Intelligent Design

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost provides a whole bunch of interesting links to information relevant to the issue of evolution and intelligent design. He begins:

Should intelligent design (the theory that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause and are not the result of an undirected, chance-based process) be classified as science or pseudoscience? Advocates almost always assume that it should be regarded as a legitimate scientific research program while its critics often scoff at the idea of this "stealth creationism" being given serious consideration.

I myself am an interested agnostic on this particular aspect of creation. (While I know the "who" (God) and the "what" (God did it), I am unclear on the "how" (what processes were involved)). I believe the problem for the advocates of ID is that there is currently not enough empirical evidence to fully support their claims. And I also believe that the problem for the critics of ID is that they tend to rule out the possibility based more on prejudice than sound philosophical objections.

While I'm not qualified to determine whether Intelligent Design is an accurate scientific theory, I do think it is at least as philosophically plausible as other approaches (e.g., naturalism). As the atheistic philosopher Daniel Dennett says, "There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination." Because I am interested in ID and evolution, I often note articles and arguments that I find noteworthy. Here are 32 such items which, if we set aside our philosophical baggage, are worth examining.

the evangelical outpost: 33 Things on Evolution and Intelligent Design