only because, organisms seem as if they were manufactured, as if they had been created by an intelligence and put to work.” Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does evolution have a purpose?, p. 268

Sounds great but actual research is more about discovery. The last fifty years of molecular biological research is driven not by trying to figure out the design but merely trying to identify all the parts and how they work together. Who knows what the "purpose" of the HIV virus is and why it is manufactured the way it is? And if you think it is there because of some "design" of the creator how in the world are you going to use science to figure that out without the creator’s designs?

Starboy