”This is the seemingly intractable problem regarding Intelligent Design - there seem to be as many definitions of it as there are commentators on it.”
Is it the definitions which are the intractable problem? Or is the problem the commentators, who seek an advantage in how they sculpt their definitions (refine their descriptions? I suggest the latter, and if that understanding is the correct one, then the problem will remain intractable.
Definitions, and/or descriptions, are supposed to facilitate communication, by contributing to the clarification or perfection of one’s understanding of things and ideas. Instead they are too often used to denigrate; the intent not being clarification, but attack. We see this in attempts to tie Darwin’s theory of evolution to the failed social, economic and governmental theories of Marxism or, generally, Socialism at large. Those who see the connection have the burden of establishing the connection. The record would seem to indicate that Darwin neither intended nor saw any such connection, but that Marx & Engels did. Likewise, we see attempts to denigrate Christianity by describing, for instance, the sacrament of holy communion as ritualistic cannibalism. The motive in either of these two cases would not appear to be clarification.
Indeed, YHAOS. You write: "Definitions, and/or descriptions, are supposed to facilitate communication, by contributing to the clarification or perfection of one’s understanding of things and ideas. Instead they are too often used to denigrate; the intent not being clarification, but attack."
Jeepers, but I think it's even much worse than that. The intended "final cause" here -- the goal or purpose -- is to destroy language itself as a conveyer of meaning authenticated by actual human living experience over long time frames within given traditional historical cultures.
To "kill" language in this sense, together with its ability to support a private culture at all, all you have to do is "dissolve" the presently-existing cultural consensus.
The Marxists figured this out a long time ago. And it is a matter of fact that they chose to include Darwinism (at least such Darwinism as such benighted lame-brains could understand) as a key component of their "public pedagogy."
And that's a big part of the reason why we have to put up with "definition contests" any time a "controversial" issue is raised in the public square.
I just wish we had more persons of discernment now living capable of mounting a counterattack to such pernicious ideas as the gutting of language and meaning as a simple matter of operational tactics: "The End justifies the Means."
But Truth is Truth, and finally outs. You can't go against it forever....
Thank you so much, dear YHAOS, for your penetrating analysis.