As I recall from reading the history of 'Darwinism', the concept of "intelligent design" predates the voyage of the Beagle, when the precursors to evolutionary theory were also in the wind. Granted, even then it was a thinly-disguised euphemism for creationism - but creationism was not only religious but scientific orthodoxy then - whereas it is neither, now, except among certain fringe groups. Intelligent design, then as now, was a philosphical compromise. From one of my sources (Boorstin's The Discoverers, I've learned of another, related cosmogeny of the Enlightenment: "The Chain of Being". At the time, of course, it wasn't meant in the biological sense of descent but as a categorization of "superior" compared to "inferior". The last of Stephen Jay Gould's collected essays I've had the chance to read, Full House, thoroughly debunked a different corollary to "intelligent design": the idea that there is a natural tendency toward complexity, intelligence, and ultimately: humans.

Balderdash, all of it.

Dan, you have a good point about "what-ifs" in the classroom - and when I think about it, dressing the creationist wolf in the sheep's clothing of "intelligent design" might be way to use it without raising anyone's hackles... except those of us who know our history, of course.

And you're also right about the pseudo-scifi angle - another thinly veiled attempt to disguise God as Designer... and it's Bad Science Fiction, too!

Precisely because: it's Bad Science.

Give 'em Hell, Dan!

Fox