intelligent design

isn't the goal of science to explain things that are inadequately explained? wouldn't that imply that all of science should just stop now and say god did the rest?

 

what does it do then?

 

The goal of science is to find the best explanation not just the best naturalistic explanation.

 

exactly what I posted

 

that's pretty much all of evolution, isn't it?

why is having a big brain a positive? i don't understand the question. you proposed that having a larger birth canal went hand in hand with having a larger head. it didn't, that was my point.

larger brains mean larger heads. if you're lucky enough to survive being born, you might pass along those big brain genes. i'm guessing enough did that big brains eventually overcame the problem of smaller birth canals -- hence the later invention of the c-section which helped carry on the legacy of small birth canals (which probably would have died out as natural forces selected against them -- ie, they died in the very act of passing on their genes). i don't see where the regression is.

 

but id's main thesis is that if it's inadquately explained, it must be unexplainable by any other means than an outside factor. that seems like some serious defeatism.

 

refresh my memory.

 

"there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

 

No. You can believe in evolution of species without believing fish evolved into amphibians.

A big brain is what allowed us to become the top of the pyramid.

Larger brains do mean larger heads, but our brains when we came down out of the trees were not capable of the reasoning and intellect that we are today. Yet, their cranial sizes and the way they were born were roughly the same as they are today. In other words, they got all the risks without any of the immediate benefits. That goes against the notion of survival of the fittest – but fits in nicely with ID.

 

so it doesn't replace evolution, it simply says that natural selection isn't good enough of an answer and since most other complex systems were designed (excluding the ones we're trying to learn about -- which are probably the vast majority) then there had to be a designer (even tho there's no evidence that such a designer exists or existed or that the ability to achieve these goals has ever been observed or even hypothesized).

sounds like they're not replacing evolution so much as replacing science.

how can id be taken seriously as science without proposing a theory?

id seems to be more a repudiationg of natural selection but without the actual evidence. instead, it relies on generalizations (other complex things were designed, thus all complex things are designed).