Talk:Intelligent design/Archive 12

message: I logged on (work's been crazy...) and noticed that we were back up to 54kB. :-(  Then I took a deeper look, and found something interesting:
:Good news - We have one of the best written Reference sections I've seen.  It's got great stuff, and it's (mostly) built well.
:Bad news - It's 17kB long.  If you hit 'Print Preview', you'll see the Reference section takes 5 of the 15 pages in hardcopy.  Without it, we're down to 37kB and well on our way to meeting the guidelines of Wikipedia:Article size.  
There's no guide for reducing the size of a Reference section (and the Harvard links may need to stay on page to work).  What's the best way to trim this, without losing value?  I'm thinking we could setup the "See Also" and other more static sections as off-page tables/templates.  Would that work?  And would the Template Police come to take us away?  One advantage would be the ability to easily carry the references across to the subarticles.  I'm sure we could trim a couple, but the impact would be negligable.  Any ideas?--ghost 7 July 2005 04:33 (UTC)
::We can try going throug hthe refrences and seeing if we can come to a consensus on what is no longer needed?--Tznkai 14:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good news, Bad news 

message: We've come a long way baby since I first saw this article a month ago.  However, one of my original comments was that I counted up the "pro-ID" sentences and the "anti-ID" sentences of the intro.  As a benchmark, I'm going to do that again with the intro and ID in summary.
:Intro - 4 sentences: Pro, Pro, Subtly Anti, Blatantly Anti
:ID In Summary
::Paragraph 1 - 6 sentences: Pro, Pro, Pro, Pro, Pro, Pro
::Paragraph 2 (and quote) - 3 sentences: Pro, Pro, Pro
::Paragraph 3 - 11 sentences: Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti
::Paragraph 4 - 6 sentences: Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti, Anti
::Paragraph 5 - 3 sentences: Anti, Anti, Anti
Total: 11 Pro, 22 Anti
Personally, I think it is unacceptable to see 2 Anti for each Pro sentence... no matter what the subject is.  Take a peek at evolution and you will see that the intro of that article has precisely zero Anti sentences.  In fact it doesn't have any Anti sentences until you get all the way to the last section.  If we did that here, we would be accused of burying the criticism.
Am I the only one, or is anyone else disturbed by this balance?  Or does everyone else think the ID article deserves to be 66% criticism?  Do the wiki guidlines support that?  David Bergan 7 July 2005 06:03 (UTC)
: as long as it is factual and acurate, I have no problem with it. It is not like the article is "anti" biased or anything, it comes of as slightly pro/ nuetral. it is our job to document the facts as they lie. It is the pro-ID peoples job to defend their cause to the scientific community. Honestly, I don't think that politics should intervien with the facts. Unless you can come up with more pro-ID facts, and we keep the pro-science portion to a minimum, and only facts, then it's ok. IreverentReverend 7 July 2005 13:10 (UTC)
:The way I see it, ID commits several major logical fallacies, and a lot of criticism has to spend time educating the reader, such as telling them about Occam's Razor, or telling them about the difference between observation-based knowledge and intuitive-based knowledge. So, I don't have a problem with that ratio. FuelWagon 7 July 2005 14:01 (UTC)
:I am not completely happy with the balance, since I think we're criticizing ID to much, not because its not worthy of criticism, or because of balance issues, but I feel like we're constantly reinventing the wheel. The ID and Evolution articles are not paralells. Evolution is an old old old theory with a great deal of popular and scientific support. ID is not. If you look at the coverage that the public gives it, we're probably underreporting slightly the ammount of criticism that ID gets (again, thats ok, since we'd be reinventing the wheel anyway)
:Whether or not ID is inherently flawed or not is not really my perspective on what makes this article good and NPOV. (Part of why I get into edit conflicts on both sides of the wall here), but accuracy of reporting what the public at large thinks. To take another view, I don't think ID is taken seriously at all by the World At Large, its primarly an American phenominon. So if we're going with ratios, ID should be verrrry tiny. You do bring up an intresting criticsm, so what I propose is that we go through the criticsms and cut them down verbage wise, and also possibly remove the ones that are less pertinent to the discussion. We're not trying to give an exhaustive list of everything here. We also should start depending on the reader and wikilinks more to explain certain concepts past a single sentance.--Tznkai 7 July 2005 14:55 (UTC)
::Content should not be cut based on "ratios". Any attempt to do so is assinine. ID is like someone asking "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It is a short sentence with only 6 words. To reply, however, you first have to explain what a "loaded question" is, point out that the person being asked the question is assumed to have beaten his wife without it being established as fact, rephrase the question to "Do you beat your wife?", and finally answer "no". These are all valid and needed pieces of a legitimate reply. And it's about FIFTY words long. To cut out a piece of this response because of ratios (6 word question, 50 word reply) is about the most assinine thing I've ever heard of. FuelWagon 7 July 2005 15:14 (UTC)
:::First, I'd appreciate if you cut down on the pejoritives, just for the sake of WP:AGF and civility. I do agree that ratio editing isn't always a great idea, but it does influence the apperance of POV or NPOV. Remember, appearance is something we have to worry about, thats the nature of POV and NPOV. I think we can find away to get all the pertinent facts, supports, and criticisms without using the format "ID says this. Critics say this, and this, and also this. Critics note that, and that." and so on, which is what skimming the article, it looks like it'll do sometimes.
:::As for your analogy, I disagree that you have to explain that its a loaded question. For a super simple example: "Thats a loaded question, I do not, have not, will not beat my wife. Ever." And in my case "... and I'm not even married." My point there is learn to depend on wikilinks. If they don't know what a loaded question is, maybe they'll find out.--Tznkai 7 July 2005 15:26 (UTC)
::::It was a 6 word question. and your "super simple" example is 24 words long. This means your example is 20% question, 80% rebuttal, sufficient for anyone to cry "Ratios!" as an excuse to cut material. FuelWagon 7 July 2005 17:11 (UTC)
:::::....Did I disagree that ratio editing is bad?--Tznkai 7 July 2005 17:17 (UTC)
: I'd like to point out that NPOV does not require equal balance of opinions, as some positions are more strongly supported. The fact that there were even 11 "pro" ID statements is actually quite amazing.  If we think about a less belief-based topic, it becomes more obvious.  For example, in an article on Spherical earth, one would not expect a 50-50 split between pro and anti (that is between spherical earth and Flat earth). Mmmbeer 15:55, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: False analogy.  --goethean ॐ 17:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Its not really a false analogy, since it illustrates the concept that ratio editing does not always mean WP:NPOV. Its an observable fact (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that Intelligent Design (theory) is not acknowledge by the scientific community, or the majoirty of people.--Tznkai 19:22, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Perhaps you should actually read false analogy.  The point of the originating comment was that since there were more anti than pro it indicated an NPOV problem.  Here I was stating that not every point of view deserves equal treatment. Mmmbeer 23:04, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Benchmark

message: in case you havn't figured it out yet, I like keeping discussions well organized.
Anyway. I'd like to roll as much of the additional criticsms section into other sections as possible:--Tznkai 17:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't figure out where else to put this, so it can stay.--Tznkai 17:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm sure this can be reduced to a single sentance along the lines of "Intelligent Design proponeents have never given a coherent picture of who the designer of life is, making it difficult to falsephy. (I can't spell!)--Tznkai 17:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I think this is fine under irredducable complexity (which is, I udnerstand it, complexity which requires a designer, which is inherently irreducably complex)--Tznkai 17:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I think this goes to specified complexity (at the very least, using specified complexity to assume a god is an argument from ignorance)--Tznkai 17:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Uh. Its only been a matter of hours since I put up the proposal, and whether we do a large reorignization or not, there is always improvements that can be made. I am not required to ask permission here before I make changes, I am doing it to get input and as a courtesy. Don't misunderstand.--Tznkai 20:06, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text: My two cents: This would be a good place for mentioning that ID is not a scientific theory, that's why it doesn't get reviewed in scientific journals. See theory or Scientific Laws, Hypotheses, and Theories --KillerChihuahua 21:05, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional Criticisms 

message: Shouldn't this page be merged with the existing page on Creationism, with a redirect from Intelligent Design to Creationism? I mean, other than the names there is very little, if any, difference between the two concepts. Indeed, the more insightful people on both sides of the debate will readily agree that "Intelligent Design" is just a euphemism for creationism. Furthermore, both Intelligent Design and Creationism consist solely of attacks on accepted evolutionary theory with little (if anything) to replace it that's supported by real scientific research. 
There are many different forms of "Intelligent Design", just there are many forms of creationism. Many in each are mutually contradictory, and the two subjects overlap to a substantial degree. Shouldn't they be merged? -- User:Karn 19 July 2005
:The whole point of Intelligent Design in some sense is to provide an alternative to evolution other than creationism. This is evident from the writings of Philip Johnson. We have tried to indicate as much in the article, but as the Discovery Institute has been able to amass some fringe scientists to support their claims of this being separate from the debacles of creation science we have to include it as a separate article. The most technical arguments of the creationists have been subsumed into intelligent design. We continue to list it as a form of creationism, it's just a different kind. Joshuaschroeder 21:15, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they're sufficiently different.  Creationism claims that the universe was created specifically by a deity.  ID claims that the universe exhibits evidence that it was designed with some completely unidentified intelligence.  Close, but not the same thing.  In particular, Creationism does not necessarily use alleged proof of intelligent design inherent in the universe as a basis for Creationism.  Of course, there is no discernable difference between the "unidentified intelligence" in ID and the vaguely defined deity of Creationism, but, technically, the ID designer could be intelligent life from another galaxy, while the Creationist deity cannot be.  --Serge 21:46, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Read creationism, and you will see that this is a particular form of creationism, of which there are many kinds.  Putting all of this (and it is a lot) into the creationism article would bias that article towards ID.  You may want to see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Creation science. Dunc|☺ 21:54, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shouldn't this page be merged with creationism?