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I don't understand why so many "scientists" are so afraid of the idea of "intelligent design"? The paranoia doesn't make any sense at all. There are very real questions concerning exactly how life began on earth and very real questions to how macro-evolution occurred and why life is able to diversify so quickly in huge bursts and I think that the putting forth of make believe stories in science books whether they be pro-evolution or anti-evolution seems to be counterproductive. I don't know how many times I've read evo-speak stories that are not in the least backed up by the evidence at hand.
I read a story the other day about a study where men were asked to watch other men having sex and found that the sperm of the men who were watching became more active. The conclusion was that that response had "evolved" so that the men who were watching might have a better chance of impregnating a women who had just been copulated with by another man. This may be so but the conclusion was in no way arrived at by the facts established by the study nor was that the only possible interpretation of the data.
I don't think the existence of God necessarily requires "intelligent design" because a creator could certainly design a world that was built to unfold however "he" wished.
I do think that the increasing level of complexity that is being discovered as we dig deeper into the nature of biological systems suggests that natural selection as proposed by Darwin is just not enough and that we have by far oversimplified the creative capability of complex systems in the universe.
What we have with even the simplest cells is more complex than any bit of nanotechnology that we have yet created, they are not simple blobs with rudimentary respiration systems. Evolution as it stands has some critical problems, one is the ancestor problem, just because one group differentiates into a separate species does not necessarily mean that the source species is doomed to extinction. One could go on and on, what we need are more questions being asked rather than the crude attempt to shoehorn all thinking into a box called "natural selection" by people who are barely removed from the religiousness of those creationists they scorn.

I don't think the existence of God necessarily requires "intelligent design" because a creator could certainly design a world that was built to unfold however "he" wished.

Huh?

I don't understand why so many "scientists" are so afraid of the idea of "intelligent design"?

They're not afraid of it. They just oppose teaching it as science because it's not science.

I don't think the existence of God necessarily requires "intelligent design" because a creator could certainly design a world that was built to unfold however "he" wished.

Good. My goal is to try to get more people convinced of this simple truth.

I do think that the increasing level of complexity that is being discovered as we dig deeper into the nature of biological systems suggests that natural selection as proposed by Darwin is just not enough and that we have by far oversimplified the creative capability of complex systems in the universe.

You're right. Darwin's theory was oversimplified. It's been expanded a lot in the last 100 years. For instance, we now know the mechanism for variation in inhertiable traits. We understand the deatils of how speciation occurs.

But you are wrong that the complexity of life is too great for evolution. There are mountains of evidence supporting mainstream evolution.

Evolution as it stands has some critical problems, one is the ancestor problem, just because one group differentiates into a separate species does not necessarily mean that the source species is doomed to extinction.

Why is this a problem exactly? There's nothing in the modern theory of evolution that says the ancestor species has to go extinct. In fact, quite often, the ancestor and descendant species coexist.

One could go on and on, what we need are more questions being asked rather than the crude attempt to shoehorn all thinking into a box called "natural selection" by people who are barely removed from the religiousness of those creationists they scorn.

The situation you describe is simply not accurate. Mainstream biology accepts that there are mechanisms other than natural selection that play a role in evolution. For instance, sexual selection, genetic drift, the founder effect, etc.

So long as your theory is scientific, it will get a hearing. The problem with ID is that it is not scientific.

One could go on and on, what we need are more questions being asked rather than the crude attempt to shoehorn all thinking into a box called "natural selection" by people who are barely removed from the religiousness of those creationists they scorn.

And that's what all this boils down to, ultimately. They teach evolution in school like it's some kind of fact, when the truth is that it's a theory, not a theorem. Now, I don't have a problem in principle with evolution being taught in school as long as it's taught that it's a theory, and not fact. Same goes for ID. Personally, I'm a young earth creationist, but I don't see any reason not to discuss various theories in a science class, as long as we are clear that they are unproven theories.

The problem you run into is interesting, and ironic. The bottom line is that evolutionists have more faith than me and most of my friends in the church. Amazing. They have more blind faith in evolution than some of the most fire and brimstone preachers I've ever met. Evolutionism is a religion. Period. And evolutionists act accordingly. And, hey, that's OK. This is America, where a man can have any kind of religion he wants. It isn't a crime. But if we're going to talk about an unproven theory of evolution in schools, I don't see why we can't talk about an unproven theory of creationism or ID. Seems fair enough to me.

"I don't understand why so many "scientists" are so afraid of the idea of "intelligent design"? "

They're not afraid of it. They just don't take it seriously. To most scientists evolution has long been a settled issue and they've been building scientific evidence on top of it for over a hundred years.

They oppose it because it would give Christians credibility. It's nothing more than that.