What is "Intelligent Design"?

[McCulloch]

Defining Intelligent Design
Intelligent design is the scientific investigation of intelligent causation, and subsequent novel data, hypotheses, experiments, and practical applications that are derived by viewing specific phenomena in the universe as designed. Intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis that seeks to explain a very large range of scientific data, and so has a general definition, and then subsidiary definitions for use within specific disciplines.

McGraw-Hill
intelligent design :The idea that an intelligent designer played a role in some aspect of the evolution of life on earth, usually the origin of life itself. Generally, a thinly disguised version of scientific creationism.

scientific creationism: The belief in a literal biblical interpretation regarding the creation of the universe, with the connected belief that this view is supported by scientific evidence. An example of a pseudoscience.

pseudoscience: Scientifically testable ideas that are taken on faith, even if tested and shown to be false. Scientific creationism is a pseudoscience.

Wikipedia
Intelligent design (ID) is an argument for the existence of God, stated in secular terms, based on the premise that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute, claim that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the evolution and origin of life.

The scientific community has unequivocally stated that intelligent design is not science; many scientists and at least one major organization of science teachers have also termed it pseudoscience, and some have termed it junk science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), a United States federal court ruled that a public school district requirement for science classes to teach that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. United States District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.

Intelligent Design Network
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 that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.

According to Dembski, intelligent design “is just the Logos of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

Why intelligent design isn’t. New Yorker.
First of all, intelligent design is not what people often assume it is. For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism. Unlike earlier generations of creationists—the so-called Young Earthers and scientific creationists—proponents of intelligent design do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah’s flood. (Indeed, they shun the label “creationism” altogether.) Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth. Although the movement is loosely allied with, and heavily funded by, various conservative Christian groups—and although I.D. plainly maintains that life was created—it is generally silent about the identity of the creator.

[otseng]

Intelligent design (or ID) is not one theory. It is a short-hand name for a cluster of arguments that offer a variety of cases that attempt to show that intelligent agency rather than unguided matter better accounts for apparently natural phenomena or the universe as a whole. Some of these arguments challenge aspects of neo-Darwinism. Others make a case for a universe designed at its outset, and thus do not challenge any theory of biological evolution.

But even ID advocates who criticize neo-Darwinism are technically not offering an alternative to evolution, if one means by evolution any account of biological change over time that claims that this change results from a species' power to accommodate itself to varying environments by adapting, surviving, and passing on these changes to its descendants. This is not inconsistent with a universe that has earmarks and evidence of intelligent design that rational minds may detect.

Francis J. Beckwith

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Discovery.org

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and are not the result of an undirected, chance-based process such as Darwinian evolution.

Intelligent design begins with observations about the types of information produced by intelligent agents. Even the atheist zoologist Richard Dawkins says that intuitively, "iology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Darwinists believe natural selection did the "designing" but intelligent design theorist Stephen C. Meyer notes, "in all cases where we know the causal origin of 'high information content,' experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role."

Intelligent design implies that life is here as a result of the purposeful action of an intelligent designer, standing in contrast to Darwinian evolution, which postulates that life exists due to the chance, purposeless, blind forces of nature.

IDEA

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 that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.

In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection -- how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.

Intelligent Design Network

Intelligent design (ID) is an anti-evolution belief that asserts that naturalistic explanations of some biological entities are not possible and such entities can only be explained by intelligent causes.

Skepdic

[Heresiarch]

The challenge that ID proponents face, and the reason ID really can't hold its own as a science, is ID's vagueness. Once you say A caused B, the natural reaction of a thinking person is to ask, "How?" How indeed did the Intelligent Designer translate Hir design into matter? (And how does SHe continue to do so? -- after all we cannot accept a perfect determinism as the consequence of the Creation, can we?)

Well then, did God (there. I said it) just set the ball into motion, or does SHe continue to nudge the atoms? Does God direct every atom at all times? Or when not?

ID as formulated in the light of conventional (Christian) religion, is incoherent. It can answer no interesting questions other than by repeating, "God made it happen."

DETAILS, PLEASE! That's what we expect of a SCIENCE.

[otseng]

The challenge that ID proponents face, and the reason ID really can't hold its own as a science, is ID's vagueness. Once you say A caused B, the natural reaction of a thinking person is to ask, "How?" How indeed did the Intelligent Designer translate Hir design into matter? (And how does SHe continue to do so? -- after all we cannot accept a perfect determinism as the consequence of the Creation, can we?)

Well then, did God (there. I said it) just set the ball into motion, or does SHe continue to nudge the atoms? Does God direct every atom at all times? Or when not?

ID as formulated in the light of conventional (Christian) religion, is incoherent. It can answer no interesting questions other than by repeating, "God made it happen."

DETAILS, PLEASE! That's what we expect of a SCIENCE.

This is in the "Definitions and Explanations" subforum, not in a debate subforum. Debating topics is not allowed here.

[Heresiarch]

This is in the "Definitions and Explanations" subforum, not in a debate subforum. Debating topics is not allowed here.

My mistake. I'll watch that. thanks for the courteous reminder.

[Undertow]

I find all of these definitions of intelligent design disturbing and annoying. I'll now define Natural Selection to show why.

Natural selection is the process by which favorable traits that are heritable become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable traits that are heritable become less common. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, or the observable characteristics of an organism, such that individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes. If these phenotypes have a genetic basis, then the genotype associated with the favorable phenotype will increase in frequency in the next generation. Over time, this process can result in adaptations that specialize organisms for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species.

http://www.biology-online.org/2/10_natu ... ection.htm

One of the prime motives for all species is to reproduce and survive, passing on the genetic information of the species from generation to generation. When species do this they tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support.
The lack of resources to nourish these individuals places pressure on the size of the species population, and the lack of resources means increased competition and as a consequence, some organisms will not survive.
The organisms who die as a consequence of this competition were not totally random, Darwin found that those organisms more suited to their environment were more likely to survive.
This resulted in the well known phrase survival of the fittest, where the organisms most suited to their environment had more chance of survival if the species falls upon hard times. (This phrase if often associated with Darwin, though on closer inspection Herbert Spencer puts the phrase in a more accurate historical context.)
Those organisms who are better suited to their environment exhibit desirable characteristics, which is a consequence of their genome being more suitable to begin with.

http://dict.die.net/natural%20selection/

natural selection
n : a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms
best adapted to the environment [syn: survival, survival
of the fittest, selection]

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_18616 ... ction.html

nat·u·ral se·lec·tion


noun

Definition:

process of adapting to environment: the process, according to Darwin, by which organisms best suited to survival in their environment achieve greater reproductive success, thereby passing advantageous genetic characteristics on to future generations.

Natural selection is by it's very nature guided. Nature selects genes which are best adapted to it. Thus, populations are guided to suit the environment in which they exist. Bah. Sorry if such an outburst isn't in the right place, it's just the way ID advocates define evolution suggests they are either ignorant of the basics or they are diliberately misconstruing the concept to gain minds.