Why do Cdesign Propentists who deny that Intelligent Design is an inherently religious idea, insist on posting

Question

questions about it in the Religion and Spirituality category?

Answer 1

That's a good question...

I don't understand how any idea that posits the existence of God could be called "not religious." Maybe they don't realize that cdesign proponentist is the transitional form between creationist and design proponent.

Answer 2

I see what you mean. I just did a search for all questions ever posted in YA including the phrase "intelligent design" in Biology (62 hits) and in Religion & Spirituality (1061 hits). That means 99.4 % of questioners consider it a religious topic, but only 0.6% consider it of interest to Biology. I wonder which group the Dover school board was in when they decided to push it in class? That's a retorical question.

The single most appropriate adjective to describe those whose push ID and its predecessors as "science" (to get it past judges) on the captive audience of public schools is "disingenuous". The real issue with ID whether or not it should be taught in public schools; that's what it was specifically word-smithed to do. That's a legal issue, so questions of motive are relevant. Motive is directly relavent to the establishment of religion clause of the constitution, and one of the reason why it lost in Dover (the other was it being religion, in fact).

Nobody would mind it if the study of ID was confined to private institutions and Bible study. When was the last time Americans protested the Dali Lama's classes on enlightenment, by comparison? You may submit all the articles you wish to the scientific journals (just try to pass review).

Answer 3

good question.... but do we post "it's not religious" idea in R&S, or are we responding to those who say there is no rational evidence of God.

It is often those who don't want to discuss God's existance, who are also the very ones saying "show me rational evidence" who say we're pushing an religious idea and trying to camoflauge it.

See...whether or not I am "religious"...the proposition raises valid points. The fact that it points to a Creator, does not automatically dismiss the argument. All this does, is show that one side of the argument refuses to acknowledge a rational discussion.

I could go on and on about I.D...but the best example is the mouse trap. 4 parts: the base, the spring, the trap, the bar. Take one away, you don't have a mouse trap. Often, it is the argument of "Irreducible Complexity" in which those who don't like I.D can't get past, so they throw the red herring response..."oh..your just trying to sneak in God." Well..the response does nothing to shatter the argument of Irreducible Complexity.

Answer 4

As Dr. Stephen Meyer said, “I think there’s a tremendous amount of motive-mongering that is detracting from the substance of the debate. And the problem with motive-mongering is that everybody can play that game, everybody has a motive. Richard Dawkins has said that Darwin has made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, something he thinks is a good thing. That it would be completely illicit for us to say, ‘well, Richard Dawkins is wrong about evolutionary biology because he wants to be an atheist.’ Motives are properly irrelevant to the assessment of an argument and to the assessment of evidence; and in any case, they are equivalent, there are motives on both sides: many of the leading people on the Darwinist side have motives, people on our side have motives. We want to see the debate settled and discussed on the basis of the evidence, and that’s where we think it should finally reside.”

Dr. Stephen Meyer, “I think that the key thing that many folks in the media and many people in the general public miss, and I think this has been a somewhat unhelpful aspect of the debate, is that they have confused the idea of evidence with the idea of implication. The evidence for design is as I said this nanotechnology that we’re finding in the cell, this information embedded in DNA, for example, but the implication of the discussion does raise larger philosophical issues – and that’s true for Darwinian evolution as much as it is for its now chief competitor, the theory of intelligent design."

So many people these days are confusing biblical creationism with intelligent design. "Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence" (Dr. William Dembski). That's it; it says nothing of who the creator is and how he/she/it/they did it. Intelligent Design encompasses every "creation" story, even aliens seeding life on this planet.

Yes, I even thought "cdesign proponentsists" was funny (Of Pandas and People). But, it still doesn't change the fact of my previous paragraph. Creationists obviously believe in Intelligent Design, but they are just one of the groups that fit under the umbrella of ID.

Many people have the problem of not making a distinction between the evidence and the implications. ID may have unsavory theological implications, and so many people simply reject it or dismiss it as religion. But implications don't decide the truth of theories—evidence does.