Intelligent Design is NOT Creation[ism]

Well it does sound like it - but Christianity also postulates Divine Intervention in human history. And that, I think, is the key point.

All design hypotheses require some idea of the intentions and capabilities of the designer. If ID is to offer a full alternative to evolutionary theory it simply cannot do so without offering design hypotheses. The fact that the ID movement refuses to talk about such things is one of the reasons it is forced to rely on weak eliminative arguments and cannot propose any positive view to supplant evolution.This is also why nobody uses their methods to detect design - allowing yourself to make some hypotheses about the designer allows the proposal of positive hypotheses which can be used in an "inference to the best explanation" rather than simply relying on eliminating alternatives, as ID attempts to do.A refusal to make hypotheses about the designer is not scientifically justifiable - in fact it is one of the major obstacles to ID becoming scientific.

So long as you ignore the capabilities and intentions of the deisgner all you have is a collection of ad hoc hypotheses of the form "some intelligent being somehow did this for some reason". You don't have a theory. You can't have a theory.And yes we DO have a good idea of the capabilities of Stonehnge's builders. The hypothesised builders are human with the technology of the appropriate periods (Stonehenge was built in several phases). Indeed while Stonehenge is unique in some respects the henge culture, using rings of wooden posts or stones is quite ubiquiteous in England. By examining these related monuments we can build up a theory about their purpose which lets us make predictions about other examples (e.g. which astronomical alignments are likely to be significant). The whole idea that Stonehenge is some big mystery which we have no understading of is completely false.As for "Mike Gene"'s claims he offers no good reasons for completely ignoring the designer - he simply claims that identifying something as designed does not tell us the name or whether the designer was supernatural or not. Perhaps not - but if we ever DID identify a flagellum as designed then we could certainly infer that the designer was capable of manipulating bacterial genomes and we should certainly seek to identify a purpose.

Now you are talking nonsense. We already know that your "some natural process did this for some reason" is a straw man. Only ID limits itself in this way - science does not and never has.And we certainly do make hypotheses about the intnetions of Stonehenge's builders - that they built it to act as a calendar, based on the astronomical alignments is one. And mcuh is implicit in the simple identification of the builders as human - we know reasons why humans build monuments and these are all available as potential hypotheses.And I might ask how the "designer" could set up the "initial conditions" so that bacteria still somehow grow flagella if the bacterial genome is NOT involved. Either "setting up the initial conditions" manipulates the genome directly or indirectly or you have some explaing to do.

I'm talking about history in the ordinary sense - rather than evolutionary history. In Christian terms, Jesus' ministry and resurrection at the least represent some Divine involvement.

Joe says that he believes that God did not intervene in the course of evolution. That does not mean that he doesn't believe God has intervened in some sense in human history - inspiring prophets, for instance. Deism rejects that.

If you're so determined to make out that Joe is a Deist then I suspect he won't want to talk to you. I must admit that I had no idea that you were so in love with the idea that you would get angry just because it was shot down. Are you sure that you are't Jonathan Sarfati ?

We know that your "some natural processes did this for some reason" is a straw man because we know that nobody regards such as a valid model. And I have shown that in a particular case loved by the ID movement we have FAR more than that.Of course if you reall wanted to dispute that claim you could have backed it up when you had the chance - instead of producing a clear example of the double standards of the ID movement as you did.Moreover the argument that you call a "double standard" is nothing of the sort and in fact is prefectly valid. The information needed for a bacterium to build a flagellum IS encoded in the genome - ergo if the flagellum is to be held to be "designed" at all this must be the intent of the designer. How the designer arranged for the information to get there does not change the fact that the designer must have done so somehow.As for your comments on homology, please identify the structures you are referring to and explain the roles of the genes involved in each case - in a different thread, since such a large subject deserves a thread of its own. I certainly don't intend to do heavy work on developmental biology and genetics to answer such a vague request especially as even if I were to do so for a single example (which would be a lot of work in itself) you'd probably find some excuse to dismiss it.

Well you seem upset at getting an answer to a question you asked so the natural conclusion is that you don't like the answer.My points are relevant to what Joe believes since Joe says he is Christian. So I referred to beliefs which are pretty minimal for Christianity (I didn't include the Virgin Birth, or Jesus' miracles for instance). It's a pretty safe bet that Joe beleives at least that much.That Joe's stated views are consistent with Deism is one thing - but they are also consistent with Kenneth Miller's, for instance. But you don't seem to want to know that.