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I remember seeing a study about squirrels and their habit of burying nuts and acorns. Was folk widsom that the squirrels did so to store the nuts -- the study showed squirels had no memory of where they hid each nut. So why do they do it? To plant trees. Good design that.

I've seen squirrels team with cardinals to drive off blue jays. Intelligence there too.

When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

Is the assumed personal value of not having a *cough* Judgemental G-d that high? Or the pride of selfishness -- without a G-d to feel inferior too, why a proud man or woman, proud of intellect or power can have full run of that pride!

When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

With evidence for evolution all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

the study showed squirels had no memory of where they hid each nut. So why do they do it? To plant trees. Good design that.

This study says they retrieve some of them by smell. Makes sense to me.

Squirrels bury nuts for winter food and relocate the nuts by smell. Squirrels find only a portion of the nuts they bury and are important in planting many species of nut trees. A single squirrel can bury several thousand pecans over the course of 3 months.

I've seen squirrels team with cardinals to drive off blue jays. Intelligence there too.

Rodents are generally pretty smart.

When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

The so-called evidence for design is, so far, strictly subjective. No one's been able to come up with an algorithm for detecting designed as opposed to evolved things.

IMO, the evidence is against design. Remember recently on another thread I brought up the recurrent laryngeal nerve. This nerve controls the vocal cords, yet it travels from the brain stem down into the chest, around the aorta, and back up the throat. In a giraffe it's 15 feet longer than it would be had a competent engineer designed it!

If you try to avoid this conclusion by saying that the hypothesized designer doesn't think like we do, it just makes detecting design even harder, because we don't really know what to look for. If you claim that the design serves some unknown purpose, you need to explain why the superior nerve goes directly from the brain to the throat without the detour. (and find the so-far hidden purpose)

There's also a non sequitur here. Just because some animals show intelligence, therefore there is some sort of external intelligence?!

Is the assumed personal value of not having a *cough* Judgemental G-d that high? Or the pride of selfishness -- without a G-d to feel inferior too, why a proud man or woman, proud of intellect or power can have full run of that pride!

Res ipsa loquitur

I remember seeing a study about squirrels and their habit of burying nuts and acorns. Was folk widsom that the squirrels did so to store the nuts -- the study showed squirels had no memory of where they hid each nut. So why do they do it? To plant trees. Good design that.

Anything which assists in survival makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint too, so you're not helping your case here.

I've seen squirrels team with cardinals to drive off blue jays. Intelligence there too.

No one denies that squirrels have a degree of intelligence, but this doesn't help your "design" presumption either.

When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

By the fact that a) there is zero positive evidence for the involvement of "intelligent design" in the history of life on Earth, despite several thousand years of searching for it, and b) there is abundant, indeed overwhelming evidence, for the involvement of evolutionary processes in the history of life on Earth.

Furthermore, "intelligent design" has the additional "is it turtles all the way down?" problem from a philosophical standpoint. At some point, you have to admit the existence of an intelligence which was *not* originated by the crafting of some prior intelligence. This torpedoes your entire line of argument, which is based on the presumption that intelligence is "too complex" to arise via a non-design process, *and* it shatters your presumption that no non-design process can possibly produce intelligence.

Is the assumed personal value of not having a *cough* Judgemental G-d that high? Or the pride of selfishness -- without a G-d to feel inferior too, why a proud man or woman, proud of intellect or power can have full run of that pride!

This has nothing to do with the conclusions drawn from the evidence, actually. The irony is that although it's the "ID" folks who draw their conclusions based on their personal feelings about God, they're the ones under the mistaken impression that a) they're the ones being most rational, and b) it must the *other* folks who are so fixated on the idea of God that they couldn't possibly arrive at a conclusion based on the merits of the evidence without "actually" being blinded emotional reactions to God...

Sorry, but while the *majority* of American evolutionists actually are *Christians* (and what does *that* do to your silly presumptions about evolutionists "running from God", eh?), the fact remains that almost all "evolutionists" arrive at their conclusion without much concern about God either way -- the Christian ones just follow the evidence wherever it leads to find out how God arranged things to work, and the non-theistic ones don't see why myths about a non-existent deity should make any difference when evaluating the evidence. Either way, they're not anywhere near as hung up on being driven by thoughts of God as you presume they are, nor as much as you yourself and the other anti-evolutionists are.

I remember seeing a study about squirrels and their habit of burying nuts and acorns. Was folk widsom that the squirrels did so to store the nuts -- the study showed squirels had no memory of where they hid each nut. So why do they do it? To plant trees. Good design that.

No memory? I think you should read better science, or perhaps read the articles twice. Squirrels really do have a good memory, they don't remember EVERY nut, considering they bury freaking hundreds to survive the wintertime it is not a surprise. Besides if a squirrels forgets a few nuts, then the trees that grow out of it will one day feed it's offspring.
Even more so, there was a type of crow found living on some island that may have some of the best memory ever described. They can bury thousands of food items, and find them again months later. Every single one,..that's better then my windows computer. It seems to lose data a lot.

When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?

And why would anyone think that the two concepts are mutually exclusive?

I firmly believe that evolution is the reason for the thousands and thousands of different life forms on Earth. I also believe just as firmly that an intelligent God created and designed the evolutionary process - just like he created and designed our climate and weather process.

What is so hard to understand about that?