What exactly is the "Intelligent Design" theory?
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"The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory."\n\n"Intelligent Cause" can ONLY be interpreted as "A Creator."\nHence, it is simply creationism with a fancy new name.  Their claim of "scientific disagreement" is, at best, laughable.\n\nIt's all a big steaming pile of poo....
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Science is a methodology - a way to go about finding information.  Below I've posted two blogs I've written.  The first one deals with creationism and science - I include it because it describes what is science and what is not. The second blog is an essay on the theory of evolution. Check out the links in the cited section for pictures and links to additional information.\n\n------------------\nIn the news today, evolution and creationism are once again on trail.  This time the lawsuit is taking place in Harrisburg Penn over the addition of creationism’s latest offering – Intelligent Design theory – into school text books. \n\n \n\nAccording to this report, intelligent design purports to be an ‘alternative theory’ to the theory of evolution.  In fact, according to the article, intelligent design purports to:\n\n \n\n"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, “Of Pandas and People,” is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.\n\nWith respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.”[1]\n\nOn the face of it, this part of the disclaimer seems reasonable.  The question is – is intelligent design an explanation of the origin of life?  Is it actually a competing scientific theory?\n\n \n\nThe answer is, unequivocally, no.\n\n \n\nFor a start, intelligent design has no positive evidence in favor of their ‘theory’.  Intelligent Design advocates attempt to present evidence by pointing out supposed flaws in evolutionary theory – as though there was a legitimate dichotomy to choose from. \n\nAn expert biologist who was giving testimony during yesterday’s trial said the following in an MSN’s article: \n\n”Under questioning from American Civil Liberties Union attorney Witold Walczak, Miller said he wasn’t even sure that Behe had done research on intelligent design.\n\n“I have yet to see any explanation advanced by any adherent of design that says we have positive evidence for design,” he said.”[2]\n\nThis is further corroborated by the utter lack of attempts to submit papers for peer review by creationists:\n\n \n\n“The priorities of creationism are politics and religious evangelism. Science is not very important to creationists in the first place. The main reason that they do not get published in reputable science journals is that they do not try to publish there. In a survey of editors of sixty-eight journals, only eighteen out of an estimated 135, 000 submissions were found that could be described as advocating creationism (Scott and Cole 1985). \n\nIn the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education creationism trial, the creationists complained to the judge that the scientific journals refused to consider their articles, but they were unable to produce any articles that had been refused publication.”[3]\n\n \n\nAside from lack of positive evidence, there is a bigger problem here.  One that is ignored by creationists and one that ultimately shows intelligent design to be nothing more then an appeal to magic – which, needless to say, doesn’t constitute a ‘scientific theory’.\n\n \n\nWhat is a scientific theory?  According to Wikipedia, a scientific theory, in the context of biology, is: \n\n \n\n“A theory is an established paradigm that explains all or much of the data we have and offers valid predictions that can be tested. In science, a theory is never considered fact or infallible, because we can never assume we know all there is to know. Instead, theories remain standing until they are disproven, at which point they are thrown out altogether or modified to fit the additional
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Intelligent design states that the species we view and their properties have to be caused by some outside agency, not the product of natural laws. They have to be the result of direct tampering. \n\nThe main argument that intelligent design uses is "irreducible complexity"; that is, the species we see are too complex to have been created by natural means. This argument is not at all new. For example, it is very similar to the arguments of William Paley. \n\nAlthough in intelligent design, the proponents claim to be open to panspermia (life from outer space) and other ideas, probably more than 99% of them are in favor of the designer being a deity, and the deity intervening in nature using supernatural means.\n\n\nIntelligent design was invented as an attempt to get around the US supreme court's injunction about teaching religion in science classes.
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Excellent post.\n\nI get quite tired of the strawman versions of evolution and the scientific method trotted out by creationists.\n\nFor example, the big bang has nothing to do with evolution.  Zero.  \n\nWhere the first life form came from has nothing to do with evolution.  Zero.\n\nA theory is simply the best explanation for observable data.  We witness the diversity of life around us, and we must explain it somehow.  It is NOT meant to be proven.  Theories, in general, are not intended to be proven.\n\nFor example, gravity is a theory.  Is gravity false?  No.  Does gravity follow certain rules?  Absolutely!  Yet it is still a theory, and there ain't nothing wrong with that.\n\nYou well noted that some mechanisms of evolution are still not completely understood.  The theory, while perfectly valid, is not completely explained (just like gravity).  However, what creationists must keep in mind is that if any theory is going to replace evolution, it must explain ALL the evidence and data we have collected.  Genetics, fossil record, geological record, geographic isolation and allele frequency shift.\n\nAt the very best creationism (or ID) only points at the parts that science has not explained.  It offers no real alternative theory.\n\nLastly, the idea of "proof" for a "miracle" (meaning God's flooding of the earth) is oxymoronic, at best.  If there is proof (meaning observational data we can see today) then there is a natural explanation and God had nothing to do with it.  If it was a miracle, then there would be no evidence (since God suspended natural laws to make it happen).  Silly Christian fundamentalists, they want to have their cake and eat it too.
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:]\nsince I believe there is a creation I believe in intelligent design\n\nI didn't know of the museum but am interested.
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No.\n\nSchneb is being purposefully deceiving by quoting Darwin out of context.  Isn't that on a par with lying?\n\nEbertis should read a book called "Why People Believe Weird Things," by Michael Shermer.  In it, he gives very good explanations of how intelligent people can deceive themselves into believing something very wrong.  He should also know that Behe has been thoroughly debunked and for facts and evidence he should take a look at talkorigins.org.\n\nFor those of you who defend "intelligent design," maybe you should take a look at this question:\n\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AsLJbgNxwECve8d_AOzB.wfsy6IX?qid=1006042026788\n\nSecretsauce got it right away.
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Yes, it requires intelligent design.\nBut it also requires intelligence to realize that fact.
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You're assuming that the universe extends for infinite.\n\nOf course, if you're assuming that it has meaning, does that mean that it has intelligent design? And therefore, an intelligent designed?\n\nIn other words, no.
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There is only one - Darwin's.  Google it and you'll find more information than you could use in a year.  \n\nNo other idea regarding the origin of humankind and the process of evolution is viable - not "intelligent design", not "creation science", nor any other answer but Evolution.\n\nYou must remember that, in science, a theory is not just somebody's best guess.  A theory is an explanation based upon facts.  Evolutionary theory is the base upon which modern science is built.\n\nRight now the newspapers and t.v. are talking about "bird flu" as if it's something we need to be scared of.  Bird flu cannot be spread from person to person.  But the virus could, and is very likely to, change to the point that it can indeed be spread from person to person.  If that happens, it will happen because the virus evolved.  This sort of thing happens time and again - proving that not only has evolution happened in the past, but that it is still happening.\n\nOne more thing: Niether Darwin nor his theory ever said that humankind descended from monkeys!  Good luck on your school project - now get to work!
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I am a Christian and I have found remarkable facts that have bolstered my faith in Intelligent Design. To name one, Irreducable Complexity. It is the fact, (Not Theory) that the simplest cell in our body was created completely in a moment's time, instead of a gradual evolution. It is like a mouse trap. There's a board, spring, lever, and latch. The cell, like the trap, has components that compliment each other in the same way the trap does. If you took one component away the trap would be defective, likewise if the cell is left without all the necessary systems it will perish leaving no time for evolution.
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Wow - yes of course people have thought of it, that's why you have so many choice in religions or the neo-popular near athiest ideologies associated with Godless science by way of the theory of Evolution, which provides absolutely NO answers and especially NO comfort for what you're looking for.  Not ragging on Science, but nobody I know curls up with test tubes and litmus paper when they go to bed at night, and if we evolved and continue to evolve based on ridiculous odds why bother to have any order in our societies at all?  But I'm biased, I favor intelligent design.  And I do believe in a benevolent creator...although how and what escapes me....\n\nHonestly? If you haven't ever tried religion, it might not be a bad idea to look into one that you can agree with, but fair warning, there are SCADS of goofy people therein.  Of course, there will be scads of goofy people anywhere life takes you.... \n\nIt just sounds like you need to believe in something or fall in love to get your mind off the downer side of things.
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I think ID asks a lot of interesting questions ... about the nature of information, complexity, form to function, etc.\n\nHowever\n(1) A bunch of questions, even good ones, does not constitute a theory; \n(2) Most of these questions have been answered for decades in such sciences as information theory, thermodynamics, chaos theory, chaotics, emergence theory, etc. all without resorting to a 'designer';\n(3) A good explanation explains complex things in terms of simpler principles ... ID does the opposite, it explains complex things in terms of an even more complex and mysterious entity ... a "designer" with unknown properties, unknown motives, unknown mechanisms ... basically something of infinite complexity.  It makes things less understandable, not more.\n\nSo count me firmly in the D camp.\n(A) It is an incredibly simple and elegant theory (although that is not reason enough to accept it); and\n(B) The evidence is overwhelming, and still growing.  Evidence from fossils, genetics, molecular (DNA) evidence, morphology, embyrology, cladistics, bacteriology, virology, immunology, biogeography, etc. etc.\n(C) It makes predictions all the time that would falsify the theory if found to be false ... but all of them have been born out.
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Did your car evolve or is it the result of intelligent design?\n\nCreation is infinitely more complex than your car, and you think it happened by random chance?  Who's the nut?
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Evolutionists argue that life of all forms evolved from primitive to more complex forms in response to the environment.\n\nIntelligent designers argue that none of this evolution stuff would work without a higher intelligence (read God) to get it all going in the first place.  Generally seen as another attempt to inject fundamentalism into the government so we can enjoy the same kind of life as our muslim brothers.......\n\nDisclaimer:  None of the above was researched anywhere on the web.  100% original Steve
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One could make a very very long list, if one was so inclined. Just to give you an idea, here are a very few to get you started:\n\n1. Steady state model\n2. Quasi-steady state model\n3. Lambda-Cold Dark Model\n4. Cosmic Inflation\n5. Cyclic models\n6. Ekpyrotic universe models\n7. Ambiplasma hypothesis\n8. Mixmaster hypothesis\n9. Chronometric cosmology\n10. Dimensionally-extended Static Cosmology\n11. Antimatter cosmologies\n\nand so on. If you look into this a tiny bit, I am sure you will find dozens and dozens of alternative scientific models, maybe even many hundreds, or even more.\n\n- - - - - - - - - - \n\nAddendum for uoflfan732 and other fans of intelligent design:\n\nIntelligent design is NOT a scientific model for the creation of the universe. Science deals with natural causes and natural processes, not supernatural causes and supernatural processes. Therefore, intelligent design is excluded from the list of scientific models for the creation of the universe.\n\nNow it might be that eventually one will reach the conclusion that science has failed to explain something by natural causes, and the only recourse is to postulate supernatural causes. At that point, intelligent design or something like it might be considered. However, until it can pass the standards for science like:\n\n1. publication in peer-reviewed journals\n2. able to make verifiable predictions\n3. falsifiable tests\n4. able to gain acceptance among a preponderance of experts in the field\n5. able to explain phenomena better than competing theories\n\nand so on, intelligent design will remain in the realm of pseudoscience. \n\nThe definition of science which would include intelligent design is so vague and loose, that one of its supporters admitted in court that it would include astrology as science. That is, to call intelligent design a science we would have to bend the rules so much that astrology would also be a science.
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That's why Intelligent Design is a crackpot theory not worth the paper it's printed on.\n\nIn every population of living things the weak, deformed, disabled and defective becomes victims to predators or disease, usually before they are capable of breeding and passing on their characteristics to future generations. This is how a population remains strong, viable and able to compete against predators which are also being subjected to the laws of natural selection by gradually becoming stronger, faster, more cunning etc etc (the weaker ones also dying for not being able to compete).\n\nThe other side of this coin is that occasionally a genetic mutation brings with it an advantage and this enables a species to better survive in a particular environment. If the advantage is great enough then over many generations this mutation will become generally incorporated into a species or population because proportionally more individuals carrying the mutation will survive and breed in each sucessive generation.\n\nYou are correct that without glasses you would be a complete liability in a hunter-gatherer society and it is only in comparatively recent times that poor eyesight has stopped being a factor in deciding whether you get to contribute to the next generation - in earlier times human society may have supported you in return for you performing menial tasks but you would have been unlikely to have found a mate. Still earlier I suspect that you may have been driven away from the tribe as an expensive liability.\n\nThe fact that you (and I - because I also wear spectacles) are alive and able to discuss this proves the case for the only form of Intelligent Design that ever has existed - the intelligent design BY humans that have evolved through natural selection brains capable of devising technologies that enable them to solve problems to improve their chances of survival.
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I call that intelligent design.