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One must assume that there is Intelligent and Purposeful Design in order to disprove it. Get a clue, VadeRetro (post #61)!

There's a nice refutation of the Marxist "Property is theft" slogan which points out that the concept of "theft" is meaningless without the concept of property and the rightful ownership thereof. However, I don't see the shoe on that foot here.

My somewhat abrupt comment in 61 was expanded upon in 66, but I'll attempt to be clearer yet. In the following passage of your article, you make an argument from semantics.

If these terms mean something very specific to evolutionary biologists, it cannot be anything that is inferred by the actual words themselves. For the very notion of design cannot be thought of in any other terms than that of a conscious being with an intent, a scheme, a protocol, a plan, or an intellect. Each of the 21 definitions of "design" in Webster's pertain to a living subject, human by implication. This is not to say that random arrangements of things cannot be fantastically complex; but if they are not purposefully complex then the word "design" is incorrect. And "chaotic self-organizing" is a cluster of words similar to "triangular circles": an excessively clever term to describe something that can't possibly exist.

Scientists believe (in fact fully know) that a system which is initially easily described may over time generate a vast amount of internal complexity, no longer easily described with accuracy. Of special interest: a super-duper-hot expanding quark-qluon-plasma may become a universe of clusters, galaxies, planets, comets, gas, and dust by following known rules of behavior. An initially simple proto-planet can cool in interesting ways in the right conditions.

Whether any of this counts as "design" in your dictionary is irrelevant even if somebody has used the word in a manner you disallow. It is quite possible, more likely than not, that our condition here arose in some such way, whether with or without some initial manipulation by some sentient being. You don't dismiss the possibility by lawyering on what "design" means to you.

'You don't dismiss the possibility by lawyering on what "design" means to you.'

It's not semantics. Let me explain...

I have no problem with chaos theory. It is great stuff. It is just descriptive of a physical process, is it not? For me, saying "God spoke the stars into existence" is just a more concise way of saying "God took some matter and, by subjecting it to a fantastically complex scheme of rules, created a galaxy full of celestial bodies." No problem.

When you remove the idea of God from the scheme, though, is when you begin to have some difficulty. If "chaotic self-organizing phenomena" and "natural selection," among others, are the terms by which you determine that a mindless and meaningless void arrived at planets and then human life, then so be it. But did the meaningless void intend on producing humanity? Did it set the properties governing the universe? Did it say,"I love it when a plan comes together like this?" If not, then it cannot truly be called design. It is just what happened to occur. It cannot really be called intelligent, either, unless by "intelligence" one means a benevolent sort of illusion. Because a mindless and empty void cannot produce intelligence, no matter how many years and how many monosyllabic terms you try and shovel into it.

So it's not about semantics. It's about intellectual honesty. When Dr. Pigliucci says that humans are intelligent, I believe that he really does mean that humans are, in fact, intelligent, and he does not mean that we must perpetuate an illusion that we are intelligent because it makes us feel good. I share that view. But materialism does not give you that view. You must hijack it from a theologian.