Talk:Intelligent design/Archive 5

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At last! An improvement to the deceptive advertisement of the second paragraph

At least you have just shown some progress. The last two responses above suggest an improvement to the current deceptive advertisement of the second paragraph--the improvement being something like the following.

Opponents of ID, who include the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, argue that ID fails to meet the science standard for what is a "theory." Rrrrr Dddddd said, "Any legitimate theory would state the 'who, why, when, where, and how' that is required for falsifiability. ID is structured to express faith, not reason." Mmmmm Sssss said, "ID is pseudoscience in claiming to be science, but not following the scientific method for making and proving hypotheses." Rrrrr Ccccc said, "It is childish for ID to claim that nature fits together like a watch. Even most people are born with 'design flaws' that require medicine to fix. The animals that have become extinct had fatal design flaws that killed all of their species." <-----Falsehood, a number of species have been hunted to extinction by humans.How could one possibly forget this.

That is REALLY POOR LOGIC. Does that fact that cars (or anything else for that matter) break down and need repairs "prove" that they were not designed? Of course not. A supposed "design flaw" does not prove lack of design. --DannyMuse 04:53, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

may i suggest that the discussion here revolves around some theological assumptions? the assertion that God made things GOOD does not mean he made them PERFECT. the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibonevolence of the "Designer" are still up for debate -- see Open Theism. Ungtss 15:18, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that was what the author was getting at. And remember, his statements were made in the realm of science, not theology. ID does not have a place in science. Natural selection is a process. ID applies a purpose to that process. By essentially saying, that if you can't disprove ID, then it holds true, is even worse logic. By arguing in terms of theology in a scientific argument, the debate is set up in a way ID wins every time, and a theory that cannot be questioned is fundamentally un-scientific. To tell you the truth, I'm embarrased to live here. I mean, what do the other countries think (I mean the non-theocracies)? At least NY is sane. GWC Autumn 68 ce 2004 14.10 EDT

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intelligent design as a concept versus the intelligent design movement

I'm thinking do we need to break this page out into the concept of intelligent design as starting with William Paley and the modern intelligent design movement with its wedge, etc. Dunc|? 10:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any point in it. AFAIK there isn't any study of intelligent design outside the ID movement, and it's altogether appropriate to mention Paley and other precedents in a post about the topic. — B.Bryant 15:00, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Quit the original research

Why is it that everyone is trying to put into this article their view on what ID is and not what the folks at the Discovery Institute say? no original research. We seriously need to cut some of this (and if you think this is bad look at irreducible complexity Dunc|? 17:29, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

;) But Dunc! Original research is so tempting! And it is so much easier and so much more rewarding than actually documenting what the proponents said. :) Here are the findings of my original research. I have found that, if you actually document what the proponents said on the article pages, somebody comes along and overwrites it with original research. There are many and varied methods of effecting this overwrite with original research--VfD, Merge to A and B, Move to Wiktionary, ... ! And all of that overwrite with original research can be done in good faith. I can see that now! 8) I have even seen the overwrite of cited OED definitions with original research!! Think of it! 8(( So I propose the following. Wikipedia needs to have a protected repository somewhere of what the proponents actually said.  ;) It could even be paraphrases to obey copyright law. So whom would we trust to be the guardian of the Wikipedia Repository of What the Proponents Actually Said? :)) I confess that this inquiry is original research. But, as far as I know have kept this original research confined to TalkPages and UserPages. 8))) ---Rednblu | Talk 18:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Excuse me sir.

intelligent design is not the discovery institute. intelligent design is a broad-based set of beliefs far beyond that organization. everything i put in there was cited or a reword from other parts of the article. the article as it is is EXTREMELY pov, and does not even fairly represent ID ideas. the mendel thing was not original research -- it was a cited quote, and it belongs in there, as it is used in Intelligent Design schoolbooks. the bit on other possible explanations was a reword of something already in the article. your reverts were unfair. the entire article is criticism of ID right now -- uncited personal research criticism i might add. it needs to be fairly represented for what it is. shall we work together on it? Ungtss 17:51, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay, well we're on better terms now.  :) Basically, the article was pants, because it was the result of cross-editing by different groups. What I've been trying to do is put it all together in a coherent way. This means that it should discuss the movement first, their arguments, then the opposition, then schooling, and possibly how other creationists view the ID movement and the ID concept. But it also means that I've cut some of the eye and the watch arguments, which I'll put in argument from design. I'm not in favour of specific biological points because they tend to clutter the page. I still think it needs work though. Dunc|? 18:57, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

good deal:). so the plan now is:

1) npov the text about the movement itself to be fact-based and cited.

2) provide a brief summary of ID bio arguments, with links to subpages.

3) remove institute-specific stuff to the institute subpage.

4) provide a concise, effective, and cited criticism section.

any other suggestions? Ungtss 19:08, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest a mention in both Evolution and ID explaining that since neither can follow the scientific method, that is, neither can make a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven

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Getting the lead right

okay. I wrote the lead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Intelligent_design&oldid=7423552

to deliberately include as many keywords as possible, these being:

evolution natural selection God, Christianity, argument from design science, pseudoscience, creationism, scientific community, scientific philosophy, naturalism, falsifiability, wedge, and a couple of others. Twas thus:

Intelligent design (ID) (ID) is a theory that life shows signs of being created by an "intelligent designer" rather than through the process of evolution by means of natural selection. The intelligent designer is usually taken to be God, via the argument from design, given the links of the intelligent design movement to Christianity, and is thus a form of creationism. The intelligent design movement themselves however tend not to use theological arguments of other creationists and instead try to get intelligent design theory accepted as science, and have it taught in schools.

The scientific community however overwhelmingly rejects ID, which it considers to be pseudoscience because it violates the principles of scientific philosophy of naturalism and falsifiability. They believe that intelligent design is a "wedge" to redefine scientific philosophy and in particular destroy evolutionary biology, after which creationism would become the prevailing view. The scientific community also considers many of ID's arguments to be deliberately deceitful.

The lead is difficult, it needs to convey the subtleties of the argument. The panspermia link is spurious, and the only intelligent designer suggested is God, and the links of the ID movement to the Christian right are not at all hard to identify. I know the ID movement try to distance themselves from theological arguments, and deny that they are creationists, but we all know what's going on really. Dunc|? 12:44, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

i can definitely see your point -- but i think there's a pov problem here that is best avoided by dodging the issue of religious bias. most creationists HONESTLY, in their HEART OF HEARTS, believe that evolutionism is just a means of justifying atheism. they see that western culture (especially europe) rejected religion for the most part at the same time evolution was coming to the fore, and see a strong correlation between the two in people (most naturalistic evolutionists are atheist or at least agnostic). i'm not PERSONALLY saying i think it's true (i'm agnostic myself on the issue) ... but that's the pov of the intelligent design folks -- they HONESTLY think that evolution is just anti-religious proselytizing, and that's why it makes them so angry to hear it taught as Fact in school -- like, "you are teaching my kids that my religion is FALSE!?"

so that POV is out there -- and PARTICULARLY widespread among the general population in the US -- but there's no reference to "anti-religious bias" on the evolution page, because evolutionists believe it to be OBJECTIVELY TRUE -- and i think that's fair -- it presents the theory as it is ... without ad hominem attacks regarding bias from outside.

i think the same rule should apply here -- we should dodge the pov question of who is objective and who is not, and simply say what they're SAYING -- and let the READER determine whether what they're saying is credible or not, on its MERITS, and not on the basis of our assumptions about their bias.

because just as you say "we all know they're just trying to bring God back into science," they're saying, "we all know they're just trying to keep God out to science."

the pov problem is ... if you frame intelligent design as a religious (i.e. biased) movement and evolution as a scientific (i.e. objective) movement, you've taken the evolutionist POV -- which may be true -- and it can stay on the evolution page no problem -- but i think the ID page ESPECIALLY needs to stay NPOV as to which is science and which is religion -- because that's the heart of the issue.

I think we should let the reader decide.

and i think that's the REAL reason why ID has come to the fore: to provide a set of scientific and religiously neutral theories that provide ROOM for God in the classroom -- not to tell kids that there IS a God or that there ISN'T a God ... but to tell them there COULD be a God. Yes, the wedge shows they have a long-term agenda -- and there will always be extremists on both sides (in fact, before i changed it, the creationism page misrepresented the law in the united states, saying that the supreme court had "consistently held that creation was religion and inadmissible in schools," when the SC explicitly held that it was NOT necessarily religion and could be taught in school if it had a scientific basis -- i think it's fair to say whoever misrepresented the law in that way had a bias).

so when it comes down to it, i think we should just present their arguments, without digging into our beliefs about their bias -- and for the moment, the ID movement makes one very simple claim: "There is still room for a Designer in scientific education." -- and THAT is, i think what the ID page needs to represent.

Thank you for working with me, by the way -- i really appreciate your insight here -- what do you think? Ungtss 15:34, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. With regard to the lead, perhaps the order of some of the points could be switched round; I think we still need to mention God in the lead. I do think that IDists are being intellectually dishonest, and they do deny that they are creationists. More on the history of science needs to be elaborated on to give context. I also think we need more criticism from we have the AiG link but that's all. I'll see what I can do. Dunc|? 15:48, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

thanks, man -- i'd love that too -- a really meaty discussion of WHY evolutionists believe ID fails, on its MERITS, rather than its bias. Ungtss 15:54, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Needs a lot of work.

This article needs some serious reworking if it's going to be a legitimate reflection on ID. Some examples:

The scientific community overwhelmingly rejects ID, which it considers to be pseudoscience because it violates the accepted principles of scientific philosophy of naturalism and falsifiability.

Putting the bad wording aside, very few philosopers of science consider naturalism or falsifiability to be accepted principles. It's almost impossible to falsifiy anything, and any argument over "naturalism" immediately runs into the difficulty of defining the word "natural". That doesn't mean that these lines of criticism are invalid, but these are complex and subtle issues that are not easily reduced to a mere sentence. To be brief, the biggest problem for ID is testability, in that it's advocates have not (and presumably cannot) say what observations would count for or against it; they can only come up with arguments for or against natural evolution, and then assume that ID's fate equals the opposite of evolutionary theory's fate. But a theory has to be tested with empirical evidence, not with another theory. Another big problem is a lack of a progressive research program, which some philosohpers have claimed is a defining characteristic of all scientific endevors. And finally, ID lacks coherence, in that its advocates have a hard time saying just what exactly ID is, without resorting to undefined terminology (such as "design" or "intelligence") that just begs the question of what it is we're talking about.

There should really be a separate section on this, but at the very least, the way it stands now is misleading and needs to be modified.

:Arguments for intelligent design can be broadly split into three categories:

• Asserting that the theories of naturalistic evolution and naturalistic abiogenesis are improbable or impossible;

• Asserting that irreducible complexity gives positive evidence of an intelligent designer;

• Asserting that the mainstream scientific community is being intellectually dishonest in presenting evolution as fact when it is questionable, and discounting a multitude of evidences for intelligent design.

This isn't three categories, this is one category. Number 2 (irreducible complexity) is simply a subset of number 1. The IC argument is an argument against the sufficiency of naturalistic evolution, no more, no less. And number 3 is just an ad hominem.

The mainstream scientific community typically criticizes intelligent design as follows:

• Asserting that Intelligent Design is pseudoscience because it violates the principles of scientific philosophy of naturalism and falsifiability.

• Asserting that intelligent design is a "wedge" to redefine scientific philosophy and in particular destroy evolutionary biology, after which creationism would become the prevailing view.

• Asserting that many of ID's arguments are deliberately deceitful.

Again, number 3 here is just an ad hom, number 2 is question begging (so what if they want creationism to prevail, that's not an argument against creationism!), and number 1 runs right into those philosophical issues I mentioned earlier.

The three criticisms of ID listed in the anon edit above that got taken out were pretty good, why were they removed?!

The Intelligent Design movements makes arguments on two fronts: positive arguments for evidence of an Intelligent Designer, and negative arguments that the theory of evolution cannot explain certain phenomena can be more reasonably explained by ID.

This is not true; ID arguments are almost exclusively negative arguments against evolution or some other natural explanation for something. Just because ID advocates claim that these are positive arguments does not make them so.

Positive Arguments

At the heart of intelligent design lies the belief that the universe in general and life in particular show signs of having been designed by an intelligent agent. Examples of intelligent design theories include:

Irreducible complexity

Again, IC is NOT a positive argument in favor of ID, it is a negative argument against the sufficiency of natural selection.

According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur randomly, and environmental stress selects against those variations that are not as advantageous as others. All life therefore shares a common ancestor...

This is a non-sequitur. Common ancestry is inferred by comparative anatomy, comparitive genetics, the fossil record, biogeography, etc. It is not inferred from random mutation. Who wrote this?

Macroevolution

The debate over macroevolution has shifted in recent years.

This part is flat-out wrong in every single respect. Contrary to popular belief, PE had almost no lasting effect on evolutionary theory and certainly did not change the mainstream view of "macro" evolution.

The ID view of "macro" evolution is, as with everything else, highly inconsistent. Some ID advocates have no problem with common ancestry whereas others are YECs. ID adovcates utilize arguments against common ancestry but there is no specific pattern or continunity to those critiques. They simply use whatever is available.

It goes on. Aside from many specific problems, the whole article is poorly organized (or I should say, not organized at all). What exists right now stands as a discontinuous jumble of paragraphs. I would be happy to try to edit some stuff and help reorganize it, but I'm afraid it will just get reverted. --Theyeti 20:25, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

fantastic work -- you should have seen what it looked like 3 days ago:). Ungtss 21:47, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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ID arguments -> ID criticisms

Why was this changed? IMO the header was better as "arguments" considering the subject it dealt with (irreducible complexity). Joe D (t) 19:31, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Confusions on ID and science

There are some good arguments for evolution and against ID theory. Nonetheless, there are also some bad ones.

The scientific community overwhelmingly rejects ID, which it considers to be pseudoscience because it violates the accepted principles of scientific philosophy of naturalism and falsifiability.

The criterion of falsifiability does not quite work in real philosophy of science (confer the Duhem-Quine problem). And intelligent design makes no reference to the supernatural, so it's difficult to say it violates naturalism as well. It's perfectly legitimate to point out that the majority of scientists reject ID, however.

ID, it is argued, does not qualify as a scientific theory. It is based on a purely eliminative inference, makes no positive statements about Earth history, lacks a research program, etc.

ID actually does make positive statements (however incorrect) about Earth history; one example being that some artificial intervention took place. ID also does research (however flawed their research is). William Dembski's The Design Inference is a case in point of a research project. One could attack these as scientifically flawed etc. but it is not worthwhile to ignore their existence.

Arguments against the sufficiency of natural causes, also known as "God of the gaps" arguments, are highly prone to failure. The history of science shows that gaps in our knowledge become continuously filled in.

The "God of the gaps" argument does not seem compelling. One reason is that there is no deity in ID, though there is a designer. So this perhaps could be said a "designer of the gaps" argument. But again this does not seem compelling. Obviously, if there are no gaps in the fabric of natural causation, then appealing to artificial intervention will get us off track. But if there are such gaps, failing to recognize them on principle will equally get us off track. And it is quite obvious that such gaps do exist. Archaeologists frequently detect intelligent design for example (e.g. the Rosetta Stone).

To underscore the pseudo-scientific nature of ID, in the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington looked through thousands of scientific journals searching for any articles on intelligent design or creation science—he didn't find any.

It should be noted that the claim of ID theorists not publishing their work or having their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature is false. While not in a scientific journal, the book The Design Inference was heavily peer-reviewed before Cambridge studies published it. It's also worth noting that the book was cited favorably in peer-reviewed scientific literature:

Chiu, D.K.Y. and Lui, T.H. Integrated use of multiple interdependent patterns for biomolecular sequence analysis. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems. Vol.4, No.3, Sept. 2002, pp.766-775. Reference number [10].

See my comments on Chiu and Lui, and other claims of ID in peer reviewed literature, at the top of /Archive3. — B.Bryant 21:56, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Being published in scientific journals is a questionable criterion for scientific coherency when it comes ot evaluating the validity of a new and novel theory (as modern ID is). Journals tend to enforce orthodoxy, whether justified or not. One example for this is http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_correspondencewithsciencejournals.htm where a correspondence is recorded. Confer this quote from Behe:

Well, I guess I should have expected it, but I have to admit I'm disappointed. For the record I'd like to point out that the "senior [journal] advisor" who reviewed my recent submission ("Obstacles to gene duplication . . .") didn't react to my actual arguments in the paper, but to associations he made. The manuscript did not argue for intelligent design, nor did it say that complex systems would never be explained within Darwinian theory. Rather, it just made the simple, obvious, and unarguable point that gene duplication by itself is an incomplete explanation. Apparently, however, my skepticism about Darwinism overshadowed all other points.

Behe didn't argue for ID, and yet the article was summarily rejected for all the wrong reasons. Even if modern ID theory were scientifically sound, a peer-reviewed scientific journal is about the last place it would be found. Of course, one can still attack ID on scientific grounds (e.g. the actual evidence, as opposed to its popularity).

Let me adress a couple of these...

Earth history -- ID does claim that there was intervention, but it says nothing about of *what kind* or *when*, hence it makes no statements about *history*. That it makes at least one positive statement (however vague) is true, but it is not a historical statement. Both Young Earth Creationism and a 4.5 billion year old Earth are equally compatible with ID. If ID said anything about history, then we would have some basis on which to choose between these.

Peer Review -- One could argue over specific examples, but as a general rule, ID proponents do not attempt to publish in peer reviewed journals, prefering instead to write books targeted to lay audiences. Dembski has even said that he prefers it this way because he makes more money. The claim that peer review is a "questionable criterion" is itself highly questionable; nearly every new and novel theory that was eventually accepted over the last 100 years first appeared in peer reviewed literature. If you disagree, name some counter-examples.

Research -- The Design Inference contains no original research. It is a philosophical argument. While some ID proponents do research as part of their day job, there is no work that can unequivocally be called "ID research". There exists no ID research program, nor are there any ideas for how to build one. The closest advocates have come is proposing to test one or more facets of evolutionary theory, which is not ID research.

God of the Gaps -- Or designer of the gaps if you prefer, is a falacious style of argument. It is one in which a gap in knowledge is claimed to be positive evidence of something. ID advocates can claim that this is not their line of argument, but others disagree, hence it's a major point of criticism. The fact that gaps exist is not in dispute, what is in dispute is whether the gaps per se constitute evidence for an undetectable entity. Human built artifacts like the Rosetta Stone are of a completely different category because we know that humans were around to build them, hence there was no "gap". We don't argue for the existence of humans based on the Rosetta Stone.

-- I agree about the bit about falsifiability, and somewhat on "naturalism", but the problem is that most ID proponents make claims about the sufficiency of "naturalism" without ever defining what they mean. It's sensible therefore to assume that ID is an appeal to the supernatural. ID advocates sometimes try to use "intelligence" as the antithesis of "natural", but this begs the question of what "intelligence" is supposed to mean. Only in the minds of ID advocates is "intelligence" some generic property of the universe that exists apart from physical context. No one else uses it that way. --Theyeti 01:21, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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WTF?!

Is it just me, or does it seem counter-productive for someone (82.161.36.157) to anonymously step in with a near-complete rewrite of a topic that has such an extensive discussion page? It seems to be a seriously intended rewrite, not vandalism, but it does ignore all the prior negotiation. Are there some Wikipedia etiquette guidelines about this?--BTfromLA 03:17, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You should revert. There's so much wrong that it's hard to edit it without almost rewriting it. I wasn't terribly happy with the into the way it was, but it's even worse now. --Theyeti 18:15, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. 82.161.36.157's edits are highly POV anyway, as well as ignoring past compromises. I support Theyeti's reversion and rewrite. Consensus should be sought before such significant changes are made.--FeloniousMonk 21:25, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It appears the revert has already occurred! Tell me though, how is, "ID is thus a form of the argument from design originally developed by William Paley in the early 19th century" and the preceeding sentence, NPOV? It isn't even stated as an opinion, but a fact! By the way, didn't the "argument from design" or teleological argument appear already in Socrates and Job and even Romans to some degree? At any rate, the teleological argument (`teleo' coming from a Greek word whose root means "complete", and with the appropriate conjugation, "end" or "purpose") was certainly formulated before Paley. It was for example the fifth of Thomas Aquinas' (1225-1274) Five Ways. Indeed Cicero (106-43 BC) wrote, "When we contemplate the heavens, we arrive at the conviction that they are all guided by a Being of surpassing skill." The design argument was only made famous by Paley. (BTW, who on earth wrote the teleological argument page? It's terrible. A first year history student could do better.) But feel free to continue the process of "evolution". Surely this undirected and random meandering will eventually converge on an accurate article. There *were* problems with my large edit: Intro too long, one word in the intro used completely in the incorrect context (retained from the original actually) and the argument about Conway Morris was weak in that he changes his mind all the time and probably wouldn't agree with anyone else's view of what he thinks. Also the description of ID should not rely on the distinctions made by others between what they believe and the ID position. However some careful edits would have been wholly preferable to the loose and uninformative intro now there. We must bear in mind that terrible sentence of the editor of the Brittanica. Wikipedia is full of poor grammar, typos, contradictions, factual errors and fails to notice important facts which a person qualified in the field would not fail to point out. Hasn't anyone noticed that the article starts by stating that the article is about the intelligent design *movement* and then goes on to explain that ID is a set of *ideas* (which the author clearly disagrees with)? How precisely is this "revert" preferable? I would be obliged if someone else could arbitrate and perhaps reinsert some of the information from my intro, though perhaps at a more appropriate location in the article (as was my original hope anyway). Anyhow, what do I care. In three days it won't look anything like it does now or did after I changed it. So it is all rather irrelevant. One just had some hope of introducing actual information somewhere in the world of the internet. -- 82.161.36.157 (yesterday at least).

I am not very experienced as a Wikipedian, and I will defer to more veteran participants if I've got this wrong, but I think the problem here has nothing to do with your attempt to make the entry more coherent, accurate or informative. All such input is welcome. The problem is that this entry was flagged as disputed and it has scores of talk-page posts where people of differing perspectives have attempted to negotiate a description of this topic. So coming in and not merely editing but essentially overwriting much of the entry, however well intended, defeats the work that has gone on thusfar. As FeloniusMonk says above, consensus should be sought before such sweeping changes are made in an active and disputed entry like this one. I am very sympathetic to your criticisms of the writing quality on Wikipedia, and as far as I'm concerned the jury's still out on whether this collective evolutionary model will ever create prose that is as lucid and trustworthy as that done under the supevision of a single editor. It may be hopeless. But if there is any hope, there must be a measure of cooperation and communication among the volunteer editors, don't you think?--BTfromLA 22:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Theyeti had already reverted the changes made by 82.161.36.157. It was not necessary to revert further and lose other edits, IMO. Kaldari 23:01, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please don't be dissuaded from making changes. It's probably best that you make small changes and discuss them if you think they're likely to cause disagreements. What you had was not only too long, it was also fairly disjointed, and contained several statements (at least) that I would consider either completely wrong or highly debatable. As for the statement on Paley, tell us what you think is wrong about it. Most ID advocates agree that their arguments are derived at least in part from Paley and will defend its philosophical underpinnings. (See for example this page .) They do however argue that ID is distinct in some way or more sophisticated (which is itself contentious). If you think there's a more neutral way of pointing this out, please share it. The preceding sentence that you think is POV is this: However, ID is most often used for the purpose of religious apologetics, usually by conservative Christians, to argue for the existence of God. Again, what is wrong with this statement? The ID movement is not shy about using ID to argue for the existence of God, and further claiming that this knowledge should be used to spur cultural and legal reform. The way you had it written, it sounded as if the ID movement is nothing more than a bunch of curious academics who get together for tea. But the Wedge Document , to cite one prominent piece of evidence, makes it clear that the ID movement has very bold and sweeping political goals. In fact, I think the article errs in not making this more explicit. There isn't even a link to the Wedge Document! --Theyeti 23:20, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I understand your point, and thank you for phrasing it politely. Nevertheless, it seems to me that agreeing on what is true by a process of "negotiation" can never be profitable. Either the matter is a fact, in which case it appears in the encyclopaedia (this being, well...encyclopaedic), or it is in dispute, in which case it belongs on a forum. Much of the material currently on the intelligent design page is simply POV because it states as fact what is a matter of opinion. Those who define the intelligent design movement are those who belong to it, not those who have a bee in their bonnet about it. Therefore it should be easy to concoct a statement of what the ID movement is about (fairly representing them) from their own statements about themselves. My whole point with the large edit I made, was that up to that point, there *was* no definitive statement of what intelligent design was, in the intro. And, statements to the effect that intelligent design *is* flawed because..., simply don't belong in such an article. Moreover, my second point was that it is a fact that the argument from design, teleological argument, Paley's watchmaker argument, and the Intelligent Design movement (let alone thesis) are all different things. An encyclopaedia is rubbish if it does not seek to distinguish the different terms it defines. It is similar to textbooks in mathematics which fail to distinguish regular functions (in the analytic sense), holomorphic functions and analytic functions (and sometimes even entire functions). They are in fact all different, but almost never distinguished properly in modern texts (wikipedia has the distinction of only including two of the three, and of the two it mentions that they aren't always the same thing, but fails to correctly identify the difference!), since everyone copies the same error from earlier erroneous sources! What protocol exists in Wiki to prevent such misinformation? I'm not convinced that "negotiation" is such a protocol. It exists to discuss what is POV, and to have it removed from the article. Either that, or evidence can be adduced which establishes beyond doubt that it in fact was not POV, but that the person who flagged it as POV, was ill-informed. That may seem too black and white, but again, if it isn't black and white, it doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia. Read what I replaced and tell me it wasn't incorrect or POV. If it was believed that what I wrote was POV, as someone commented, then I'm interested to hear what my POV is? Since *I* don't entirely know whether I support ID as a movement or theory, or not, I find the claim unconvincing.

Let me make one final contribution to the current situation (after that I will leave you all to figure it out, since my input is not helping with a "concensus"). I believe the following need to be addressed in relation to the current version of the page before it can be considered accurate:

i) There is a contradiction between calling ID a "movement", then "a claim" and later "an argument" (in the philosophical sense) as the intro and preceding sentence state. ii) Agency has a specific meaning (especially to philosophers and theologians) which is distinct from designer, and should be eschewed. iii) "abiogenesis is impossible" is a nonsensical statement and thus not a claim of ID'ers (I'm not making a statement of my opinion with this comment, but a statement of grammar). iv) "evolution cannot account for the complexity of life" is not sufficiently precise. v) "which must have been by design" is a grammatical error, and a statement of opinion, not established fact. vi) "put forth" is clumsy vii) "not necessarily related to each other" is not necessarily related to any meaningful comment. Darwin and Albert Einstein were not necessarily related to each other, but that is quite vacuous as a statement. viii) "All share the common conclusion that... intervened at some point in the history of the universe", is not the common conclusion. This is factually in error. Moreover it completely fails to state what actually *is* the design inference according to ID'ers. ix) "While arguments against biological evolution are the most common", POV. It is also vacuous in that *any* debate must establish that the alternatives are false or incomplete. The arguments are actually, as stated further down in the article, specifically to do with information and complexity. xi) "All ID arguments", hyperbole and factually incorrect. ".... observed properties of nature", not sufficiently precise. xii) "ID can therefore be thought of..." clearly POV, not a statement of fact. It is in fact a conclusion of the author and says nothing about ID itself. xiii) "Antithesis of philosophical naturalism", try telling that to philosophical naturalists and see the response you get! It's patently absurd. xiv) "Expressed as a scientific theory" clearly pejorative. xv) "ID advocates reason" sentence is grammatically incorrect and meaningless. xvi) "eliminative inference", clearly begs the question. xvii) "that we should settle", clumsy. xviii) "opperates" spelling error. xix) "However ID is most often used..." pejorative, subjective and not objectively quantifiable. xx) "The argument from design" was NOT "originally developed by William Paley", besides, the sentence has a dismissive flavour which is not objective. A better statement would be one suggested above, that ID'ers have made specific reference to Paley... xi) "ID is opposed by the overwhelming", what a load of twaddle! I can tell you that as a scientist, a majority of my colleagues are not even informed about the debate, so they do not even disagree with the point of view, let alone OPPOSE it. Moreover this is not an objective statement of fact. It cannot be quantified. xii) "pseudoscience", please omit. This kind of nonsense is quite offensive to those making a serious attempt at the science of information theory, complexity theory and design detection. It is also an insult to people who RELY on design and intelligence being detectable, such as the folks at SETI, who use statistics, information theory, etc, to *quantify* objectively what would comprise information with an intelligent origin. xiii) "Many religious critics" ambiguous. xiv) "consider...bad theology", who cares! This is someone's opinion and does not help to define intelligent design. Incidentally, intelligent design is argued to some degree in the Bible (Job, Psalms, Romans, Acts). It has always been a part of what is called natural theology, and therefore it can only be meant pejoratively to mention the fact that some "religious critics....bad theology." xv) Even after this poor introduction, there are numerous omissions. What of IDEA Centres, information theory, irreducible complexity, complex specified information, the current education debate, the history of ID, the founders, the date of founding, the academics associated with it, the names of prominent opponents, related movements/concepts, definition of intelligence and design? In conclusion (and here I leave you), the article is so far from authorative that it is almost worthless. 82.161.36.157 (How fitting that a mathematician be known only by a number.) :-)

Well, I'd like to thank you for polite phrasing, but your little tirade is quite sour and vapid, in addition to being poorly thought out. Case in point: If you find any grammatical or spelling errors, the proper thing to do is to correct them. Bringing them up on the talk page is silly, unless you're doing it for the sake of complaining, in which case it's childish. I probably shouldn't bother, but taking these one at a time, ignoring the more pointless ones... i) There is a distinction to be made, as I see it, between the arguments of ID and the ID movement. I think the article would be better if this distinction were made early on, and expanded upon later, but the intro at least is not inconsistent. ii) "Intelligent agency" is a term used by ID advocates; if they are using it incorrectly, take it up with them. iv) "Evolution cannot account for the complexity of life" is a *general* form of ID argument, which is why it's not precise. vii) Whether or not different ID arguments are related is directly relevant to ID's status as a coherent theory. If the arguments are unconnected, in that one can be false without affecting the truth value of the others, then you don't necessarily have a coherent body of thought. Perhaps this is an issue that should be explored elsehwere in the article, but it is hardly irrelevant. viii) You're flat-out wrong. ix) To say that arguments against evolution are the most common form of ID argument is a statement of FACT, not POV. Anyone familiar with ID literature knows that this is the case. Arguments concerning infomation and complexity boil down to claiming that evolution is insufficient to account for them. ID doesn't try to establish that alternatives are false as part of its arguments, those ARE its arguments. xi) Absolute generalizations are indeed dangerous. "All" can be changed to "almost all", and problem solved. But then you'd just complain that it was ambiguous and lacked precision, as you've done everywhere else. xiii) Anyone familiar with ID knows that philosophical naturalism is enemy #1, and that ID is framed as a "scientific critique of naturalism". If that's absurd, go tell it to Phillip Johnson. Calling ID the "antithesis" of naturalism might not be quite right, but it's not far off the mark. xiv) Nothing pejorative about that. Poor reading on your part. xvi) "Eliminative inference" is an ID term, not mine. xx) The part about Paley could be tweaked. Simply removing the word "originally" would satisfy the substance of your complaint. xxi) You have a trivial point here, in that most scientists aren't aware of ID, but it is rejected by the overwhelming majority who are. Leading scientific societies (NAS, AAAS, etc.) have produced statements denouncing ID, so ID is overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community. Point remains the same. xxii) Again, it is simply a statment of FACT that ID is held in low regard by the scientific community. If this offends you, tough. (I'd agree that term "pseudoscience" is hard to define, but this isn't the point of your complaint.) ID is held in low regard precisely because it has nothing to do with information theory, complexity theory, or design detection as its done by real scientists. And you are grossly misinformed about SETI. Their method of design detection is to look for narrow bandwidth signals; they do not "objectively quantify" intelligently derived information or any nonsense like that. Go read the SETI FAQ if you don't believe me. xiv) Who cares if ID is bad theology? Theologians, for one. That would include William Dembski, who is first and foremost a theologian and is currently employed at a theological seminary. He wrote an entire book about ID and theology. And given that ID is heavily pitched to religious audiences, your run-on-the-mill believer might care too. xxv) There are certainly things missing from the article (most important IMO is the Explanatory Filter.) But it's bizarre to list irreducible complexity and specificed complexity among the omissions. They have their own sections! And I've never heard of an IDEA Centre; maybe those exist in the UK, but here in the States we have IDEA clubs, which are tiny in number and membership and hardly worth mentioning. --Theyeti 04:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personally I think the main problem with this article is that it's too long and argumentative. Every time a pro-IDer adds something an anti-ID has to add something in response and vice-versa. This article needs to be edited DOWN, not expanded with more esoteric explainations of obscure debating points. I've been guilty of this myself, but I think we all need to refocus on reducing this article rather than expanding it. It's already way too long and detailed. This article should be a dozen paragraphs long. That's plenty of room to explain the basic ideas without getting bogged down in contentious details. Right now this article is over 60 paragraphs long. The version that 82.161.36.157 posted was even longer than that. If people want that much information about ID they will go to websites devoted to ID, of which there are no shortage. Encyclopedia articles are supposed to be brief overviews that are readable by the general public, not philosophical treasties.Kaldari 04:56, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If this article is getting too unweildy, consider branching into sub-articles. For example, we already have an article for irreducible complexity. For guidances see Wikipedia:Long_article_layout --Rikurzhen 07:59, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Theyeti, I disagree with your point xxii) above. You claim ID has nothing to do with information theory as done by real scientists. If so, it's hard to explain technical articles such as the following: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2004.08.Variational_Information.pdf Whilst Dembski may have written a large amount of material which does not meet standards of rigor, and is written for a popular audience or in a philosophical style, hes also is a real scientist as you'll realise from looking through the whole of this paper. Besides, it seems to me that pseudoscience is a label, not a fact about ID. - WBH

That article doesn't have anything to do with ID, and is basically Dembski's late attempt at publishing something -- anything -- on information theory. Moreover, it's not even original . Dembski can only be said to use information theory if you accept that he's invented his own theory. He doesn't use Shannon or algorithmic information, but basically invents his own metric. It's a point of contention I suppose, but one can be very harsh on Dembski and the rest of ID without dissin' information theory. As for the term "pseudoscience", I'm not the one who first inserted that word, and I agree that it's harsh. But it is a fact about ID that the scientific community does not consider ID to be science, or at least considers it to be bad science, which could be called "pseudoscience". I'm happy to use a more neutral sounding term. --Theyeti 16:23, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We risk having a debate on the issue, which wouldn't be appropriate. But perhaps you'd like to clarify. You seem to be saying that Dembski _is_ inventing his own theory (information metric), then you say that it is _not_ original. You seem to have a standard of real science which is a bit hard to satisfy. You also seem to indicate above that SETI _only_ looking for narrow bandwidth signals (but saying nothing of the scores of scientific papers written on detecting intelligence in signals), in comparison, is real science. At any rate, I propose the word "pseudoscience" be removed. Theyeti seems to give implicit agreement. All those in favour/against!? - WBH

Well let me quickly clarify. Dembski wrote a paper about information theory which (unbeknownst to him) was unoriginal. The paper had nothing to do with ID, or with Dembski's "complex specified information", as far as anyone can tell. His own ID-relevant information arguments, which can be found in No Free Lunch (published well before the paper in question), are not part of standard information theory, though Dembski does try to derive his own concepts from them. In fact, some people refer to "Dembski information", because Dembski uses the term differently than in classical or algorithmic information theory. As for SETI, I'm not sure if it's real science, but I would contend that it does not lend credence to what ID advocates claim to be doing. --Theyeti 23:46, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

1. I agree that the article is currently a sprawling mess, and could be greatly improved by being radically shortened, allowing sub-topics and links to outside sources to convey many of the details that are now included here.

2. It is a dicey question whether ID should be separated from the ID movement. I daresay that there would be no entry on this if it weren't for the efforts of Phillip E. Johnson (who, so far as I can tell, is the sole inventor of the current use of "Intelligent Design") and the Discovery Institute, which is the overwhelming source of pro-ID arguments and the well-orchestrated public relations campaign in favor of ID. And, it is clear (again, reading Johnson) that the ID movement is not primarily a question of science, but a question of the acceptance of religious beliefs within a larger political/intellectual sphere. It is largely a political argument, which argues not only for the cultural values of Judeo-Christian traditionalism, but against what ID proponents present as the intellectual legacy of scientific materialism, including Marxism, Freudian psychology, and arguments for regulating corporations on, for example, environemtal impact grounds (see George Guilder's writings--Guilder is also one of the prime architects of "trickle down" economics). So, the ID claims are clearly being put forward as a tactic of the ID movement--this movement was not formed around the work of a body of scientific dissidents, it's the other way around. However, some of the ID proponents assert that theirs are purely non-ideological, scientific findings. If ID is presented only as a scientific argument, it seems to me that would be a pretty square adaptation of the pro-ID POV, even if there are caveats included about the scientific communities widespread rejection of the view. My vote is to include the history of the modern ID idea, starting with Johnson, and frame it as an outgrowth of a larger social movement. That would make for a more accurate article, I think, and it still allows for a presenation of the ID arguments in the proponents own terms.

3. "Pseudoscience," if I understand it correctly, is a set of ideas that claim to be scientific but that are not in fact scientific. I think that is an exact description of how ID's scientific arguments are viewed by the vast majority of practicing scientists and "mainstream" scientific institutions.--BTfromLA 17:40, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The following seems to have been cut by overlapping edits of the discussion page:

I've made a couple of minor edits to try and fix some things. Maybe famous is not the best word, but I couldn't think of a better one. Incidentally, the lead can be shortened. We could replace 'or that the Earth and/or universe are "fine tuned" for living things, which must have been by design' with 'or that the Earth and/or universe have been "fine tuned" for living things by design'. Does anyone object to this, it sounds more neutral to me? - WBH

Do Pro-ID people actually use the term "fine tuned"? If not, we don't want to mis-attribute that to them. See my links to related articles below about fine-tuned universe arguments -- if they were used by pro-ID people, they would be doing themselves a disfavor. --Rikurzhen 18:07, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, they use it: http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1202 I think the term goes back to at least Paul Davies in 1988. Perhaps someone can find an earlier reference. Anthropic principle is a good keyword. - WBH

Incidentally. The lead says that the arguments for ID aren't necessarily related, the article gives CSI and IC as the main arguments, then proceeds to say that the two arguments are actually related (one depends on the other). Sounds dodge to me. - WBH

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Recursive Design Flaw

Perhaps this could be added to the list of criticisms by someone who is less of a wikipedia noob than I.

Intelligent Design has a serious recursion error, as do many arguments for Supernatural Gods.

"A key concept in Intelligent Design is ... the idea that ... science cannot account [the origins of life]. Therefore, it is reasonable to posit that these mechanisms were deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence."

First, just because you can think up a magical possibility in your head, doesn't mean it has any weight to it (unless you count a heavy Bible).

But the main argument I mean to bring up here, is that the same "unaccountability" that applies to human life, also applies to the so-called Intelligent Creator. If humans are too complicated to show up "naturally", then surely so would a creator complex enough to create us. So now we have to worry about "What created our Creator?". And what about the Creator3 who created Creator2 who created our Creator? Intelligent Design is clearly a belief based on supernatural beings. Otherwise any Creator has the exact same origin problem that He was invented to solve for humans. --anonymous newbie

This is a characteristic of any creator-god theory. The only counterargument that I'm aware of is theological mystification: the question of "who created God?" is declared irrelevant, because God by definition exists outside the realm of cause-and-effect. He is the Unmoved Mover or First Cause. The ID proponents sidestep this issue by referring only to an unidentified intelligent designer, allowing for the materialistically logical possibility of an advanced alien species, for example, being the designer (and since they are only one implied possibility, the "who created the aliens?" question doesn't really arise). Of course, this is a transparent rhetorical game; the architechts of the ID movement want to promote the idea of a Judeo-Christian God, and an accompanying package of political ideas. Check out the Discovery Institute for details.--BTfromLA 04:22, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

AN: You have a confusion in your writing, if not in your thinking. The creator is not "Natural" in any sense that I can see. Nature specifically refers to that which is created. A creator cannot exists wholly within what it has created. An analogy being that a completely ficticious character in a book could never write the book in which it is a character.

With respect to the recursive design flaw, how is it more likely that the universe sprang into being without cause? Nothing is much more likely than something. Non-existance is more likely than existance. True, any system of thought that admits of an eternal creator must at some point state that the creater exists outside of the creation. In the same way, if you deny an eternal creator, you must state that the universe came into existance for no reason (how can reason, cause and effect, or even the laws of quantum physics exist when nothing exists?. Both systems of thought come to a place of inexplicability.

-Rholton 00:00, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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ID and the fine-tuned universe

Be careful to distinguish content that should be included in this article (intelligent design) and the related article on the fine-tuned universe question. Yet another similar article exists for the anthropic principle. Also, anyone interested in writing on these topics would be well advised to first read the article for the prosecutor's fallacy. --Rikurzhen 00:25, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

I guess I shouldn't forget to mention evolution and origin of life. --Rikurzhen 00:28, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

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Cosmic Design Arguments

Is it just me, or is this article only really mentioning the evolution-based ID arguments and neglecting to mention the (in my opinion, more reasonable) cosmological ones? --Brendanfox 10:58, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Those arguments seem to have their own article (Fine-tuned universe). You're welcome to make the distinction and connection between the two clearer in both articles. --Rikurzhen 17:36, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

The cosmological (aka Fine Tuning) argument is definitely used by ID proponents. I think we should structure this article to mention it , but then link to the more extentsive article that already discusses the fine tuning argument. It remains, however, that the antievolution arguments are the most common, and that should be made clear. Also, there is a certain inconsistency between the two lines of argument. One says that the universe was designed for life to come about, the other one says that the unvierse cannot generate life without some sort of outside intervention. Maybe that can be briefly explored in this article. --Theyeti 04:56, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)