Annafan: The one thing I always find irritating about the ID claim, is that it comes down to the absolute sillyness (not the Official, RAZD meaning ;-) ) that Intelligent Design is the best explanation because it exactly explains why a structure does exactly what it does or has taken on the exact shape that it has.
It was DESIGNED to do exactly what it does or look exactly what it looks like, for what else would it be designed???
But more importantly: what possible USE does this conclusion have? It is pure idiocy.
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)
This message has been edited by Warren, 09-20-2005 05:40 PM
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