Is there anything left to say about the "Intelligent Design" movement? Its conceptual base is two centuries old and can be found in William Paley's Natural/Theology(1802)Paley's argument was that the perfection and complexity of living things are far too great to be attributed to natural processes and must therefore reflect the work of adivineCreator. Much of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was a detailed refutation of this proposition and an argument on behalf of the efficacy of natural (evolutionary) processes in shaping life on Earth. Nearly a century and a half's worth of careful, scientific exploration and analysis has provided abundant, indeed overwhelming, evidence for Darwin's case.Furthermore, in the aftermath of federal Judge John Jones Ill's ruling (December 20th) in the Dover, Pennsylvania school board case, that intelligent design is a religious position, not a scientific one, it might seem that the "intelligent design" movement (IDM) has been soundly defeated. That conclusion, however, would be premature.
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