User talk:Atethnekos/IDdraft

proposals

I'd like to propose some pretty big changes to this lead. A few reasons:

• Opening sentence. The opening bold term should be the article name or very near it.
• An opening sentence should try to get close to the core theme as quickly as possible.
• To have any chance of community agreement we need to move the movement up in the lead a bit.
• Wikilinks. Intelligence is the wl to the psychology-oriented article. After a discussion similar to one we have had on this article, philosophy was moved to nous. Also, another split I do not like is that a lot of philosophical material about nature was moved to Nature (philosophy). --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Very good work here. If adopted, this would be a large improvement in the article. I'd like to suggest being more specific about the time frame in the third sentence: "in recent decades" >> "since the 1980s"; and 1st sentence in 2nd paragraph: "should be explained with" >> "is best explained by". Plazak (talk) 13:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Atethnekos is the draft below good enough to move on to the draft page itself?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Plazak those changes seem ok to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

draft

Intelligent design is a term used to describe the claim that nature appears to be designed by an intelligence. The term is used in philosophy (especially before Darwin), theology, and debates about creationism. In recent decades, the term has become most strongly associated with the Intelligent Design Movement, a creationist activist group who have sought, largely unsuccessfully, to have their views taught in the science courses of public educational systems.

Claims for the existence of evidence for intelligent design are typically used to argue that the entire natural order, and especially life, should be explained with reference to some sort of intentional design by a diety, normally identified with God. These arguments for the existence of God are known collectively by terms such as the "Argument from Design", or "Teleological Argument". This type of argument is found in many different variants, including non-Christian variants, and variants which accept the existence of evolution or even see the process of evolution as part of the evidence for intelligent design. However, the most well-known variant in recent times, that of the Intelligent Design Movement, has now strongly associated the concept specifically with anti-Darwinian christian creationism that insists that the species of living things is fixed and itself designed, and can not be a result of evolution.

Modern scholars have rejected the intelligent design movement's type of position as an untenable position in natural science. Natural scientists instead seek to explain the entire natural world with reference to purely natural processes. Its large scale structure is to be explained by Big Bang cosmology, and the structure of life in particular is to be explained by evolution, following on from abiogenesis. The few natural scientists who seek to give scientific justification for intelligent design are fringe elements of the wider community, and their work is dismissed as pseudoscience.

There are also thinkers who argue for intelligent design outside of the disciplines of natural science. Their arguments are instead grounded in theological or metaphysical considerations. Such thinkers may employ, in particular, teleological arguments. Most philosophers now reject such arguments, however. Many credit the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume with having refuted them.

Title

As discussed recently at talk:intelligent design#Source searching, "Intelligent Design (teleology)" could be a good title for the article on this philosophical usage, as could "Intelligent Design (philosophy)" or perhaps even "argument from intelligent design". A simpler option would be "argument from design". However, before an article is created in main space, it has to be shown that this generic philosophical usage differs significantly from teleological argument. However, it's clearly bringing up useful sources, and even if a new article isn't justified, improvements can be merged into the teleological argument article and the intelligent design article. . . dave souza, talk 13:37, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Dave, indeed maybe material we are working on should end up at a different article, but if that is the case then of course we need to review the existence of all related articles, not just this one. The balance would then have to be found between too much redundancy, and creating a wikitruth where subjects we are not personally interested to write about gets filtered from view. I think there is significant and justifiable concern about the latter possibility.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:03, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Obviously some articles attract more attention than others, I've repeatedly drawn attention to teleological argument and added some content, but it could do with more information and a spring-cleaning. Do you think it would attract more attention with a different title that avoids confusing the generic term with the prevalent creationist usage of the phrase as a term for their pseudoscience? . . dave souza, talk 19:58, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, the most common term for the argument seems to be "Argument from design". It has alternative terms "Argument from intelligent design" and teleological argument". Secondly I believe we have another article for teleology? So yes this kind of thing could be discussed, but isn't that another subject? I still really don't see how we can justify "killing" our reporting of the term "intellectual design" by treating as uniquely associated with a current (weakening) political movement in one country, when it is clearly not, and when our sources are also not saying that it is. If someone comes to Wikipedia and wants to know what ID means as a term, where can they find that? They will currently be misled.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Andrew Lancaster. The current ID article suffers from serious WP:Systematic bias in that it treats ID only as the idea is used in the USA in the past 40 years. However much the idea may be misused currently by creationists in the USA, intelligent design has a long history covering many countries and centuries, and the Wikipedia ID article should reflect that. Plazak (talk) 21:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Andrew that the commonest name appears to be "Argument from design", and we can probably make a good case for moving teleological argument to that name: however, other editors are likely to know more than I do about the respective merits of these names. As for finding out what the phrase originally was used to indicate, we've already made that pretty clear in the intelligent design article and with additional sources becoming available, we can probably do more. Similarly, it may be a good idea to add something to the lead of teleological argument, and possibly set out historic uses of various terms for this general argument from design. By the way, there are ID proponents in several countries, though like all anti-evolution creationism it's most prevalent in the U.S. and [possibly] Turkey. . dave souza, talk 22:27, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes no doubt ID, as per the movement, is an internationally known name (but always strongly associated with America). From what I have seen BTW, in other countries the English term is used to refer to the movement. Just to recall (because I fear that a straw man is being built up) no one is questioning this, but we currently seem to have 3 articles about the one movement. And the question of whether the movement is the only significant user of this term is being discussed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

update

Just a heads up that I have adapted some material from this draft for use in the current teleological argument article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:27, 28 August 2013 (UTC)