Intelligent design...?

answer to question one: No, because it isn't a theory. It is a bunch of "how do you explain this through natural forces" questions, and they're not new questions. They have the same answers that they've had for a couple hundred years. The ID "theorists" just consciously ignore them.

Question 2: I'd be interested in seeing this movie, but it's not a must. I've read a few books by 4 of the intelligent design "theorists" and I can see the holes in their arguments a mile away.

Also, I feel I must adress "question...'s" answer. The "science" for detecting design is based on a FALSE ANALOGY between human design and biological "design". Essentially, I don't have the space here for a full refutation, but the above answerer is basing that off of the so-called "information" argument, that if a sufficiently complex pattern contains meaningful (or "specified") info, then it must come from an intelligent source.

The flaw in this logic is that in order to DEFINE what makes a pattern "meaningful" you need to have prior knowledge of what an alleged designer would find meaningful. An English phrase is only more meaningful than random typed gibberish because you have prior knowledge that intelligent humans understand and read english.

Put in these terms, we can see that there is nothing meaningful or "specified" about DNA or biological systems, because they do not conform to any pattern that would fit prior knowledge of what any known intellignet beings would recognize as a "meaningful" message. The only aspect of a particular DNA molecular scructure that makes it any more special than any other molecule is the fact that it is capable of builing a body that can survive and reproduce in a given environment.

So the "intelligent source" of biological systems is natural selection, guided by the unthinking laws of chemistry and physics. Contrast this to an english phrase, which the laws of nature cannot distinguish from random gibberish, becasue the english language is a pattern that was created by humans, not by physical laws.

(Put another way, the factors that make biological systems meaningful are the laws of chemistry and physics, which allow them to build proteins which form organisms, not a human invelted "language") I hope that my answer is somehwat intelligible to a layperson.

My take is that Intelligent Design asks some very good questions of evolution ...

... but a bunch of questions is not a theory.

And secondly, those questions have good answers ... but these require some background in fields such as information theory, complexity theory, emergence, chaos theory, and some advanced genetics and biochemistry ... all things that anyone with a PhD in any scientific field would have (and which is why ID has found almost no support among people with science PhDs) ... but all things that your average 10th-grader in a Kansas biology classroom ... or for that matter a Kansas *schoolteacher* ... has little or no grounding in.

As a result, bringing up Intelligent Design in biology classroom would have no other purpose than to leave students feeling hoplessly confused, and convinced that evolution is both a complex, and controversial topic ... when in fact it is neither complex (actually one of the simplest and most elegant theories in science), nor controversial (not within the scientific community).

This is the part that I find despicable about the call to bring Intelligent Design into public schools.

In other words, unable to convince scientists, the ID advocates will settle for confusing children.

I think the ID people don't realize (or choose not to realize) that the modern theory of evolution isn't Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin laid the groundwork and was revolutionary in his day, but scientists have expanded greatly on the original theory, especially in light of new technologies like DNA analysis. You won't find many "Darwinists" nowadays (even the word "Evolutionist" bugs me, 'cause adding -ist tends to imply that it is a belief, not a scientifically supported theory).

I can't decide whether or not to see the movie. On the one hand, it would be interesting to see what actual arguments they make, but on the other hand, it'll probably just angry up my blood.

If Stein said that Darwin's theory was a great theory for the mid-1800's, then what about ID? ID is fundamentally creationism-lite, which would make it a great idea for ~1000 BC.

You have a good grasp of the issue. ID proponents take honest, straightforward, and critical analysis of their position as persecution. Some of them suffer a Christian martyr complex. The problem is, ID really has nothing to back it up. It is philosophy rather than science.

The movie is not on my "must see" list, as I just now learned of it through your post. I'd view it if it came across my path. There is always the possibility I might learn something new. :) If not, I at least better understand the various viewpoints, even if I cannot completely agree with them.

The thing is, reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, and data fraud analysis. These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems.

When being interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Dr. Stephen Meyer said, “There are developments in some technical fields, complexity and information sciences, that actually enable us to distinguish the results of intelligence as a cause from natural processes. When we run those modes of analysis on the information in DNA, they kick out the answer, ‘Yeah, this was intelligently designed’ . . . There is actually a science of design detection and when you analyze life through the filters of that science, it shows that life was intelligently designed.”

And for those who put so much faith in peer-review, check this out: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?...

Would any intelligent desiner have designed anything as stupid as an intelligent design proponent?