Talk:Intelligent design/Archive 4

message: Rednblu, you are constantly restructuring the Talk pages here and at Talk:Creationism, Intelligent Design and Human, usually in a way that favors your POV. Your incessant refactoring of these Talk pages is highly inappropriate and clear evidence that you are conducting a campaign, the purpose of which to rewrite both the Creationism and Intelligent Design articles to conform to your pet POV. Your attempts to control the debate here are consistent with your well known history of bias on the usenet and the web. 
I am going to have to insist that 1) you cease your mendacious campaign to promote your biased POV on wikipedia, 2) that you stop restructuring/refactoring the Talk pages, 3) that you cease continually resurrecting previously settled NPOV topics. 
Wikipedia provides for dealing with those who conduct POV campaigns, and based on what we've seen of your contributions at Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Human taken with your usenet history, and your statement on your User page there is substantial evidence that you are conducting one here.
BTW, the second paragraph of the article is accurate and concise as it stands, your text above is no improvement.--FeloniousMonk 18:18, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  How does your own POV assertion justify its own separate heading here? 

message: I like the style of the new edit of the first two paras, but IDists (apart from YECs and the like) don't talk about creation other than that of life, in my experience.  Noisy | Talk 15:59, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Anon edits - 22OCT04

message: --- Begin preservation container ---
Intelligent design (ID) is the claim that there is empirical evidence that the universe and/or living things were designed by an intelligent agent.  This includes but is not limited to arguments that abiogenesis is impossible, that evolution cannot account for the complexity of life, that the mind cannot be explained in physical terms, or that the Earth and/or universe are "fine tuned" for living things, and therefore could not have come about naturally.  The various arguments put forth in favor of ID are not necessarily related to each other, but all share the common conclusion that a "designer" must have intervened at some point in the history of the universe.  While arguments against biological evolution are the most common, all ID arguments are based upon the insufficiency of natural processes to account for the observed properties of nature.  ID can therefore be thought of as the antithesis of philosophical naturalism, expressed as a scientific theory.  ID advocates reason, by way of an "eliminative inference", that we should settle upon intelligent causes whenever natural causes are incapable of explaining some phenomenon.  Exactly what this intelligence is, how it opperates, why it chose to do what it did, etc., are theoretically excluded from the debate.  However, ID is most often used for the purpose of religious apologetics, usually by conservative Christians, to argue for the existence of God.  ID is thus a form of the argument from design originally developed by William Paley in the early 19th century.  
ID is opposed by the overwhelming majority of scientists and philosophers of science, who regard ID as a form of pseudoscience.  Criticisms are ID are many, but usually include the following:  1)  Since ID is based on a purely eliminative inference, and makes no positive statements about Earth history, it does not qualify as an actual scientific theory.  It cannot be used to generate testable hypotheses nor serve as a meaningful guide for research.  2)  The specific criticisms of biological evolution offered up by ID advocates, most of which are merely updated versions of old creationist arguments, are deeply flawed.  In fact, most of ID appears to be little more than warmed over creationism.  3)  In general, arguments against the sufficiency of natural causes, also known as "God of the gaps" arguments, are highly prone to failure.  The history of science shows that gaps in our knowledge become continuously filled in.  How, then, does one 'prove the negative' and show that there can exist no natural explanation for something?  Additional criticisms include the presence of seemingly poor designs within biology, and the "fine tuning" argument's failure to account for the anthropic principle.  Many religious critics also consider ID to be bad theology.
--- End preservation container ---  ---Rednblu | Talk 19:31, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Preserving the Anon edits - 22OCT04 for discussion

message: As it has been reverted, I have re-instated the changes and explained here why:
* Changed "Anti-ID from a young Earth creationist perspective" to "Young-Earth creationist comment on ID" because the former is not accurate.  AiG goes along with most ID arguments, but does have a problem with their overall approach.  My heading better reflects that.
* Reverted "Anti-ID from a scientific perspective" back to simply "Anti-ID" (which was not my wording in the first place).  With the change to the YEC heading, this change was rendered unnecessary, and in any case is not NPOV in drawing a distinction between "scientific" and "YEC".
By the way, my changes were described as an "attempt at spin control".  I plead guilty.  I certainly was trying to control the spin (probably inadvertent) put on it by the previous editor. :-)Philip J. Rayment 15:53, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The PJR action seems appropriate, given the concluding paragraph of the article linked to.  Noisy | Talk 16:55, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heading Changes