Design Notions
Two pieces from The Panda's Thumb converge on a single issue for me when it comes to "intelligent [so-called] design":
In a posting on the Center (for the Renewal of) Science and Culture Media Complaints Division PR man Rob Crowther whines that a recent story in the Seattle Times disses Intelligent Design “theory” by saying
" … an opportunity for the Discovery Institute to promote its notion of intelligent design, the controversial idea that parts of life are so complex, they must have been designed by some intelligent agent."
['A "Robust" Theory? April Fool!', by Richard B. Hoppe.]
And
[…] the Discovery Institute has created a new blog, humbly entitled Intelligent Design the Future. … The purpose of the blog is to explore “issues central to the case for intelligent design, from the Big Bang to the bacterial flagellum and beyond.”
["Intelligent Design the Future", by Reed A. Cartwright.]
Okay, maybe not so much convergent as just useful and entertaining.
First off, the idea of referring to ID as a "notion" is brilliant and entirely appropriate in light of the silliness and dangerous idiocy of the "evolution is just a theory crowd". I think I will only now refer to the "intelligent-design notion", or the "notion of intelligent design".
Oh, yes, it's just a notion. "Honey, while you're at the sewing goods store would you pick me up a few intelligent-design notions for me? I used the last one yesterday."
So anyway, this notion is so grand and so compelling, so obvious, especially now that the ID Notionists have thought up the idea of "irreducible complexity", for which someone no doubt expects to be awarded a lot of junior-debater points. By now they're thinking that they're pretty unstoppable.
They can wave their hands and pronounce about the Big Bang all they want (say, where are all those "Strong Anthropic Cosmological Principle" people? This would seem a natural for them), but when it comes right down to it, it seems that their most compelling Darwinian counter-example is — ta da! — bacterial flagella!
Hey, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm pretty impressed by that. I never expected the not-necessarily-God-but-pretty-obviously-damned-intelligent designer to be an intelligent designer of such incredible subtlety that he/she/it would choose to put all of his/her/it's design signature into the flagellum of some bacteria.
Such subtle mastery, such incredibly intelligent design in such an unexpected and unlikely place almost guarantees that humankind would have to be highly evolved to discover it.
What a notion!