Intelligent, Insmelligent
Intelligent Design has to be one of the most unintelligent thought processes ever to come out of the US. Apart from the faulty presumptions in the theory, and "proofs", it seems to me that the goals of the ID crowd will utimately fail.
ID basically is a way of explaining away evolution, by positing that the universe was designed. One of the theories is that some orgainisms are too complex to have evolved. (Such as the flagellum in E.coli - a tail with a "motor"). All of current examples have been debunked (see the ID wiki entry above) which should be enough debunk the whole ID movement, but certain political weight has been brought to bear on the whole debate by the conseratives and Christian Right. (Bush in the US, Abbott here in Australia)
It seems to me that ID is a way of saying "the intelligent designer did this, there is no need to think about it any more", which is really anti-scientific.
The main problem with ID is in explaining the gap between scientific knowledge and the universe, by saying it was designed (by God/Allah/et al) is that when scientific knowledge catches up with the universe the god-botherers will have no "proof" that god/allah/et al exists. All that effort into getting ID (or as some have put it sanitised creationism) into schools will have worked against the movement to get religion back into schools (and mainstream society as the only way of thinking).
ID basically is a way of explaining away evolution, by positing that the universe was designed. One of the theories is that some orgainisms are too complex to have evolved. (Such as the flagellum in E.coli - a tail with a "motor"). All of current examples have been debunked (see the ID wiki entry above) which should be enough debunk the whole ID movement, but certain political weight has been brought to bear on the whole debate by the conseratives and Christian Right. (Bush in the US, Abbott here in Australia)
It seems to me that ID is a way of saying "the intelligent designer did this, there is no need to think about it any more", which is really anti-scientific.
The main problem with ID is in explaining the gap between scientific knowledge and the universe, by saying it was designed (by God/Allah/et al) is that when scientific knowledge catches up with the universe the god-botherers will have no "proof" that god/allah/et al exists. All that effort into getting ID (or as some have put it sanitised creationism) into schools will have worked against the movement to get religion back into schools (and mainstream society as the only way of thinking).