john milton may be considered to have weighed in on the intelligent design controversy in book vii of paradise lost:

...in his hand

He took the golden Compasses, prepar'd

In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe

This Universe, and all created things:

One foot he center'd, and the other turn'd

Round through the vast profunditie obscure,

And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,

This be thy just Circumference, O World.

Thus God the Heav'n created, thus the Earth....

here we have not only a designer, but a design mechanism.

cliff barney

Mr. Thompson's expressed dismay about being merely "an accident of nature" solved a mystery for me. Now I understand why folks get so darn upset about evolution: they are terrified of death, unless there is the guarantee of something beyond it.

News flash, Mr. Thompson: It's true that "if you die ... you'll change into something else." When someone dies, the body rots, the worms come, and before long, you're compost. If there is a noncorporeal component that endures (and science doesn't have anything to say about that, really, since "noncorporeal" is not in science's portfolio)that's fine and good, but the body rots.

Death is truly terrifying, the mystery to end all mysteries. For some people, faith is a way to deal with the terror, but for a few of those folks, it only works if it is unchallenged. That's sad.

I hope for Mr. Thompson's sake that he can someday find a faith that will stand up to the idea that not everyone agrees with him about Heaven and Hell. I hope that he finds out, someday, that there are lots of human beings who behave themselves not out of a terror of hellfire, but because they believe their behavior matters, not only on some account book in the sky, but in the greater scheme of, yes, creation.

You know, I very much doubt it, but I'll grant them this: MAYBE Intelligent Designers are onto something. MAYBE in a few years they'll stumble across some key piece of evidence that brings the theory of evolution crumbling down. As ID'ers will admit, new insight has in the past come from seemingly unlikely places, often from people vilified by mainstream scientists of the day.

So sure, they're certainly welcome to go on studying and researching and writing papers and maybe even getting some of them published in credible journals. That's their right and their duty if they're serious scientists.

But UNTIL that breakthrough happens, until they've been subjected to the necessary critical review and proven their theories scientifically apt, Intelligent Design doesn't belong in public education. Otherwise from a scientific standpoint we'd have to give "equal time" to any crackpot idea that comes along and can hire a few "expert scientists" to vouch for it. If ID wants to be respected, it has to take the time and the effort to work at it and prove themselves, just like the Darwinists have.

(And that's not even taking into account ID's religious motivations ...)

I wrote a long screed refuting Thompson point by point in a vitriolic manner, but I scrapped it in order to respond to this single quote: 'Did you see me show that there's no scientific evidence for man coming from an ape?'

In his unadulterated megalomania, Thompson reveals his true self. He's so infatuated with himself that he can't even get the facts right about his own refutation. Wow. Man didn't 'come from' apes, and if he were a real scientist, he would know that. Not only has he failed to refute 100 million scientists, he can't even get the question right. Perhaps, one day in the future, when South Korea has produced a cure for Alzheimer's using embryonic stem cells, and a huge outpouring of US capital goes overseas instead of into our own economy, will Thompson ponder our true 'floundering society'. I doubt it. I assume he won't be in line to get the cure, because that would be 'moral relativism'.

Oh man, if you are going to trot out the same tired arguments on bacterial flagellum that the ID folks seem so proud of could you at least mention the fact that scientists have already dealt with this "problem" in the scientific literature. I imagine not everyone reading your site has a strong biology background and the article leaves one with the impression that irreducible complexity is actually a valid argument for the IDers, when that is sinply not the case. Here's one link:

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

Like any movement, there are different strands within ID. And for Thompson to try to 'disprove' evolution puts him in a camp that I think the majority of ID proponents would not put themselves in.

However, what Thompson does do effectively is show how scientific theories are used to back up metaphysical principles. You don't have to agree with ID to any extent to agree that he shows this effectively.

I am surprised by readers who think this shouldn't have been written for Salon. It shows quite clearly where Thompson stands, and shows effective reponses from opponents. It lets the reader come to their own judgements--as all journalism should. Well done to Gordy Slack for letting us use our own minds. It's difficult on such a controversial topic.

Cooner:

You're almost completely wrong. I say "almost" because there is, of course, a chance that Darwinian evolution could be undermined by overwhelming evidence against it being uncovered. "MAYBE" that will happen some day (in fact, looking at the history of science, it seems inevitable that any seemingly complete theory will be replaced by an even better theory somewhere down the line.)

However, even if Darwin is thoroughly discredited, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that ID can be proved correct. No amount of scientific evidence can validate the theory, because ID is not a scientific theory. It posits a designer who cannot be detected by any existing or even theoretically possible means.

We fall into the trap that's being set by the creationists when they try to foist ID on our schools when we start to argue that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that's unsupported by evidence or even one that's completely wrong. The theory that phlogiston is involved in combustion and the theory that maggots are spontaneously generated by rotting materials are both bad science that's been disproven. Intelligent Design can never hope to rise to even that status.