"The last point that should be brought up here is the relatively new area
referred to as „žIntelligent Design.„’ Those involved
with this frame of reference are part of various religions or are
non-religious altogether. Intelligent Design is the logical and
philosophical position, combined with science, which says that the
universe and life itself give strong evidence for
intelligent design. The identity of the Intelligent Designer is
left to the individual„äit is not a matter for discussion within the
parameters of the Intelligent Design movement itself. There are
both Christians and non-Christians in this movement, as
well as those who are agnostic. It is a far wider-reaching category
of thought than creation as discussed above, but
includes it. Some of the articles by those involved in the
Intelligent Design field can be found here:"
http://trueorigin.org/creationism.htm
Does this sound a little circular ?
"whether life exhibits the purposeful activity of an intelligent agent
usually called a designer who in creating life has impressed on it the clear
marks of intelligence. "
http://www.origins.org/offices/dembski/docs/bd-theologn.html
Does ID shows evidence of intelligence in the design?
"Until the mid 1980s this dissent was sporadic, focused largely at the grass
roots, and seeking mainly to influence public opinion through the courts
(and not very effectively at that). With the Intelligent Design movement this
dissent has now become focused, promising to overturn the cultural
dominance of Darwinism much as the freedom movements in eastern Europe
overturned the political dominance of Marxism at the end of the
1980s. "
http://www.origins.org/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign.html
Is ID, as Bertvan suggests, merely an opposition to Darwinism? Does that make
it scientific?
"What then is Intelligent Design? Intelligent Design begins with the
observation that intelligent causes can do things which undirected natural
causes
cannot. Undirected natural causes can place scrabble pieces on a board, but
cannot arrange the pieces as meaningful words or sentences. To obtain
a meaningful arrangement requires an intelligent cause. This intuition, that
there is a fundamental distinction between undirected natural causes on the
one hand and intelligent causes on the other, has underlain the design
arguments of past centuries. "
See abov
Of course the problem lies in the equivocation of directed or undirected.
While natural selection has no long term purpose it does direct the outcome
of a mutation.
"What has emerged is a new program for scientific research known as
Intelligent Design. Within biology, Intelligent Design is a theory of
biological
origins and development. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are
necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology,
and that these causes are empirically detectable. "
But indistinguishable from the actions of a natural designer.
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