Talk:Intelligent design

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Welcome to Wikipedia's Intelligent Design article. This article represents the work of many contributors and much negotiation to find consensus for an accurate and complete representation of the topic.

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A common objection made often by new arrivals is that the article presents ID in an unsympathetic light and that criticism of ID is too extensive or violates Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (WP:NPOV). The sections of the WP:NPOV that apply directly to this article are NPOV: Pseudoscience, NPOV: Undue weight, and NPOV: Giving "equal validity". The contributors to the article have done their best to adhere to these to the letter. Also, splitting the article into sub-articles is governed by the POV fork guidelines.

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Dembski reviews peer review issues in:

[http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.09.Expert_Report_Dembski.pdf "As part of a monograph series with an academic editorial board (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory), The Design Inference is the equivalent of a journal article — the reason monographs get published as books is that they are too long to fit in journals."

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Notes to editors

This article uses scientific terminology, and as such, the use of the word 'theory' to refer to anything outside of a recognised scientific theory is ambiguous. Please use words such as 'concept', 'notion', 'idea', 'assertion'; see Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Theory.
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Quotations marks and footnotes

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Bogus popups revert

Could someone explain to me the purpose of this revert of a copyedit I worked hard on 10 days ago? -Silence 07:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, Lets go step by step.

You removed wikilinks to universe and life. No defense there on my part I guess it is a matter of taste. Looking at it again there are plenty of wikilinks so deleting irrelevant wikilinks does no harm. My fault.
you replaced [Argument from design|intelligent cause] by [intelligent designer|intelligent cause] which in my opinion is not a good change. Intelligent cause here refers to the more broad nature of the intelligent cause such as the argument from design rather than the especific agent that does it.
You added evolution. IDers claim that ID is an alternative to evolution because they define evolution to include origin of life when in reality it does not. By using correct definition of evolution it is clear that ID really only challenges other origin of life theories.
Why remove "not as a valid scientific theory but " which is more descriptive?
experiment link. My fault you are right there.
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment link. I argue here that some people would like to follow the link to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment while other will like to go directly to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or for that matter to both. For example I am Spanish and my knowledge of the US Constitution is not that good. So I get a better undertanding of the issue by reading both articles and I guess other users will feel the same.
Intelligent design's to The. Small change that to me looks more encyclopedic.
"signs of intelligence" is redundant as a paragraph above already uses the term. So it is better to refer to "sign" alone IMHO.
the rest of the changes wich I believe are a couple of corrections in spelling and wikilinks where reverted due to unattentiveness for my part. Sorry.

I hope this explains my revert.--LexCorp 12:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, links to such broad articles are not useful here, at least in the very beginning of the article. It makes the first sentence too link-crowded, thus attracting the eye's attention away from genuinely vital links on specifically relevant topics.
You are incorrect in assuming that [[argument from design|intelligent cause]] is preferable to [[intelligent designer|intelligent cause]] for two reasons. First, most obviously, argument from design is just a redirect to teleological argument, and there's no reason to link to a redirect here rather than the article itself. Second, most importantly, it is misleading to link to a tangentially-related subject matter when clearly what's actually being discussed in the sentence in question is not the "argument from design", but the intelligence that caused the design: the intelligent cause/intelligent designer. Remember that one of the most important principles in wikilinking is the "principle of least surprise": we should always avoid linking to an article that will confuse or surprise users who click on the sentence in question, and without a doubt that applies to a link to teleological argument from the phrase "intelligent cause", since anyone clicking a link would expect information about the cause itself (and the article for that is at intelligent designer), not about a group of arguments that are closely related to intelligent design in general.
That is your personal belief. I agree with it, but treating it as fact is inappropriate when 100% of all intelligent designers treat their belief system as a dispute over evolution, not over the origin of life. Misrepresenting what they themselves focus on doing (which is challenging evolution, even if they're going about it the wrong way by focusing on the related, but distinct, topic of the origin of life) is not remotely useful for helping people understand what the intelligent design movement actually beliefs and focuses on.
Please reread the entire lead paragraph, both your version and mine. I spent over and hour reading over both to carefully check for errors and redundancies in the overall flow of the paragraph. You apparently haven't noticed that the word "theory" is used five times in the intro in your version, and linked to twice—and, even worse, the word "scientific" is used twelve times in the intro alone, including in several places where it's not necessary, and twice in the sentence in question ("scientific community views intelligent design not as a valid scientific theory")—that's just plain bad prose, and there's no other way of putting it. The reason that I removed that particular line is simply because it was 100% unnecessary: it was fluff, it didn't clarify anything that was unclear and just added unnecessarily wasted time and energy between the beginning and end of the sentence in question. Within that paragraph, we had already made the point that "An overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design as pseudoscience"; to go on about scientific theories, which had already been touched on in the first paragraph, would be entirely redundant.
Yep. I checked every single link in the lead to ensure that it went to a real article (rather than a redirect), and replaced it with one where it didn't. Time-consuming, but worth it.
I don't really care. Link to those articles however you prefer. I was simply linking to a more accurate title for the specific article in question (Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, not just Establishment Clause); it doesn't make a significant difference.
I'm afraid that you are 100%, absolutely incorrect here. Please reread the sentences in question. "The" doesn't make the statement "more encyclopedic" here, it only makes it more ambiguous. It is also poor grammar, based on the context (start of a pargraph and new topic, and no in-sentence clues as to what "The" refers to, making it even worse than if you'd just used "Their").
I'm fine with that. Merely trying to avoid ambiguity. But in this case, unlike the previous one, the referent is made clear, and there is a valid reason not to repeat the word (whereas there is no reason not to repeat "intelligent design" in the aforementioned paragraph).
So do I have to redo them all? -Silence 12:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
1. I'd suggest, on the topic of origin of life, that a NPOV rewrite could resolve this. Ie., we can note that the official definition of what the theory of evolution is does not include an origin theory, and we can also note that however many ID proponents seem to feel evolution does speak to the question of origins. Ie., as in all POV disputes, we simply note what each side says/believes. Then the readers can realize for themselves that many IDer's don't even know exactly what they're discussing, without our having to point it out, which would be crossing the line. Kasreyn 02:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that that would be very useful information to have, and have well-referenced, in the article. However, I still think that for the lead, which should be as short and concise as possible, simply stating "evolution and the origin of life" is completely sufficient and satisfactory and non-POVed in its vagueness, and more informative and concise than the alternatives. -Silence 11:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot engage in discussions now due to real life issues. So feel free to make any changes.--LexCorp 11:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Research Program

The following material listed in "Peer Review" appears to cover research. Propose moving this to after "Peer review" with its own new subheading "Research Program" DLH 01:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The debate over whether intelligent design produces new research, as any scientific field must, and has legitimately attempted to publish this research, is extremely heated. Both critics and advocates point to numerous examples to make their case. For instance, the Templeton Foundation, a former funder of the Discovery Institute and a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that they asked intelligent design proponents to submit proposals for actual research, but none were ever submitted. Charles L. Harper Jr., foundation vice president, said that "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review."[71] At the Kitzmiller trial the judge found that intelligent design features no scientific research or testing.

We hear an awful lot about peer review and the so called conspiracy to keep ID out of legitimate science journals. What articles have Dembski, Behe, et al submitted to legitimate, peer reviewed science journals that have been rejected? Has Dembski/et al ever said "I submitted X to J only to have it rejected? I know Dembski has fgone on record saying he has no desire to submit anything for peer review and I know Behe said under oath that doing any actual testing of his own theories would not be fruitful, so he has never induleged in any actual testing of ID theory. Have the IDists EVER done any testing or made any attempt to submit their ID related works to a legitimate, peer reviewed science journal? Mr Christopher 17:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How could one test for the supernatural? Jim62sch 17:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Simple answer: no scientist would. See methodological naturalism. Science explicitly denies the possibility of supernatural causes for natural phenomena. If a person advocates a theory involving supernatural forces, fine, good for them. But it is by definition not scientific. Kasreyn 22:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review is what is being discussed; research, such as it is, is what gets reviewed in peer review. FeloniousMonk 01:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

External Links

Restored two major links to ID Perspectives deleted by ScienceApologist alleging spam.

Research Intelligent Design is a Wiki systematically linking to ID materials. ID The Future is a web site/blog for major proponents of ID. DLH 11:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Assume good faith "To assume good faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. As we allow anyone to edit, it follows that we assume that most people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it. . . . So, when you can reasonably assume that something is a well-intentioned error, correct it without just reverting it or labeling it as vandalism. When you disagree with someone, remember that they probably believe that they are helping the project."

This Wikipedia site allows very little material by ID proponents. The link to Research Intelligent Design provided to direct users to a wiki with a mission to give reference material on Intelligent Design. This is an effort to give some semblance of NPOV to this page.DLH 16:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ScienceApologist deleted links alleging spam without discussion. This appears to violate Wiki Policy of "Assume Good Faith". I have provided further discussion deleting my previous description of ScienceApologist.DLH 16:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The major contributors for ID The Future are Michael Behe, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Cornelius Hunter, Steve Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Jonathan Wells, and Jonathan Witt. That appears to be as stellar a list of major ID proponents as will be found anywhere. These clearly represent the minority view on ID. DLH 16:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article has 91 footnotes. Any statements made by these proponents which are germaine are cited in the footnotes section. The ID position is a minority position; adding spamlinks in some misguided effort to provide "balance" is actually undue weight towards a vansihly small minority position. You cite AGF yet all SA did was state in his summary why the additions were being reverted. Your accusation of vandalism is a different, and far more serious, matter. Step back and consider your actions; this is not the pot calling the kettle black but rather the pot calling the shiny new saucepan black. KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had already withdrawn my vandalism accusation. ScienceApologist claims it is "spam" without justification or discussion. You also reverted my edits without discussion. See Wiki Policy: "Reverting a good-faith edit may send the message that "I think your edit was no better than vandalism and doesn't deserve even the courtesy of an explanatory edit summary." It is a slap in the face to a good-faith editor. If you use the rollback feature for anything other than vandalism or for reverting yourself, be sure to leave an explanation on the article talk page, or on the talk page of the user whose edit(s) you reverted." Twelve reverts in a row suggest that no allowance at all is being given that I am attempting a "good-faith edit".

DLH 17:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree completely with KC. Undue weight is very clear on this. We no more need a "balance" of pro-ID links here than we need a "balance" of pro-Flat Earth links at Flat Earth. It would be a different story, IMO, at the article on Creationism, because Creationism acknowledges that it is a religious belief. Intelligent Design chooses to cast itself as science instead. What I keep trying to point out to DLH is that, by getting in the ring with science, it is therefore both valid and appropriate that ID be criticized from a scientific viewpoint. And, not surprisingly, the (vast) majority scientific viewpoint is that ID is a crock. Kasreyn 17:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page is supposedly to explain the minority position of "Intelligent Design." Yet it already lists 13 "Non-ID" (effectively anti-ID) to 6 ID links. Wiki policy is to clearly present BOTH the minority and majority positions. Considering the strong anti ID tone of this article, it is important to provide ID links where users can find complementary information and discussion. Just because you support the majority position does not justify reverting minority position links.DLH 18:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Asked for page protection for this section to stop this edit war. Three reverts already today.DLH 18:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where's the beef?

(Camera pans to host at center stage: Announcer, in exuberant voice: "It’s time to playyyy: 'What's my POV'", "Brought to you by the makers of Gene gun")

(Curtain opens: "And, behind Door Number One... "

([1]) ([2]) ([3]) ([4]) ([5]).

It has been this way from the very first edit, hasn't it? This quest to impose a particular POV on these related subjects of the creation-evolution debate is the cause of these reverts. The three-revert rule (WP:3RR) applies only to sole editors, not multiple editors seeking to defend amply debated and well-considered consensus. .... Kenosis 18:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There appear to be de facto coordinated effort to impose an anti-ID "majority" viewpoint and using multiple persons to get around the 3revert rule. I have had 14 reverts in a row. That does not appear to be allowing for ANY "good faith effort."DLH 19:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How can an effort be de facto coordinated? If it's consciously coordinated, then it's coordinated. If it's not consciously coordinated, how is it coordinated at all? I would suggest that to find your error you need look no farther than the quote marks you placed around the word majority. ID is a scientific issue, and there is a clear scientific majority against it. Kasreyn 19:53, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the word DLH might hae been looking for was "consensus". As a side note, I find it rather humourous that a project that does not allow "weasel words" has such a wiggly and subjective policy as AGF, which is prone to abuse and at a certain level, primarily that of its implementation and invocation, is very much at odds with other policies. An editor makes a highly POV or inaccurate edit (usually in violation of WP:V, WP:NPOV or other policies), then when it is reverted cries "good faith, good faith, good faith!" without ever once considering the nature of the reverted edt or the simple fact that the editor doing the reverting was acting in good faith.

Also, I think DLH misses the the mark regarding the presentation of what is clearly a minority viewpoint, and suggest that he or she read Undue weight. Jim62sch 17:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with DLH that those two links, particularly ID the Future, are significant and should be included. The idea that "Any statements made by these proponents which are germaine are cited in the footnotes section" seemed pretty far off the mark. Obviously, there is much more to the topic of ID than is included in this article. The point of a Wikipedia article is to distill the most important parts into a coherent, balanced story. The point of the external links is to allow readers to get further details, often from non-neutral and/or less notable points of view that don't quite make the article. While many of the links that people try to add are linkspam, I think these links are appropriate.--ragesoss 18:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Look, I have no problem with the inclusion of these should a consensus develop on it. In fact, though, one of these is linkspam to a blog (ID The Future) and should be excluded because it's a blog. The other is a rather interesting and increasingly well developed POV link (Joseph C. Campana's ID Wiki at Research Intelligent Design Wiki). If it's the consensus that this second link should be included, I'll back it – either way is fine by me. ... Kenosis 20:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see Wiki pages on how to make cites, and not to have Blogs on Wiki. HOwever, I find no discussion about whether or not to link to major blogs. Anyone else have any directions to such policy?DLH 00:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Under External Links I found the following:

Blogs, social networking sites (such as MySpace) and forums should generally not be linked to. Although there are exceptions, such as when the article is about, or closely related to, the website itself, or if the website is of particularly high standard. I believe the following two apply and that [ID the Future] fulfills these two well.

What the article is about.
Website is of particularly high standard.

What other comments?DLH 00:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article is not about the blog itself, nor does the blog meet the "Website is of particularly high standard" criterion. Campana's piece is something I need to think about before offering an opinion - at this point I'm neither in opposition to or supportive of its inclusion. Jim62sch 17:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A pro-ID blog run by Discovery Institute fellows will be notable enough to merit mention here, being that ID and the conflict around is largely a product of the Institute, so ID Future is fine to include. But ResearchID.org, a privately-run pro-ID wiki, is largely the product of one individual, Joseph Campanga, a former Wikipedia editor (JosephCCampana (talk · contribs)). ResearchID.org contains his summarizations or interpretations of leading ID proponents arguments. It's not a prominent player on the ID stage, and so does not merit mention in the article; there are much more prominent and influentional websites that come before it. FeloniousMonk 02:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One less link?

User:CloseEncounters seems to be determined to remove Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture and refer it to Discovery Institute (Hub of the intelligent design movement): they're both the DI, but wearing different hats on different home pages. Other than alerting readers to CSC being DI, was there a reason for the two links? ..dave souza, talk 18:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To show the duplicitous nature of DI and ID. Jim62sch 18:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it appears CE and DLH are interested only in promoting ID, not contributing positively to the greater wikipedia project, so I'd expect that. FeloniousMonk 01:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the Wikipedia community expects: 5 pillars policy including --- Assume good faith from others. Be open, welcoming, and inclusive. Strive for accuracy, verifiability, and a neutral point of view. --- I am trying to help towards that. Thanks for the welcome.DLH 01:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You've promoted the ID POV to the exclusion of all others since you've arrived, so I shouldn't be surprised. Assume good faith is not a suicide pact. FeloniousMonk 02:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The discovery.org links were duplicate links; I consolidated the two. FeloniousMonk is deleting a legitimate link to a newly launched site, www.ReasearchID.org, the launch of which was announced at www.evolutionnews.org on June 24th. The site is "Currently collaborating on about 67 research applications of intelligent design." This is an exceptional new resource, and it is completely wrong to censor it from readers interested in the development of ID; there is no good reason for FeloniousMonk's deletion. Secondly, FeloniousMonk deleted Michael Behe's well-written and published response to the Kitzmiller decision while permitting a non-scientist's response (Kitzmiller: An Intelligent Ruling On Intelligent Design), not to mention a link to the anti-ID opinion of Judge Jones. In other words, FeloniousMonk allows ID opponents to respond to the ruling, but does not allow ID supporters to respond to the ruling. This is a blatant double standard that should not be tolerated on Wikipedia, which purports to strive for neutral treatment.

--CloseEncounters 02:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]