[Fester Chugabrew]

You seem to use the word "evidence" as if evidence of intelligent design requires the designer to be present and directly testify at all times to his work. You require less evidence for the intelligent design of an automobile than for the design of objects that function specifically on a scale far more complicated than any human intelligence has been able to design or build.

Put another way, direct observation of an intelligent designer is necessary when it comes to biological phenomena, but is not needed where human artifacts are concerned. This is an arbitrary double standard for defining what causes matter to be organized and perform specific functions.

There is no harm for science to proceed under the assumption that God built and maintains the physical universe. It has done so for thousands of years. There certainly is no need to cry foul when this idea is set forth in qualified language. Unless, of course, one is a devotee of a particular philosophy of his own.

[js1138]

The harm is that it inserts an entity that has no properties, no methods, and no limitations into the causal chain. This is not the way science works.

[gondramB]

>>You seem to use the word "evidence" as if evidence of intelligent design requires the designer to be present and directly testify at all times to his work.<<

Nope, I don't feel that way at all.

>>There is no harm for science to proceed under the assumption that God built and maintains the physical universe.<<

There is no problem with considering that assumption. Assumptions are "arbitrary elements" (Hawking) that are "accepted without proof, and it is incorrect to speak of an assumption as either true or false, since there is no way of proving it to be either/

Asimov said "It is better to consider assumptions as either useful or useless, depending on whether deductions made from them corresponded to reality. .. On the other hand, it seems obvious that assumptions are the weak points in any argument, as they have to be accepted on faith in a philosophy of science that prides itself on its rationalism. Since we must start somewhere, we must have assumptions, but at least let us have as few assumptions as possible."


If ID could be shown to lead to deductions that could be verified and could not be deduced without that assumption then ID would be on its way to being useful scientifically. If you are interested in promoting ID this could one approach you could take to get it introduced into science.

But without usefulness the scientific community is not going to want to teach an assumption based on faith.