Daniel,

The idea is not to dismiss ID, at least not to me. The idea is to keep it where it belongs i.e. as a theological, social or philosophical idea, not a scientific one. I see no problem with people believing in ID -- but I see a huge problem with certain (though not all I suspect) proponents trying very hard to call it "science", by trying to change the meaning of "science" itself to include supernatural explanations.

If someone's belief in a designer brings value to their lives, if they really have the need for a progenator, a source that they can anthropomorphize, that's fine. However, calling it "scientific" and interjecting it in places where it does not belong (e.g. biology classes) -- that's not so fine. I can't see how some ID proponents' hand-waving and dismissal of the scientific method is any better than some scientists' hand-waving and dismissal of faith. They cater to two completely different facets of the human condition, and trying to label one as the other doesn't do either of them any good.

Regards,

John

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I pretty much agree with what's already been mentioned: ID is not scientific, and should not be taught in science classes. I have a different view on ID itself, though. I believe the term is theistic-evolutionism.

I believe (of course) in the possibility that one or both of them could be wrong, but faith wise, I believe in both. I believe that, in the "beginning," there was (and still is) a large group of gods: male, female and androgynies. They all made a group effort to jump-start the beginning of evolution, in that they created the very first microorganisms with the intent of them evolving into all the plants and animals that populate the earth today. Evolution, however, was what carried out the process, instead of: *poof* there's a dog, *poof* there's a human, *poof* there's an oak tree, *poof* there's a grasshopper. The whole concept just makes a little more sense to me than either/or.

I'll start with the caveat that I haven't read a whole lot of ID literature. What I have read and heard from creationists over the years mostly amounts to pointing to holes in Darwinism and attempting to fill them in with supernatural spackle, rather than developing a substantive alternative theory that better accounts for the data.

It is well known that there are mysteries about our evolution, and gaps in the fossil record. As I understand it, we have lots of fossil evidence for evolution working at the species level, but very little for evolution at the phylogenetic level. We also don't know why very rapid evolution and speciation happened in the "Cambrian explosion" but little speciation happens after that. These and others are very interesting questions, and our current inability to provide a convincing answer to them may signify a crucial weakness in Darwinian theory. Then again, it may only signify that more research needs to be done. Maybe the Darwinian model will eventually be able to account for all of what we consider the relevant data. Maybe it will have to be modified to gain empirical adequacy. And maybe it will some day be replaced by a superior theory.

To gain any acceptance in the scientific community, ID is going to have to do more than make arguments pointing to our ignorance of how certain evolutionary processes work. Humans make a lot of models to understand our experience, and *most* of them are deeply flawed, however pragmatically useful or comforting they might be. Good models usually arise throgh a feedback loop between theory and empirical observation (these two cannot be separated so easily as one might assume), and since the intelligent designer cannot be observed, ID theorists are stuck relying on vague "intuitions" of what is too complex to arise by natural means. As long as ID makes no new testable predictions, it will continue to look like an ad hoc attempt to fill-in the gaps of our knowledge rather than a serious candidate candidate model for explaining our origins.