Hi,
I’m just wondering if there is somewhere that I could ask some questions about Intelligent Design (and evolution, but from an Intelligent Design perspective) and get answers from people who are knowledgeable in ID. Maybe this forum is a good place, I don’t know much about this forum.
Thanks.
You are welcome to post questions about ID here. There are some people who are very knowledgeable, both from the proponent side and the critical side. You can add questions to this thread, or start a new thread for each question. New users are limited for like 24 hours in how many new threads they can start, but that limitation goes away.
Great! Thank you! 
I’ll probably start a new thread a little later. I know so little that I’ll probably have a lot of questions… But I’m interested.
Welcome to the forum. While this forum is more EC oriented, seeing ID from an outside perspective is always helpful.
If you are new to the conversation, this blog post discusses a good book to get started on. There are also a lot of other good blog articles on the main BioLogos page.
Sorry what is EC? The book looks good I’ll check it out! Is there somewhere you think would be a better place to get answers from Intelligent Design adherents?
“Evolutionary Creationism” … yeah I think there is a guide to all the acronyms floating around here somewhere. Basically, consider it synonymous with TE (Theistic evolution). It’s just the more preferred label around here as it emphasizes the basic creationist foundation of our beliefs … with the evolutionary descriptor of how it appears God created the diversity of life. TE makes it sound like the Evolution part is the foundation, with a mere “theistic” descriptor added on as an afterthought. And while a lot of detractors may like to characterize TEs that way, most of us don’t own that as the best or most accurate characterization of our priorities.
Here it is … something that someone (was that you, Phil? @jpm ) posted recently that will not only define these terms but even gives you the interesting “polar bear test”. I was fascinated enough, I bookmarked it.]
They don’t host an open forum. There used to be a number of ID people around at Peaceful Science. You could post in both places and see what happens.
Fun! I got Progressive Creationism 2 or Intelligent Design, but the latter fits me better.
I suggest the youtube channel “Is genesis history” it’s an excellent ressource on the subject of ID.
There used to be a bunch of ID advocates here on the forum. One of the main ID guys was even alowed to do a guest post here (while D. Falk was in charge).
ID is just creationism in a cheap tuxedo. They had their day in court (Kitzmiller) and even were invited to make their case at the American Museum of Natural History. So they did have a fair hearing.
Top site for discussion: (open forum)
https://uncommondescent.com/ - “Serving the Intelligent Design community” - can’t say it’s a place to spend much time at, but provides “news” (paid service by the Discovery Institute, meaning PR & propaganda for them) related to “science & faith” topics & issues. This is a place to ask low-level questions, at best due to the high distortion there, before moving on to higher and more edifying conversations.
Top blogs: (no questions allowed)
#1 - https://centerforintelligence.org/ 
- this is a “next generation” platform that goes far beyond the “creationism” of yesteryear. Artificial Intelligence included. Transhumanism attacked. Human exceptionalism defended, in line with Discovery Institute programs.
Voice of #1 - https://mindmatters.ai/ 
Discovery Institute (propaganda) blog: (no questions allowed)
http://evolutionnews.org/ - old school Intelligent Design promotion - highest traffic site among Discovery Institute Fellows and favorite of ID activists 
Discovery Institute YouTube page: (ask questions in comments to your heart’s content, or frustration with ID “theory”)
https://www.youtube.com/user/DiscoveryScienceNews - Do check out, while exercising caution with the “Science Uprising” series.
Salvo magazine: where several ID proponents or ex-Discovery Institute affiliates post - they made their own venue, since most mainstream outlets won’t publish their “theory” (no questions allowed)
Historical: http://arn.org/ - used to be an active forum for ID theory proponents, but not now.
This one shut down after a few years: 
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design - Wikipedia
p.s. ID theory is more like “neo-creationism” than “creationism”; it’s quite a different approach that doesn’t “start with Scripture”, as “creationism” usually does. Creation Science, of course, isn’t actually “science”. 
Safe travels in your exploring! 
ID has everything to do with creationism. They just have to be sneaky about references to God because they want to get into the science classroom. Just look at the edits done to “Of Pandas and People,” the ID textbook. This all came out in the Kitzmiller trial.
What do “the edits done to “Of Pandas and People”,” have to do with the suggestion that ID “theory” doesn’t “start with Scripture”? Did the edits to OPaP somehow “start with Scripture”? Creationism usually starts with a person’s interpretation of Scripture, does it not?
The Discovery Institute instead claims ID theory doesn’t “start with Scripture”. Are you suggesting they are lying or somehow hiding that they actually did/do “start ID theory with Scripture”?
When you replace the word “creator” with “intelligent designer” and “creationism” with “intelligent design,” what should we think?
That’s likely giving too much credit to one text & publisher as if it could speak for a movement & that OPaP somehow also covers multiple other attempts create a clear scientific theory of ID. Nevertheless, it isn’t worth arguing that there is at least some “continuity” between ideas used by ID theory people & that used by creationists, and that some of the people are the same.
It’s like some people think being a graduated creationist turns them into an IDist, whilst other people think a graduated creationist becomes a EC/TE.
BioLogos “Common Questions” section made an effort to distinguish “creationism” and 'ID theory". That makes sense to me too.
What is the scientific theory of ID? Have the people involved made any progress?
Edits were made to try to hide the fact they started with Scripture. If you haven’t read much on this topic Wikipedia has a good overview of the history of the book.
And from that page
They did a global edit to change creationist to design proponents but missed up this one. As if a simple comparison of the texts wouldn’t show the same thing. They don’t like to admit it but ID was started as a way to get creationism back in the public schools. I can’t say if they have or haven’t changed much since then.
Well, I’ve read up on the case some time ago, but I haven’t read the textbook itself, so perhaps I missed something important here. Or perhaps you’re reading things into what I’m writing that I don’t intend, or perhaps misunderstood. Let’s keep both options alive, ok?
You seem confident that OPaP “started with Scripture.” Ok, then, could you please specify “which Scripture” was used in promoting “Intelligent Design” theory in OPaP? The research has dug up the edits, right? I’d just like to restrict my interest in case you’d like to stick with the “started with Scripture” part because it doesn’t seem to me that Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen, though motivated by Scripture, certainly, yes, did not “start with Scripture” when they "formulated’ (that’s debatable) their earliest known “modern theory of Intelligent Design”. But it could be that Davis & Kenyon (eds. Thaxton, Dembski, Wells) indeed “started with Scripture”. I’ve just never heard which verses.
You seem to be saying “ID theory started with Scripture.” It does not seem to me that is accurate or true history, though it makes an obvious rhetorical device when challenging ID people. Please list which Scripture verses ID theory started with. That way, this will be sorted out for the record.
“ID was started as a way to get creationism back in the public schools.”
That is not the case, though, if ID theory differs fundamentally from creationism, right? And that indeed appears to be how BioLogos Common Questions section sees it. Should I accept your version, or theirs?
The history of Discovery Institute & its motivations seem more multifaceted than you are suggesting with wikipedia backup. Johnson promoted ID theory as a “way to get naturalism out of the public schools”, as much as to get ID thinking into public schools. He was a lawyer, & that was part of the “wedge” that he used as an evangelical anti-Darwinist.
Aside from Johnson & the DI, or ID theory generally, meanwhile given the naturalism vs. theism spectrum, it seems to make sense to allow for some voices among evangelicals against naturalism, even if they support limiting natural sciences to using methods that study nature only. Anti-naturalism seems to be pro-theism in many peoples’ philosophical approaches these days. I wonder what the ratios are on this spectrum of ideas at BioLogos.
I think one of the tenets of ID is that it proclaims that it isn’t rooted in ‘cdesign propentistism’ but rather it stems from a pure evaluation of the data itself. I think that’s one of the million dollar questions where proponents of ID claim it’s a scientific position and opponents claim it’s obviously creationism in disguise.
TE is ID.
‘Francis Collins describes theistic evolution as the position that “evolution is real, but that it was set in motion by God”, and characterizes it as accepting “that evolution occurred as biologists describe it, but under the direction of God”.’
Despite:
‘Adherents of theistic evolution also have no trouble accepting other tenets of origin sciences with their religious beliefs. They include:
1.the prevailing cosmological model, with the universe coming into being about 13.8 billion years ago through quantum fluctuations;
2.the likelihood of a multiverse, in which our universe branched off from others, that explains our fine-tuned universe;
3.early chemical elements originating through stellar nucleosynthesis;
4.the solar nebular theory of the formation of the Solar System and planet Earth;
5.billions of years of geological history bringing forth the formation of plate tectonics, Earth’s oceans, and the atmosphere;
6.the origins of life through chemical processes and formation of multicellular life;
7.billions of years of biological evolution through natural mechanisms;
8.humans are also the byproduct of these natural processes;
9.human behavior, cognition, and consciousness are a result of these evolutionary mechanisms;
10.morality, religion, intelligence, emotions, politics, and other cultural and psychological facets are the result of the same evolutionary processes;
11.archaeology also provides large amounts of evidence for cultural evolution of early Homo sapiens, prior to the start of the Bronze Age and Iron Age;
12.Despite no supernatural intervention in any of these phenomena, humans are unique. The concern for the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the continuous search for God among all human cultures defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature.’.
Humans are as unique as every infinite other conscious species, the trillions in our universe alone.
At what point in the eternal 2. did God set evolution in motion? Or does He have to in every 1. or 4.? Despite not: 6.? How does He guide it? Despite not?
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