[tacticalogic]

but if one believes the Designer to be God, obviously it can be an alternative to materialism.

The author doesn't make that distinction. By doing that, he appears to be helping to bolster the argument that ID is really just a creationism in disguise.

[Kip Russell]

The author doesn't make that distinction. By doing that, he appears to be helping to bolster the argument that ID is really just a creationism in disguise.

Which, obviously, it is.

[Heartlander]

People will always see what they want to see but intelligent design is not creationism, nor is it a religious position. It is the application of design theory to the natural and living world. Intelligent design theorists point to the existence of precise physical laws and the fine tuning of universal constants, the staggering complexity and nanotechnology of the living cell, and the digitally-coded information content of DNA as evidence for a designing intelligence.

"For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. From Plato to Aquinas to Newton, maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind, a Creator, served to guarantee humanity's own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from law to literary theory, from behavioral science to biology, a thoroughly materialistic understanding of humanity and its place in the universe has come to dominate. Free will, meaning, purpose, and God have become pejorative terms in the academy. Matter has subsumed mind; cosmos replaced Creator."
- Steven Meyer