Will someone please explain the term "Intelligent Design" to me?

Question

Go ahead and dumb it down some...

Thank you everyone, for taking a moment to fire a magnum round my way and answer this prickly question - in all honesty, I haven't the mental capacity to discern a Best from a Worst here, so I'll put this mother to vote! Do it to it.

Answer 1

Intelligent Design is a ruse for getting religion into schools.

It's not a scientific theory. It's a matter of some people saying that nature is just so spiffy that someone must have put it together, even when plenty of much smarter people have shown that life could *easily* evolve through naturalistic mechanisms.

IDers want to give up before even looking for answers to biological problems (even when those answers have been found already by other people).

ID is not taken seriously by scientists because it's a silly idea. There is no "controversy" with it, except in the minds of religious fundamentalists.

Answer 2

ID is not science, because science identifies a process, not a lack of one. (Have you ever heard a scientist say "I don't understand how mountains form, so we're going to call it Intelligent Growing.") All of science is falsifiable, meaning that it specifies experiments and predictions that could prove it wrong. ID does not, and therefore is not science

Further, the Theories of Natural Selection, Neo-Lamarckism, and others are to explain the FACT of evolution. There's a big smear campaign, but in reality there is no "theory of evolution"... there's the fact of evolution, and multiple theories competing to explain the mechanism. The fact of evolution is this:

1 - All complex life comes from other, similar complex life. (Nothing goes "poof" and becomes a chicken.)
2 - The fossil record shows that life went from simple to complex over time. (Fossils of later animals are not found at all before certain time periods.)
3 - Therefore, by some mechanism (theory), life MUST HAVE gone from simple to complex over time through direct descendants. (Fact of evolution). The only way to disprove this is to show:
a) the fossil record is wrong, or
b) complex animals that "poof" into existence

It's really quite simple, so I don't understand why so many people misunderstand it.

Now, to address my idiotic friend above:

"Fact: DNA cannot create new information."
I sincerely doubt he knows the slightest thing about biology. Anything that mutations can do, they can undo. If a DNA is copying information, and it makes an extra copy, then that's new information. If it messes up a sequence or gets it out of order, it doesn't always result in birth defects or cancer. Some people are born without an appendix because of a DNA mutation -- that's probably good since the only thing an appendix can do these days is get infected and kill you. Let's stop using Marvel Comics version of "mutation" and actually get back to real science. Mutations are just changes in genes -- and they can help or hurt, or be big or small.

"Fact: Life cannot form from non-life, time makes no difference."
I agree, when it comes to complex life. However, this has nothing to do with evolution, which starts and ends with life. The hypothesis he's arguing against here is called Abiogenesis. It is seperate from and unrelated to evolution. Therefore, this statement is irrelevant.

"Fact: Nothing can form from nothing"
Aside from this (again) having nothing to do with evolution, my idiotic friend seems to discount quantum mechanics, in which this happens all the time. The transistors that power the computer you're looking at right now work because electrons on one side of the transistor pop out of existence and then reappear (from nothing) on the other side of a barrier. Apparently computers shouldn't work either, according to splinterjah. I'm really glad he's not in charge of anything important in this country (I hope).

Now it's my turn...
Fact: There are genes that are shared by every living organism in existence. Whether you're a human, amoeba, frog, or donkey, you have these genes.
Fact: These universal genes perform universal functions, such as transporting electrons in a fundamental metabolic process.
Fact: There are TRILLIONS of different DNA sequences that can successfully perform the same function. Therefore, there's no reason for any two organisms to have a similar DNA sequence for the function unless they are related via heritage.
Conclusion: Organisms with similar DNA sequences for fundamental functions are more related through heredity than organisms with different sequences.

Fact: Humans and chimps have only a 1.3% difference in their DNA sequence for the fundamental cytochrome c protein. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#protein_redundancy
Humans are other animals have less similarity, and the amount of similarity corresponds exactly to the current theory of how humans evolved. Explain that, Intelligence Designerists.

Intelligent Design -- yeah right -- I bet he never even heard of cytochrome c before. Grow a brain.

Answer 3

If you look at a car or a plane or something like that you don't think to yourself "Gee, I guess a tornado must have hit a parts store and all of these parts that were lying around just happened to all get put together so that they all work together in a way that serves a useful purpose."

Instead you look and you know that someone with a plan took a lot of time to figure out what parts they were going to need to build that car or plane. When you consider all of the complex internal organs that make up your human body, from the bones to the eyes to the lungs to the stomach, etc you don't say to yourself "Gee, I guess a lightning bolt must have shot through a chemical stew billions of years ago and just by chance that ended up creating a man." Instead you say that some intelligent being must be responsible for giraffes and elephants and bumble bees and hummingbirds, etc.

Answer 4

Basically this is a term used by religious leaders, and zealots intent on forcing their beleifs into your family, schools, and goverments.
It is a notion that the universe is so technically designed that it could not have been as a result of accident, or evolution but instead it must have been as a result of a creator.
It is futher an attempt to remove science, biology, and education of the masses form our world and install a religious world goverment controlled by the few involved in this. It is an international in scope using religious fanatics disguise das scientists experts in bending the truth and reaching into every espect of our lives to change profitable to their beleifs and needs in the long run.
They not only seek to remove and distroy the sciences, but reasoning, free thought and hope in our schools, lives, and world.

Answer 5

Intelligent design is the idea that it would not be possible to create a beautifully complex body part such as an eye by the trial-and-error method of evolution.

The intelligent design theory is used to maintain that God exists, and that God created everthing the way that it is.

I personally beieve in evolution, AND that evolution does not disprove God. If people left God out of science, things would be a lot easier. Science and God are mutually exclusive - neither can prove nor disprove the other.

Answer 6

Its the idea that life is too complex to not be created by some superior being. Its an idea with its roots in religion, not science.

Creationists reject evolution so they want intelligent design taught in schools, but the controvery exists because theres no scientific data to support intelligent design, unlike the scientific theory of evolution ('theory' in science refers to any idea that can be tested scientifically and is based on evidence, like the theory of gravity for example), which has tons of evidence to support it. It boils down to a science versus religion argument, or facts versus faith.

Answer 7

The way I see it, ID means an exterior force purposely putting things together in the right sequence to make it work. Evolution assumes random chance and denies that this could ever take place, and to me not allowing exterior forces to produce, let alone manipulate nature, is not scientific. It merely removes a variable and tries to work out the equation another way. No, ID is not a "cop out". It's out-of-the-box thinking for Darwinian adherents, and only the boldest can accept this challenge.

Answer 8

Another term for Creationism, that God made everything rather than the big bang theory. Rather than give God the credit, they want to water it down by making it an "Intelligent Design" rather than just say God created it all. Got to be politically correct these days to fit in. But they say the THEORY of evolution is fact when the man that came up with it said it was nothing more than a theory. No proof of that but plenty of proof for Creation.

Answer 9

It just means that an Intelligent Being had to create everything because it is unlikely that the way things are happened by accident without a plan.

its another term for Creationism which Christianity has been pressing.


this is another version that has been going around
http://www.venganza.org/

Answer 10

It's the notion that the universe is too complicated to have happened on it's own, so there must have been a guiding force.

I personally subscribe to that theory myself, but I object to the stupid name and don't believe it should be taught in schools. It's just a way for the conservative wackos to force religion into science classes, where I don't think it belongs.