Warren: I don't know where you are getting this. IDers are interested in exploring whether an explicit teleological approach can carry out a progressive investigation that serves to weaken or strengthen the design inference and whether it can help expand our understanding of biotic reality.
Design-type thinking is already part of science so I fail to see what you are complaining about.
Consider:
“Both history and present Darwinian evolutionary practice have shown us that this kind of design-type thinking is involved in the adaptationist paradigm. We treat organisms - the parts at least -- as if they were manufactured, as if they were designed, and then we try to work out their functions. End-directed thinking - teleological thinking - is appropriate in biology because, and only because, organisms seem as if they were manufactured, as if they had been created by an intelligence and put to work.”
Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does evolution have a purpose?, p. 268 (Harvard, 2003)
The point of my post was that I simply don't see HOW postulating an intelligent designer as an answer to certain questions could EVER
"Help expand our understanding of biotic reality"
I don't disagree that adaptationist thinking also features "design-type reasoning" on some level. After all, the basic idea is that random mutation together with natural selection results in a process that mimics "design in order to serve a purpose". As such, I would say the "design-type thinking" is used as some sort of working hypothesis that leads scientists to the right questions to ask.
What I was getting at is: although they apply this kind of design-oriented thinking, they WON'T accept "intelligent design" as an endpoint to work towards. They will always intend to break down the answer "designed" into smaller constituents.
"It appears designed, but HERE are the deeper reasons/mechanisms WHY/HOW it comes accross as intentional design"
ANY "deeper understanding of biotic reality" comes from the second part of the sentence. The 'conclusion'
design in itself is useless as long as it doesn't lead to meaningful research
behind it.
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