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To: Ahban
Well, Creationism is not exactly the same thing as Intelligent Design, as these terms are normally used.

Creationism was a kind of bogus science that sincere Christians were more or less forced to resort to to when the courts illegitimately threw religion out of our public schools. Teachers should have been able to say, "The theory of evolution teaches this, but the traditional account in the Book of Genesis teaches that." But the courts would not longer allow them to do so. Ergo, the phony science of Creationism was introduced so as to get Genesis back into the schools through the back door. Which is not to say that God didn't create the world, or that the Genesis account isn't true, but that you can't prove the full Genesis account scientifically.

Intelligent Design theory, on the other hand, is not religion-based. Using purely scientific arguments and statistical methods, you can make a good case that the best way to explain the nature of life as we see it is to posit an intelligent designer rather than blind chance. You can't prove that the whole Genesis account is true by pure science, but you can show that positing an intelligent designer better explains the facts than blind chance.

This argument about no new families appearing does, indeed, add still another difficulty for general evolution to deal with. I don't think it's as persuasive as some of the other arguments intelligent design theorists have recently been making, but it makes a good point, and one that's pretty simple to understand.
4 posted on 11/20/2002 3:45:16 PM PST by Cicero
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To: Cicero
I see Creationism as a major subset of ID. Even Theistic Evolution can be considered ID. Creationism I define as that subset if ID that maintains that the Designer intervened at least once in creation after the initial creation event.

Thank you for your input.
60 posted on 11/20/2002 7:54:45 PM PST by Ahban
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To: Cicero
I see Creationism as a major subset of ID. Even Theistic Evolution can be considered ID. Creationism I define as that subset if ID that maintains that the Designer intervened at least once in creation after the initial creation event.

Thank you for your input.
62 posted on 11/20/2002 7:55:09 PM PST by Ahban
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