Who's the extremist - the person who admits the possibility of a creator to explain the improbabilities of Darwinist theory, or someone who aggressively defends that increasingly threadbare theory? The only fundamentalists in the debate are Dawkins and others who insist they are the only ones who preach the truth, when it's obvious that they lack the information to make such concrete pronoucements.

Intelligent Design is a criticism, not a theory or a worldview or a backdoor for religion, and criticism is a vital part of the scientific method. Darwinists do not have a monopoly on truth, and they are the only participants in this debate who want to silence the other side.

Congratulations, Stefan, for writing a misleading, venomous post demonstrating exactly that point.

Sterling, you are a dullard. You are so dumb you do not even understand your own language: The mere fact that you give "Intelligent Design" capital letters implies that it is somewhat more than a "criticism". Name another "criticism" in any field that deserves, and generally gets, capitalised. They generally do not get named even. Criticisms are generally negative, in their nature. This whatever it is, says the typical critic of a proposition, is not right/proper/good/justified/true, -- most importantly -- for a specified reason. A pure criticism is not normative in terms of another explanation. "Intelligent Design" is in fact thoroughly normative in that way. It is not a "criticism", it is what we english speakers call a "proposition". The onoma of this particular "criticism" says it all. "Intelligent Design", when concerning the origin of species and development of life, is the idea that things are "Designed" by someone or something "Intelligent". It criticises evolution in exactly the same way it criticises the "Jelly Mould" theory of planet formation by "The Great Chef" (a part of the theology of my own religion, Eurofism), ie not at all.

Secondly I do not think your use of the word "threadbare" can apply to the theory of evolution, when in fact the majority of the world's educated population -- I do not include midwestern christians in this description, nor you -- still subscribe to it as the current most likely explanation for the development of speciation in the life-forms inhabiting the planet, with lots of supporting arguments and examples which are increasing in number all the time. When you consider also that intelligent design is really based on a feeling of "golly gee it is a bit hard to believe" but I have yet to detect any concrete science, example or proof behind it, I think that one of the theories is threadbare but you do not understand which one is.

That's an interesting nuance that rarely gets mentioned. Creationism is a single source theory, no? No Bible, no creationism. How many data points can Intelligent Design proponetns reference in their, um, theory? Aren't there literally hundreds of thousands of data points in the history of evolution research?

Creationism is sort of a dead end, right? No more data points could be identified. Is there a structured effort on the part of ID people to advance a theory using the scientific method, or is that irreducible complexity higgidly jiggidly all they got?

We've gone through all this before. Several of you were tremendously surprised when I informed you that chimpanzees and gorillas were entirely absent from the "fossil record" until someone found a handful of fossilized chimp chiclets this past summer in Africa. There is no fossil record - there are merely fossil moments that have been unearthed, with little context bridging any one to any other. They tell us something about how things were at points in the past, but they provide little information about continuity, process and origins.

Eurof wrote: Name another "criticism" in any field that deserves, and generally gets, capitalised.

Heh. Not a social sciences major, I see, or a history major. It isn't whether theories or criticisms are capitalized, it's whether they're NAMED that matters. Darwinism is named. So is Intelligent Design. I'm not sure you had a point so I'll stop there.

...Pure criticism is not normative in terms of another explanation. "Intelligent Design" is in fact thoroughly normative in that way. It is not a "criticism", it is what we english speakers call a "proposition". The onoma of this particular "criticism" says it all.

Nor are you a student of Max Horkheimer. I.D. was born as a reaction against Darwinism's over-reach, by people who could not buy in to its more ludicrous presumptions and wished to diminish its negative societal consequences. Now you may make the claim that Horkheimer's concept of critical theory applies only to social science, not hard science. But as is apparent to anyone who really looks at Darwinism, it is not a hard scientific theory so much as a old prejudice cherished by materialists.

"It isn't whether theories or criticisms are capitalized, it's whether they're NAMED that matters."

Dimwit. Propositions, systems and theories can get named or capitalised -- e.g. Communism, the Theory of Relativity, Evolution, Intelligent Design, even. "CRITICISMS" do generally not, unless they throw up new propositions -- before you jump in with your predictable aha, I would imagine that 99% of all propositions, systems and theories emerge from particular criticisms of previous propositions, systems and theories. The bone I have to pick with you is where you state that "Intelligent Design is a criticism, not a theory or a worldview or a backdoor for religion".

Clearly, this is just wrong. Intelligent Design is a normative proposition, it IS a theory. You cannot name and capitalise a mere "criticism" like that -- how often do we the hear of the You Are Stupid, or the That Just Sounds Wrong, or the You Looked at the Wrong Data, or the You Missed That Bit criticisms? No, you contradict yourself in the same sentence, which means you are a spacker.

As to your other points: how odd, in fact I have TWO degrees in what you are pleased to call social sciences, both MAs. Ha ha, one of them is in History, Cambridge University, where amazingly they gave me a First. Please note I did not "major" in anything, in universities in the rest of the world we concentrate on and "study" particular subjects in detail, unlike the 1st 2 years of college in the US, which are needed to make up for the waste of time that is your secondary school system.

I am not a student of Horkheimer, and neither are you, if you knew anything about him: from what I can tell he may be a hoary old continental lefty and I find it amusing you cite him approvingly.

Also I was not at all surprised or even interested when you told me that gorillas are absent from the "fossil record". As a good historian I know that we only see the past through fragmentary evidence and theories can only be constructed on what is avalailable. To think that evolution is not the current "best fit" to avaliable data merely because 100% of the data is not available is ludicrous, a moronic excrescence of an idea.

"Eurof wrote: Name another "criticism" in any field that deserves, and generally gets, capitalised.

Heh. Not a social sciences major, I see, or a history major. It isn't whether theories or criticisms are capitalized, it's whether they're NAMED that matters. Darwinism is named. So is Intelligent Design. I'm not sure you had a point so I'll stop there."

So name one and prove your point. Although even that would not prove it. I agree that Dawkins is as much a Fundamentalist as Pat Robertson. But there are people and positions in between that are reasonable and based on the best science we have right now. Eurof's last sentence above really is the final word on this. No one is claiming that the Theory of Evolution is the end-all position on existence, but it is the best we have so far based on the scientific method and it has proven quite useful in the fields of biology and medicine. It should be and is open to criticism, and the one good thing about this ID crap is that it has pointed out to the unwashed (myself included) areas of evolutionary science that need more study. Great, if the ID people stopped there, that would be fine. But they don't and for purely religious reasons.

Eurof -
Horkheimer and the whole Frankfurt school were a bunch of hoary old lefties. They wound up being the unacknowledged fathers of the American "New Left." So any student of American radical politics knows Horkheimer.

They are relevant to this discussion because over the last 15 years the American Right has begun to appropriate the tactics of leftist radicals in an effort to combat them. This has been extremely successful and I.D. is simply one manifestation of this.

Sac -
Only very successful theories or criticisms have names that enter common currency. One similar to I.D. that I included last night (but then deleted because it's a pointless argument to engage in) is usually referred to as "Beard's thesis" or "the Beard Thesis", which is a Marxist challenge of 19th century scholarship on the American Revolution. Also worth mentioning is Bastiat's "broken window fallacy" or "Parable of the Broken Window", and Henry George's refutation of Malthus called "Population and Subsistence".

The fact is that people hardly ever cricize one theory without offering one they think is better. In the case of I.D., we are not talking about a single criticism of Darwinism but of a grouping of challenges to it based on various viewpoints and studies. So I.D. is not a theory - it just isn't - but instead is a movement in which various critics of Darwinism gather.

Hey, we agree! ID is merely a criticism of a scientific theory, although it offers no scientific alternative to what it criticizes. Is that even fair? I suppose so, one can point out an actual problem and yet not have an answer. But because of this, ID in no way should be offered as an equal alternative in a science class.

Well, some I.D. proponents do offer alternatives to portions of Darwinist theory, but I agree that I.D. itself should not be offered in class. I just want to see some of its more highly regarded criticisms included in science classes.

Something like this would be agreeable to me: "Darwinists and neo-Darwinists claim a purely materialistic origin of life on Earth. However, they have been better able to show how certain existing structures or families, such as the flagella, eye or Felidae, have evolved over time than how they originated. So as far as a spiritual versus scientific origin for life on Earth goes, as scientists we should keep looking but we may not ever be able to prove that life was created entirely absent intelligent involvement."

Does evolution theory even get into the origin of life on the planet? And isn't that disclaimer rather pessimistic in its view of science? This is better:

"Spiritual explanations for the origin of life are not based on scientific study. This is not to say they are invalid, but rather they are not part of scientific discussion, hence will not be discussed in this textbook except in cases where they have impacted scientific study, and then only for historical context." (I'm thinking Scopes Trial, the ID debate, etc.)

Sorry you are both wrong, woolier in your thinking than a sheep left unsheared for 25 years. SAC, you came close to acknowledging my near perfection but then dropped the ball embarrassingly. IT IS IN THE NAME. INTELLIGENT DESIGN. IT IS A THESIS, is a descriptive fucking THESIS. It is NOT only a criticism. You are right that it "is a "grouping of challenges to [Evolution] based on various viewpoints and studies," but only insofar as those various viewpoints and studies have the common elements of believing in, positing or indicating BOTH 1) that speciation is a designed outcome AND IS created by 2) someone or something intelligent. And that my friends is a fucking THESIS. And whoever the designer is, s/he/it (sheeit!) is very clearly powerful and jolly clever, much more powerful and jolly well cleverer than we are, and are likely to be for some time to come. But oh no not necessarily a godly thingummy, just as near as dammit.

And then all of a sudden, once I accept that, I am no longer interested in speciation and the different varieties of life on earth and how they got where they are, because I just posited something MUCH more interesting and powerful as a concept, a divine or near-divine entity capable of organising life itself. Hell why bother with biology and physics at all -- the "laws" science comes up with are likely merely guidelines for He who I shall call OhNoDefinitelyNotGod, who much like the White House disregards legislation if it feels like it, may even have a Get Out clause where these things are concerned.

There are in fact other schools of thought who reject what you are pleased to call Darwinism (no, it is the "Theory of Natural Selection"), who do NOT come to their criticism through positing Intelligent Design, and who would be horrified and insulted at being lumped in with the ill-tailored midwestern snake oil peddlers who plug for ID. These would be Lamarckians, macromutation theorists, complexity theorists and adaptationists, who all come to the subject from the perspective of something vaguely recognisable as science, which ID most certainly is not.

And why do these sometimes quite reasonable objections to the theory of natural selection get no air time on Fox? Because they all posit spontaneous order arising without anything resembling god, which is what we all really know ID is all about.

Eurof you really are in top shape of late. Been getting some more sleep?

No my mother in law is over, the greeks talk so loudly I cannot hear the television. I am at a loose end. I am not getting at all enough sleep nowadays. This is why I am doing so much unseemly SHOUTING in my comments.

That was funny. Shrill, but funny, particularly the "sheeit" part.

..woolier in your thinking than a sheep left unsheared for 25 years...

A 25-year-old sheep would not be wooly, it would be dead. Ask your in-laws.