Talk:Intelligent design/Archive 30

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This is an archive of past discussions about Intelligent design. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 25

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Bogus popups revert

Could someone explain to me the purpose of this revert of a copyedit I worked hard on 10 days ago? -Silence 07:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, Lets go step by step.

You removed wikilinks to universe and life. No defense there on my part I guess it is a matter of taste. Looking at it again there are plenty of wikilinks so deleting irrelevant wikilinks does no harm. My fault.
you replaced [Argument from design|intelligent cause] by [intelligent designer|intelligent cause] which in my opinion is not a good change. Intelligent cause here refers to the more broad nature of the intelligent cause such as the argument from design rather than the especific agent that does it.
You added evolution. IDers claim that ID is an alternative to evolution because they define evolution to include origin of life when in reality it does not. By using correct definition of evolution it is clear that ID really only challenges other origin of life theories.
Why remove "not as a valid scientific theory but " which is more descriptive?
experiment link. My fault you are right there.
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment link. I argue here that some people would like to follow the link to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment while other will like to go directly to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or for that matter to both. For example I am Spanish and my knowledge of the US Constitution is not that good. So I get a better undertanding of the issue by reading both articles and I guess other users will feel the same.
Intelligent design's to The. Small change that to me looks more encyclopedic.
"signs of intelligence" is redundant as a paragraph above already uses the term. So it is better to refer to "sign" alone IMHO.
the rest of the changes wich I believe are a couple of corrections in spelling and wikilinks where reverted due to unattentiveness for my part. Sorry.

I hope this explains my revert.--LexCorp 12:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, links to such broad articles are not useful here, at least in the very beginning of the article. It makes the first sentence too link-crowded, thus attracting the eye's attention away from genuinely vital links on specifically relevant topics.
You are incorrect in assuming that [[argument from design|intelligent cause]] is preferable to [[intelligent designer|intelligent cause]] for two reasons. First, most obviously, argument from design is just a redirect to teleological argument, and there's no reason to link to a redirect here rather than the article itself. Second, most importantly, it is misleading to link to a tangentially-related subject matter when clearly what's actually being discussed in the sentence in question is not the "argument from design", but the intelligence that caused the design: the intelligent cause/intelligent designer. Remember that one of the most important principles in wikilinking is the "principle of least surprise": we should always avoid linking to an article that will confuse or surprise users who click on the sentence in question, and without a doubt that applies to a link to teleological argument from the phrase "intelligent cause", since anyone clicking a link would expect information about the cause itself (and the article for that is at intelligent designer), not about a group of arguments that are closely related to intelligent design in general.
That is your personal belief. I agree with it, but treating it as fact is inappropriate when 100% of all intelligent designers treat their belief system as a dispute over evolution, not over the origin of life. Misrepresenting what they themselves focus on doing (which is challenging evolution, even if they're going about it the wrong way by focusing on the related, but distinct, topic of the origin of life) is not remotely useful for helping people understand what the intelligent design movement actually beliefs and focuses on.
Please reread the entire lead paragraph, both your version and mine. I spent over and hour reading over both to carefully check for errors and redundancies in the overall flow of the paragraph. You apparently haven't noticed that the word "theory" is used five times in the intro in your version, and linked to twice—and, even worse, the word "scientific" is used twelve times in the intro alone, including in several places where it's not necessary, and twice in the sentence in question ("scientific community views intelligent design not as a valid scientific theory")—that's just plain bad prose, and there's no other way of putting it. The reason that I removed that particular line is simply because it was 100% unnecessary: it was fluff, it didn't clarify anything that was unclear and just added unnecessarily wasted time and energy between the beginning and end of the sentence in question. Within that paragraph, we had already made the point that "An overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design as pseudoscience"; to go on about scientific theories, which had already been touched on in the first paragraph, would be entirely redundant.
Yep. I checked every single link in the lead to ensure that it went to a real article (rather than a redirect), and replaced it with one where it didn't. Time-consuming, but worth it.
I don't really care. Link to those articles however you prefer. I was simply linking to a more accurate title for the specific article in question (Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, not just Establishment Clause); it doesn't make a significant difference.
I'm afraid that you are 100%, absolutely incorrect here. Please reread the sentences in question. "The" doesn't make the statement "more encyclopedic" here, it only makes it more ambiguous. It is also poor grammar, based on the context (start of a pargraph and new topic, and no in-sentence clues as to what "The" refers to, making it even worse than if you'd just used "Their").
I'm fine with that. Merely trying to avoid ambiguity. But in this case, unlike the previous one, the referent is made clear, and there is a valid reason not to repeat the word (whereas there is no reason not to repeat "intelligent design" in the aforementioned paragraph).
So do I have to redo them all? -Silence 12:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
1. I'd suggest, on the topic of origin of life, that a NPOV rewrite could resolve this. Ie., we can note that the official definition of what the theory of evolution is does not include an origin theory, and we can also note that however many ID proponents seem to feel evolution does speak to the question of origins. Ie., as in all POV disputes, we simply note what each side says/believes. Then the readers can realize for themselves that many IDer's don't even know exactly what they're discussing, without our having to point it out, which would be crossing the line. Kasreyn 02:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that that would be very useful information to have, and have well-referenced, in the article. However, I still think that for the lead, which should be as short and concise as possible, simply stating "evolution and the origin of life" is completely sufficient and satisfactory and non-POVed in its vagueness, and more informative and concise than the alternatives. -Silence 11:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I cannot engage in discussions now due to real life issues. So feel free to make any changes.--LexCorp 11:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Research Program

The following material listed in "Peer Review" appears to cover research. Propose moving this to after "Peer review" with its own new subheading "Research Program" DLH 01:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

The debate over whether intelligent design produces new research, as any scientific field must, and has legitimately attempted to publish this research, is extremely heated. Both critics and advocates point to numerous examples to make their case. For instance, the Templeton Foundation, a former funder of the Discovery Institute and a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that they asked intelligent design proponents to submit proposals for actual research, but none were ever submitted. Charles L. Harper Jr., foundation vice president, said that "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review."[71] At the Kitzmiller trial the judge found that intelligent design features no scientific research or testing.

We hear an awful lot about peer review and the so called conspiracy to keep ID out of legitimate science journals. What articles have Dembski, Behe, et al submitted to legitimate, peer reviewed science journals that have been rejected? Has Dembski/et al ever said "I submitted X to J only to have it rejected? I know Dembski has fgone on record saying he has no desire to submit anything for peer review and I know Behe said under oath that doing any actual testing of his own theories would not be fruitful, so he has never induleged in any actual testing of ID theory. Have the IDists EVER done any testing or made any attempt to submit their ID related works to a legitimate, peer reviewed science journal? Mr Christopher 17:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

How could one test for the supernatural? Jim62sch 17:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Simple answer: no scientist would. See methodological naturalism. Science explicitly denies the possibility of supernatural causes for natural phenomena. If a person advocates a theory involving supernatural forces, fine, good for them. But it is by definition not scientific. Kasreyn 22:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Peer review is what is being discussed; research, such as it is, is what gets reviewed in peer review. FeloniousMonk 01:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

External Links

Restored two major links to ID Perspectives deleted by ScienceApologist alleging spam.

Research Intelligent Design is a Wiki systematically linking to ID materials. ID The Future is a web site/blog for major proponents of ID. DLH 11:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Assume good faith "To assume good faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. As we allow anyone to edit, it follows that we assume that most people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it. . . . So, when you can reasonably assume that something is a well-intentioned error, correct it without just reverting it or labeling it as vandalism. When you disagree with someone, remember that they probably believe that they are helping the project."

This Wikipedia site allows very little material by ID proponents. The link to Research Intelligent Design provided to direct users to a wiki with a mission to give reference material on Intelligent Design. This is an effort to give some semblance of NPOV to this page.DLH 16:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

ScienceApologist deleted links alleging spam without discussion. This appears to violate Wiki Policy of "Assume Good Faith". I have provided further discussion deleting my previous description of ScienceApologist.DLH 16:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

The major contributors for ID The Future are Michael Behe, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Cornelius Hunter, Steve Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Jonathan Wells, and Jonathan Witt. That appears to be as stellar a list of major ID proponents as will be found anywhere. These clearly represent the minority view on ID. DLH 16:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

This article has 91 footnotes. Any statements made by these proponents which are germaine are cited in the footnotes section. The ID position is a minority position; adding spamlinks in some misguided effort to provide "balance" is actually undue weight towards a vansihly small minority position. You cite AGF yet all SA did was state in his summary why the additions were being reverted. Your accusation of vandalism is a different, and far more serious, matter. Step back and consider your actions; this is not the pot calling the kettle black but rather the pot calling the shiny new saucepan black. KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I had already withdrawn my vandalism accusation. ScienceApologist claims it is "spam" without justification or discussion. You also reverted my edits without discussion. See Wiki Policy: "Reverting a good-faith edit may send the message that "I think your edit was no better than vandalism and doesn't deserve even the courtesy of an explanatory edit summary." It is a slap in the face to a good-faith editor. If you use the rollback feature for anything other than vandalism or for reverting yourself, be sure to leave an explanation on the article talk page, or on the talk page of the user whose edit(s) you reverted." Twelve reverts in a row suggest that no allowance at all is being given that I am attempting a "good-faith edit".

DLH 17:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree completely with KC. Undue weight is very clear on this. We no more need a "balance" of pro-ID links here than we need a "balance" of pro-Flat Earth links at Flat Earth. It would be a different story, IMO, at the article on Creationism, because Creationism acknowledges that it is a religious belief. Intelligent Design chooses to cast itself as science instead. What I keep trying to point out to DLH is that, by getting in the ring with science, it is therefore both valid and appropriate that ID be criticized from a scientific viewpoint. And, not surprisingly, the (vast) majority scientific viewpoint is that ID is a crock. Kasreyn 17:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

This page is supposedly to explain the minority position of "Intelligent Design." Yet it already lists 13 "Non-ID" (effectively anti-ID) to 6 ID links. Wiki policy is to clearly present BOTH the minority and majority positions. Considering the strong anti ID tone of this article, it is important to provide ID links where users can find complementary information and discussion. Just because you support the majority position does not justify reverting minority position links.DLH 18:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Asked for page protection for this section to stop this edit war. Three reverts already today.DLH 18:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Where's the beef?

(Camera pans to host at center stage: Announcer, in exuberant voice: "It’s time to playyyy: 'What's my POV'", "Brought to you by the makers of Gene gun")

(Curtain opens: "And, behind Door Number One... "

([1]) ([2]) ([3]) ([4]) ([5]).

It has been this way from the very first edit, hasn't it? This quest to impose a particular POV on these related subjects of the creation-evolution debate is the cause of these reverts. The three-revert rule (WP:3RR) applies only to sole editors, not multiple editors seeking to defend amply debated and well-considered consensus. .... Kenosis 18:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

There appear to be de facto coordinated effort to impose an anti-ID "majority" viewpoint and using multiple persons to get around the 3revert rule. I have had 14 reverts in a row. That does not appear to be allowing for ANY "good faith effort."DLH 19:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

How can an effort be de facto coordinated? If it's consciously coordinated, then it's coordinated. If it's not consciously coordinated, how is it coordinated at all? I would suggest that to find your error you need look no farther than the quote marks you placed around the word majority. ID is a scientific issue, and there is a clear scientific majority against it. Kasreyn 19:53, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the word DLH might hae been looking for was "consensus". As a side note, I find it rather humourous that a project that does not allow "weasel words" has such a wiggly and subjective policy as AGF, which is prone to abuse and at a certain level, primarily that of its implementation and invocation, is very much at odds with other policies. An editor makes a highly POV or inaccurate edit (usually in violation of WP:V, WP:NPOV or other policies), then when it is reverted cries "good faith, good faith, good faith!" without ever once considering the nature of the reverted edt or the simple fact that the editor doing the reverting was acting in good faith.

Also, I think DLH misses the the mark regarding the presentation of what is clearly a minority viewpoint, and suggest that he or she read Undue weight. Jim62sch 17:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with DLH that those two links, particularly ID the Future, are significant and should be included. The idea that "Any statements made by these proponents which are germaine are cited in the footnotes section" seemed pretty far off the mark. Obviously, there is much more to the topic of ID than is included in this article. The point of a Wikipedia article is to distill the most important parts into a coherent, balanced story. The point of the external links is to allow readers to get further details, often from non-neutral and/or less notable points of view that don't quite make the article. While many of the links that people try to add are linkspam, I think these links are appropriate.--ragesoss 18:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Look, I have no problem with the inclusion of these should a consensus develop on it. In fact, though, one of these is linkspam to a blog (ID The Future) and should be excluded because it's a blog. The other is a rather interesting and increasingly well developed POV link (Joseph C. Campana's ID Wiki at Research Intelligent Design Wiki). If it's the consensus that this second link should be included, I'll back it – either way is fine by me. ... Kenosis 20:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I see Wiki pages on how to make cites, and not to have Blogs on Wiki. HOwever, I find no discussion about whether or not to link to major blogs. Anyone else have any directions to such policy?DLH 00:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Under External Links I found the following:

Blogs, social networking sites (such as MySpace) and forums should generally not be linked to. Although there are exceptions, such as when the article is about, or closely related to, the website itself, or if the website is of particularly high standard. I believe the following two apply and that [ID the Future] fulfills these two well.

What the article is about.
Website is of particularly high standard.

What other comments?DLH 00:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

This article is not about the blog itself, nor does the blog meet the "Website is of particularly high standard" criterion. Campana's piece is something I need to think about before offering an opinion - at this point I'm neither in opposition to or supportive of its inclusion. Jim62sch 17:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

A pro-ID blog run by Discovery Institute fellows will be notable enough to merit mention here, being that ID and the conflict around is largely a product of the Institute, so ID Future is fine to include. But ResearchID.org, a privately-run pro-ID wiki, is largely the product of one individual, Joseph Campanga, a former Wikipedia editor (JosephCCampana (talk · contribs)). ResearchID.org contains his summarizations or interpretations of leading ID proponents arguments. It's not a prominent player on the ID stage, and so does not merit mention in the article; there are much more prominent and influentional websites that come before it. FeloniousMonk 02:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

One less link?

User:CloseEncounters seems to be determined to remove Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture and refer it to Discovery Institute (Hub of the intelligent design movement): they're both the DI, but wearing different hats on different home pages. Other than alerting readers to CSC being DI, was there a reason for the two links? ..dave souza, talk 18:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

To show the duplicitous nature of DI and ID. Jim62sch 18:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it appears CE and DLH are interested only in promoting ID, not contributing positively to the greater wikipedia project, so I'd expect that. FeloniousMonk 01:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand the Wikipedia community expects: 5 pillars policy including --- Assume good faith from others. Be open, welcoming, and inclusive. Strive for accuracy, verifiability, and a neutral point of view. --- I am trying to help towards that. Thanks for the welcome.DLH 01:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

You've promoted the ID POV to the exclusion of all others since you've arrived, so I shouldn't be surprised. Assume good faith is not a suicide pact. FeloniousMonk 02:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Just trying to provide some NPOV balance. From the text and discussions there seem to be plenty of "Non-ID" advocates around. There is an ancient proverb: The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him. Proverbs 18:17 Someone has to provide some peer review here to keep the presentation honest:)DLH 02:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The discovery.org links were duplicate links; I consolidated the two. FeloniousMonk is deleting a legitimate link to a newly launched site, www.ReasearchID.org, the launch of which was announced at www.evolutionnews.org on June 24th. The site is "Currently collaborating on about 67 research applications of intelligent design." This is an exceptional new resource, and it is completely wrong to censor it from readers interested in the development of ID; there is no good reason for FeloniousMonk's deletion. Secondly, FeloniousMonk deleted Michael Behe's well-written and published response to the Kitzmiller decision while permitting a non-scientist's response (Kitzmiller: An Intelligent Ruling On Intelligent Design), not to mention a link to the anti-ID opinion of Judge Jones. In other words, FeloniousMonk allows ID opponents to respond to the ruling, but does not allow ID supporters to respond to the ruling. This is a blatant double standard that should not be tolerated on Wikipedia, which purports to strive for neutral treatment.

--CloseEncounters 02:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

If you're interested in genuinely improving the article and not promoting a particular viewpoint you'd be fixing the CSC link instead of deleting it.

ID Future is a notable and prominent site and should be included. But as I said above, ResearchID.org is a private pro-ID wiki run by one individual, Joseph Campanga, a former Wikipedia editor (JosephCCampana (talk · contribs)). It only contains his summarizations or interpretations of leading ID proponents arguments. It's not notable enough to merit mention here.

You really need to stop edit warring here, you've already violated 3RR 12 times in the last 24 hours and will be blocked if you continue. FeloniousMonk 02:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

That is a poor categorization from a superficial look at the site. ResearchIntelligentDesign.org is a Wiki for the ID community to collect ID materials and links (without being continually deleted by the likes of FelloniusMonk). This edit war interaction shows all the more why it is an important link to include.DLH 02:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It's factual. The burden of proof is on you to prove it's not. FeloniousMonk 03:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

FeloniousMonk Please review the very high frequency of your reverts and deletes. If the shoe fits wear it. DLH 02:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I abide by WP:3RR and don't generally make a habit of reverting the same article 12 times in one day as does CE. FeloniousMonk 03:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

CloseEncounters - Please create a section if needed, and add your discussion on reasons for changes. Most of the present 'editors' here appear to delete all changees made directly without extensive discussion etc. etc. DLH 02:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

FM, a question for you arising from more than mere curiosity: what type of "proof" would be required to include the link to ResearchID.org on the 'Intelligent Design' Wikipedia article? -- Joseph C. Campana 19:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Dembski and Behe as active editors of ResearchID.org. Barring that, Dembski and Behe or other leading ID proponents repeatedly citing ResearchID.org as source. Failing there, significant independant media coverage of ResearchID.org may qualify it, but it would have to be some signifcant and extensive coverage.

Right now there are 67 registered users at ResearchID.org. Of those, fewer than ten are the most active contributors, with the wiki's founder, you being the most active by far [6]. The work of one individual and his 10 or so occasional helpers does not make ResearchID.org a significant or notable source on ID in and of itself. FeloniousMonk 20:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

FM, thank you for your response. I think these criteria are fair and it is true that we do not meet any of them yet. I hope to fulfill one, if not all of them, at a future date. At some point, I may return to inquire on your definitions of "active editors," "repeatedly cited," and "significant or notable." Again, I appreciate your very prompt response. Regards, Joseph C. Campana.

Improbable versus impossible events

Added See also link to Universal probability bound that provides a mathematical basis for addressing the Improbable versus impossible events issues and is a core ID argument.DLH 02:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I see that that link may have gotten caught in the morass of changes and reverts. I personally will not oppose its inclusion. Disclaimer: Opinions of other editors may differ depending on your location in the minefield. ... Kenosis 22:36, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...I'd have to think a spell...actually, though, DLH, given that Dembski defined it to support his forgone conclusion, it doesn't "prove" anything, it's just bad math...but, since ID is bad science (or really, no science at all), maybe it should be joined by bad math. Maybe. Hmmmm... Jim62sch 23:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It's only marginally relevant here. Better placed at specified complexity if it's not there already. FeloniousMonk 23:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Template placement

Doesn't it make more sense to have the more specifically relevant template in a more prominent position than the more generally relevant template? I switched the placement of the two templates only because the Intelligent Design series of articles, for obvious reasons, is more relevant to our Intelligent design article than the Creationism series of articles: both series are relevant, but the one specifically named after this page is the one we should use at the top of the article. For the exact same reason, the top of the Jesus article uses the template for the "Jesus" series of articles, and the template for the "Christianity" series of articles is lower-down on the page. -Silence 02:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the Creationism template being on top for early two years now, I'd think that subcategories always follow their parent categories, hence: Creationism (category) --> intelligent design (type). FeloniousMonk 02:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This is not a category, this is a template. Templates do not go, on an article page, from "top-level hierarchy" to "bottom-level hierarchy" as one scrolls from the top to the bottom of an article: that would be horrendously inefficient and poorly-designed. People who had just arrived at the "Botany" article, for example, would have to wade through first a "Science" template, then a "Biology" one, then finally get to the template that's actually relevant to the article, the "Botany" listing! (Even though, obviously, a "Botany" template or an image is what should adorn the top of the article, since that's the most immediately relevant and significant topic.)

Moreover, although I didn't want to have to get into this issue, Intelligent Design advocates dispute whether ID is a form of Creationism or not; the only motivation for keeping the template at the top of the page (when it would work just as well slightly lower in the article) is to go out of our way to snub them, in this case at the expense of encyclopedic value. Moreover, the intro to "intelligent design" nowhere mentions "creationism". Neither does the "Intelligent design in summary" section. Indeed, the word creationism is only mentioned six times in the entire article text! And "we should keep it this way because it's always been this way" is a terribly weak argument; nothing on Wikipedia would ever improve if we truly cared more about tradition than utility to the reader.

I'm not arguing for the removal of the creationism template, merely for the placement of an even more blatantly relevant template (the ID one) in the most prominent position in the article, so that users who come here looking for intelligent design articles will be immediately given the most benefit possible—if someone was looking specifically for a listing of creationism topics, they would have searched for "creationism", of course. -Silence 03:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand the difference between templates and categories on Wikipedia; I meant category in the general sense.

Well, I'm glad to see you're not arguing for the removal of the creationism template, since ID is by definition and necessity a type of creationism, something that is apparent when the article is read. If it needs to be better spelled out it can easily be added, there's no shortage of supporting cites available for that addition.

If you're going to stand on argument of "utility" or "benefit" for the placement of the Creationism of ID templates, favoring ID over Creationism strikes me as arbitrary since most ID enthusiasts coming to this article are creationists by definition and necessity again. FeloniousMonk 03:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

"Favoring ID over Creationism" in general would be arbitrary—there's no reason to place the ID template above the creationism one in ID/creationism articles that are primarily creationism-related. But favoring ID over creationism in the ID article isn't arbitrary, it's just common sense. Not putting the ID template on the top of the article just because ID is a type of creationism (which, again, IDers themselves ardently dispute, though I don't want to get into that issue) would be like not putting the Scientology-articles template at the top of the Scientology article and instead putting a general "religion" template there because Scientology is a religion.

How broad a template is is largely irrelevant in a discussion of template placement: what matters is how directly relevant it is to the article in question (and therefore how useful it will be to people just coming to the article), and the Intelligent Design template is clearly, inherently 100% relevant to the Intelligent design article, which makes it a better choice for the top of the article even if creationism is 99% relevant to the article (and it's probably closer to 75%, since there are noteworthy differences between the two movements: creationism is more explicitly religious, ID is more pseudoscientific). Also, the intelligent design article is written for the general public, not for "ID enthusiasts" (by which you seem to mean "ID believers"), so your above argument is a red herring. -Silence 06:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

In an attempt to compromise, I've restored the ID template to the top of the page, but added a link to creationism at the very top of that template ({{Intelligent Design}}). If the view that ID is a type of creationism is as uncontroversial as you claim it is, then there should be no problem whatsoever with linking to creationism in the ID template. And now we get to actually start the ID article with links to ID-related topics! Much better, ne? -Silence 09:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence, regarding your revert: no consensus was reached here. FM merely agreed that the ID template might be of value in the article. It may be, but not at the top. Additionally, when responding, let's try not to write pseudo-doctoral theses, shall we.

As for your purported compromise -- it's no compromise. Since you are attempting to change what we have already agreed upon here, I'm reverting once again. Try to gain consensus for your change before you make further changes.

In addition, the wholesale changes you made to other sections of the article are unsupported. Jim62sch 10:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with keeping the creationsm template first and the ID template second. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 14:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I find it rather curious that three different people have endorsed a certain template placement without yet having actually explained their basis or justification in any way, shape, or form. Surely there is some reason to keep the status quo, hence your support for it? KimvdLinde and Jim62sch have both ignored the discussion entirely in favor of blind-support voting (in Jim62sch's case, accompanied by scornful and insulting bad-faith-assuming), and FeloniousMonk's explanations have been some of the flimsiest I've ever seen in my life, amounting to the fallacious "it's good because it's been there a while" and the patently false "broader, vaguely-relevant things must go higher than more specifically relevant things".

As a side-point, I've only been visiting this article for a short while, but purely from my experiences on this Talk page so far (which I expect, and hope, is quite inaccurate!), it's, ironically (and despite having a similar appreciation for science and references), almost exactly the opposite of the Talk:Evolution page: xenophobic (new people editing = changes must be bad!), ultraconservative (whatever's already in the article now must stay there forever!), hostile, unhelpful, unreasonable, dismissive, and completely uninterested in relevant discussion or the open exchange of ideas. It makes me sad. I hope this first impression is a false one, and the environment here is friendlier and more open than it's initially appeared. :/ Surely a little controversy isn't enough to burn away all the Wikilove. -Silence 14:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I follow the discussions at this page, but do not feel the need to add comments to every discussion. I think that an article should start with the general templates first before going into the more specific templates, just my opinion. As for your arguments, ID is not even pseudoscientific, and is just as religious as creationism. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 14:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I did what? "scornful and insulting bad-faith-assuming" -- it was probably more condescending than insulting. In any case, I note that you are indeed new to this page -- did you bother to read all the archives or just the FAC part? Other than the clever use of a template refering to the watchmaker analogy as the lead template, you've really not brought anything new to the page.Jim62sch 16:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Let's compromise: it was insultingly condescending. OK? :) Good job keeping it up, too. Whee. -Silence 17:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

So the Jesus article should start with a Religion template (and a History template?), then further down the page provide a Christianity template, then finally a Jesus template? Aren't we forgetting about practicality and accessibility in the midst of this arbitrary "most general goes at the top" idea?

Anyway, thanks for the reply to my comment. To respond: ID is certainly pseudoscientific, as it is "a body of alleged knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is portrayed as scientific but diverges substantially from the required standards for scientific work or is unsupported by sufficient scientific research"; and I did not state that ID is nonreligious: I stated that ID, unlike creationism, is not explicitly religious (though it doesn't always hide it well). -Silence 15:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This is the intelligent design article, not the Jesus article -- let's try to keep that in mind. Jim62sch 16:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The Jesus article is a completely random example. I also used a Botany example earlier. Objecting to my valid analogy on the grounds that the two articles are not exactly alike is missing the point of what an "analogy" is: it points out a comparable quality between two unlike things in order to illustrate a point. If the two things were alike, it wouldn't be an analogy, now would it? :/ You're ignoring the meat of the argument, in favor of the plate. Plates are unnutricious, sir. -Silence 17:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

reduce indent Meat: Kitzmiller decision -- ID is creationism. Dessert?

Complete and absolute non sequitur. Nobody in this entire discussion, myself included, has even once said "ID is not creationism". The argument is about whether or not a list of ID links is more relevant to ID than a list of Creationism links is to ID—which is about as silly as asking whether a list of Elvis Presley links is more relevant to Elvis Presley than a list of rock & roll links. It's blatantly obvious. Having the ID template at the top is both more useful to readers (since otherwise there's no major article on Wikipedia they can go to to immediately get to the ID template, and the "hub" ID forms betwee the entire ID series of articles is blocked off unnecessarily from easy "hopping" from one to another) and makes more sense layout-wise (since an ID-specific thing is inherently more relevant to ID than a corresponding Creationism thing, and the top of an article should be used for what's most specifically relevant, useful, and illustrative, not for a cheap opportunity to try to piss off IDers at the expense of encyclopedic usefulness). -Silence 03:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

If it were pseudoscience, there would not have been a victory in the Dover case based on the first amendment, because that amendment does not prohibite bad science. As for the templates, I make up my mind based on accesability, not how other articles do it, and could come to different conclusions for differetn articles, which is not a problem. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 15:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I think I see where the misunderstanding is. Pseudoscience means "fake science", not "bad science", KimvdLinde. The Greek prefix pseudo- means "false, counterfeit, fake". Pseudoscience isn't a type of science, it's nonscience masquerading as science. As for the templates, I, too, make up my mind based on accessiblity, not on how other articles do it, and would come to different conclusions for different articles—which is the main reason I came to the conclusion for this article that the template for the article itself (this article is still named "Intelligent design", right?) is more immediately relevant than a template for anything else. -Silence 15:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

reduce indent Dollars to donuts, Kim knows what pseudoscience is. In any case, you missed Kim's point: the US Courts don't rule that the Establishment Clause has been violated absent a tie to religion, hence, ID is creationism (religion) cast anew -- that's it's pseudoscience (and in Dembski's case, pseudo-math) is just one more problem it has. Jim62sch 17:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how anything you said implies that I missed Kim's point. I'd expect Kim to know what pseudoscience is, too, but the context and contents of the above statement make it sound like Kim's saying that "ID isn't pseudoscience because a court said it isn't science", which seems rather backwards. On the other hand, it's quite obvious (even painfully obvious?) that both you and Kim have completely missed my point, as demonstrated by the fact that you argued against my "creationism is more explicitly religious, ID is more pseudoscientific" statement by, essentially, agreeing with it. You pointed out examples of how ID is implicitly religious and pseudoscientific, which is exactly what I was saying: non-ID creationism is more explicit in its religiosity, and usually makes significantly less effort to try and give the false impression of being scientific, secular, etc. -Silence 17:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, so you value door number 3 more than what's behind door number 3 then? Jim62sch 21:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope. I'm just not ignorant to the existence of the door. If you'd rather walk face-first into it than perform the simple action of turning the handle and opening it, go for it. -Silence 03:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

And here I was trying to avoid the cliché about wrapping paper. Jim62sch 22:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

{{Intelligent Design}} looks pretty good to me; I think, considering this article is the main article of the series, it makes sense to increase the visibility of the most closely related articles with the template. Putting it as the top template would be best, in my opinion, although considering the resistance to change on this page, it might be less of a headache for everyone involved to just keep the Creationism template on the top and add the new one below.--ragesoss 05:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The ID template could be first. That would be fine and I would support this. I think the original choice for the creationism template first was for spatial reasons because the creationism template was longer than the ID template. However, it makes sense to have the ID template first on the ID page. --ScienceApologist 05:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. It makes quite a bit of sense to start the ID article with the ID template, if we're going to use the ID template on any pages at all! The arguments above for keeping the Creationism one at the top of the page (rather than a few inches lower, in the "Overview" section) seem extraordinarily weak and inconsistent, and more based on adherence to tradition ("creationism was around longer, so it goes on the top") and a poor understanding of template-placement standards and conventions ("the broader template goes above the more specific one, even if the more specific one is vastly more relevant to this article than the broader one"), rather than on solid reasoning. All of these arguments have been refuted above. Or at least, KimvdLinde's arguments ("an article should start with the general templates first") and FeloniousMonk's particularly weak arguments (it's been "on top for [n]early two years now" and "ID enthusiasts coming to this article are creationists") have all been effectively refuted; Jim62sch, the other supporter of the current template scheme, hasn't provided any arguments or rationale at all. ScienceApologist, Ragesoss, and myself, on the other hand, have clearly explained the simple reason to include the ID template first: this is the ID article! O_o; Not including the ID template at the top of the ID page because the Creationism template is "broader" would be like not including the Creationism template at the top of the Creationism page because the Theism template is "broader"; specific relevance, not generality, is the measure of how high-priority a template should be on an article page. That's what most benefits our readers, who should be our first priority, not our last. -Silence 07:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

SA, thanks for your input, although as I explain below (contary to Silence's assertion), I do not see what the template adds to the article.

Silence: never again do I want to hear you bitch about what anyone else writes. You seem to be intent on being confrontational and getting in digs wherever possible, which, since you are the person proposing changes, is rather stupid from a political standpoint (deal with the fact that Wiki, as a human endeavour, has it's own political dynamic). Additionally, misreprentation of fact and misrepresentation of an editor's statements is both foolish and a rather serious violation. You state that FM and I have failed to provide rationale or provided weak rational is disengenuous at best. To wit, [7], [8], [9], [10]. (Admittedly, I had been somewhat undecided on the issue, but no longer -- absolute no to placing the template at the top, and no to the template period.) Do not misrepresent what I write again, Silence.

Additionally, as I explained to you before as ID is a subset of Creationism it (ID) should be the second template. Your Theism analogy is a non-starter as the template, Template:Theism, does not say squat about Creationism.

As for this, "...most benefits our readers, who should be our first priority, not our last", I agree -- however, I don't see that you speak for our readers any more than does anyone else here, nor are you the arbiter of what is best for our readers. Jim62sch 10:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Jim, all I have done is pointed out that no strong rationale has been proposed for keeping the "creationism" template above the "ID" template, rather than vice versa; I have not made any attacks on any person, nor attempted to provoke any hostile argument, and your accusations to this effect I found rather ironic after almost every comment you have yet directed at me has been clearly weighed in such a way as to antagonize, insult, and goad to the greatest extent possible. I have no interest in fighting you; please find a more constructive way to express your hatred or anger, and keep it off of this Talk page. At the very least, if you feel the need for some reason to attack me, do it at User talk:Silence, where it is more relevant and will not get in the way of the good work people are trying to do here. Thank you, and pax tecum.
Note that the theism analogy is correct (the only real difference is that the Theism template doesn't have a link to "Creationism", which doesn't matter for the purposes of the analogy). Having a theism template on Creationism would only provide the information that creationism is theistic, nothing more. Likewise, having a creationism template on Intelligent Design only provides the information that ID is creationistic, nothing more. (And if that fact is so vitally important, it should be mentioned in the first paragraph of the article anyway, properly cited!) Note that this is not an argument against including the creationism template on intelligent design, nor even an argument for including the theism template on creationism. It is merely pointing out, correctly, that a theism template, despite being broader than the creationism one, is not more important to the creationism article than the creationism template is; and that, for the same reasons, despite creationism being broader than ID, the creationism template is less important to the ID article than the ID template is.
As for the links you provide, three are regarding the question of whether or not to include the template on the page (which is a rather strange question; there is as much reason to use an ID template on this page as there is to use a Creationism template on Creationism, as both provide valuable links to a cohesive series of significant articles), not the question of which template to place above the other. "while ID is a subset of Creationism, Creationism is not a subset of ID" is a non sequitur and inconsistent argument, but I did miss it (since it wasn't on this page)—thanks for catching that one, and I apologize for missing it the first time. Now we have the justifications from all three current proponents of the status quo, and can properly discern the holes in them. -Silence 11:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why the Creationism series-template is on top. Isn't this article called Intelligent Design, not Creationism? If the more general templates have to go on top, you might as well then put a Hypotheses series-template on top of the Creationism template, and then put an Ideas series template even before that, and then maybe even a All Stuff template before that. That doesn't make sense. ID page: ID template. Doing otherwise strikes me as just keeping the traditional layout for tradition's sake, no? D. G. 21:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

ID is the most notable type of creationism at the moment, giving {{creationism2}} prominent placement seems appropriate to me. I've questioned if {{Intelligent Design}} is even necessary here since the links it contains are already found in the article. FeloniousMonk 21:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Isn't "ID is the most notable type of creationism", on its own, a reason to mention ID prominently on the creationism page, not vice versa? "X is the most notable Y" is an assertion that X is significant in any discussion of Y, not necessarily that Y is significant in any discussion of X; that depends on other justifications.
Also, actually, not all of the links are found in the article (Intelligent design in politics is linked to solely within the template), and even several of the ones that are are rather out-of-the-way and hard to track down for an interested user, despite their importance. Yes, how many times and how prominently a link is featured in the article is relevant, but not as relevant of the question of how important the link is to the article: having two links to a centrally-important article like wedge strategy is vastly more worthwhile than having one to a tangentially-related article like Old Earth Creationism, for example.
And that's the reason why having both a creationism and ID template is a fine idea for this article, but having the creationism one above the ID one (rather than vice versa) is bizarre: why feature links to only quasi-relevant articles like modern geocentrism, omphalos (theology), and Islamic creationism more prominently and immediately than links to Discovery Institute, irreducible complexity, Teach the Controversy, etc.? You have to consider things from the perspective of someone completely new to the article, not just from the perspective of someone who's already thoroughly scanned over and reviewed the page: new readers will have no idea whatsoever that those links are to be found at various points in the article, or where they are in the overall layout.
Consequently, not only does having an ID template at or near the top not cause any inconvenience or trouble whatsoever, but it actually provides a huge benefit to new readers! This same line of reasoning is responsible for hundreds of other articles receiving similar treatment, including Christianity, History of Poland, Emotion, Scientology, and Creationism itself; the fact that a link is repeated elsewhere in the article is irrelevant if it's a sufficiently important link to merit linking to twice. A little redundancy for the editors is tolerable for the sake of a lot of utility for the readers. -Silence 22:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You've been angling for this change for weeks now. What the big deal? Why is it so important again? FeloniousMonk 22:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly? Because I'm a baby-eating creationistic religious fundamentalist zealot who wants to destroy the separation of church and state, turn the United States into a theocracy, and put all the scientists in concentration camps. :D

Come on, FM. What the heck do you want me to say here? My reason for pushing for this change is extraordinarily simple: it just makes sense to me. ID is itself; a template specifically about ID is more important to an ID-focused article than a template generally about Creationism, by the very nature of the interaction of topics and categories. I have seen hundreds of other articles with seriesbox templates, and, despite having seen a wide variety of silly errors, layout faux pas, and inconsistencies across the board on Wikipedia, have never seen anyone have any problem with the simple principle of putting the more specifically-relevant template in a more prominent position than the less specifically-relevant one before now.

It is an anomaly, and seemingly a completely arbitrary one; I have no problem with making exceptions to rules where they benefit the article, but this one doesn't seem to do that at all. And from the arguments I've heard for the status quo so far, I am thoroughly unconvinced that putting the creationism template above the ID one is in the article's best interests; its support seems to stem primarily from the fact that it's simply been around longer, with other, half-hearted justifications coming after the fact. -Silence 22:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

"Isn't "ID is the most notable type of creationism", on its own, a reason to mention ID prominently on the creationism page, not vice versa?" Not if disengenuously separating ID from its creationist roots in the mind of the public is an item on the agenda of ID proponents, it isn't. We're not here to endorse or assist a particular viewpoint, particularly considering what NPOV has to say about handling pseudoscience. FeloniousMonk 22:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Then mention creationism (or better yet, neo-creationism, a term specifically created as a label for ID and related movements) in the first paragraph of the intelligent design article. I'll support you 1000% in doing so. Come on. It's obviously important, as you've stated; why wait until 3/4 of the way down the article (in the "movement" section) to mention it? At the very least state it explicitly in the "Overview" section. Why use coy templates for what would be better conveyed through well-referenced, clear, cogent textual explanations? I support, fully, clearly pointing out to our readers that ID is a fundamentally creationistic concept and movement. I simply want to do it right, and not let our zeal to point such facts out get in the way of organizational effectiveness and utility—i.e., letting our desire to make it blatantly obvious that ID is creationism get in the way of the simple organizational principle that a more centrally relevant list of links in a box is a better choice for the top of the article than a more tangentially relevant list of links in a box. -Silence 22:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I think the ID Template on any of pages it lists is completely unnecessary. ID is a subset of Creationism and the Creationism template works fine not only in pointing people who wish to know more about the subject to ID, but also in sending people interested in ID to other forms of creationism. Honestly, I think if there must be an ID template, it should have a link at the top pointing back to Creationism, the major category to which it belongs. --Jmast7 15:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, ID is a subset of Creationism, but it is the largest subset of creationism by far. There is no reason not to have templates for both, to make navigating the relevant pages easier on users, especially since we aren't using illustrative images for the top corner of the article (or for just about anywhere in any of the articles in the ID series at all).
By the way, I agree with you about the link to creationism (or at least neo-creationism) at the top of the ID template. I myself tried to add such a link, but was reverted by Guettarda and FeloniousMonk without any substantial explanation or justification, just with an insulting and unjustified accusation of bad faith. Perhaps you should try to reason with them.
I find it bizarre that a group of editors so adamant about making it clear that ID is a form of Creationism are so completely unwilling to discuss the possibility of making such things clear on the top of the ID template or in the text of the article's lead and/or intro; it seems utterly paradoxical to be strongly in support of an ambiguous, unexplained indicator of ID's Creationistic origins and strongly opposed to an unambiguous and clear (and, in the case of a mentioning of this fact in the lead or overview, able to be properly referenced) indicator of ID's Creationistic origins. If it is so important, it shouldn't be left until halfway down the article. -Silence 18:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Must say that my considered preference is to have the ID template with a creationism link at the top, with the creationism template immediately below it rather than at the head of the first section. This quickly shows the various linked ramifications of ID, with the less relevant varieties of creationism underneath, and would look well at all the ID articles. ..dave souza, talk 18:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

An ID template with Creationism would be fine with me, but right now all the other entries in the series look incredibly cluttered with both ID and Creationism templates awkwardly stacked on top of each other. Everything fits OK into the ID page because the entry is so long, but the others look terrible. How about adding a Creationism link in the ID template, keeping both templates on the main ID page, then simply having the ID template on all the ID subset categories (The DI, IC, Wedge Strategy and such)? Thanks for the quick feedback - Cheers! --Jmast7 23:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Expanding lead section slightly

The current lead section is very well-referenced, decently neutral, and accurate. A good job overall. However, in my opinion, it is not quite as balanced or explanatory as it could, and should, be. a significant problem is that it spends too little time actually presenting the basic ideas behind the concept of "intelligent design": only a sentence or two actually discuss the concept, and then two paragraphs are spent on its repurcussions and criticism—before most people will probably really understand what IDers advocate.

Obviously we shouldn't go into too much detail in the lead (especially since we have an "overview" section just below for explaining a lot of that), but a little expansion of the first paragraph wouldn't hurt. (And, if the first paragraph was expanded by about 50%, it would give us a good reason to merge the second two paragraphs into one, which I think is merited by their shortness and related scope.) I noticed, reading over this article's last FAC, that a large portion of the "oppose" votes were concerned that the article spent too much time on negative criticism and commentary, relative to time spent on actually describing the concept of "intelligent design" itself. It's no wonder that they would think that, when two-thirds of our lead section discusses criticism of and opposition to the movement, not the actual beliefs or activities or what-have-you of the IDers themselves! I have no problem with us including a significant amount of ID-criticism in the lead, since that is a major, and noteworthy, aspect of the movement (if not of the belief system itself...), but if we can chance that 1/3 ratio to 1/2 (or at least 2/5), it should allay a significant amount of the potential "too much negative commentary, not enough direct description" criticism.

I have no strong opinions on what, specifically, we should add to the first paragraph, as long as it is broad, well-referenced, and informative enough, but the best suggestions I can think of include adding a mentioning of the intelligent design movement, or possibly of some closely-related topics (such as the teleological argument or creationism). -Silence 09:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The intro is fine as it stands; accurate, balanced and well-supported.

The current balance struck in the article represents a careful effort to adhere to the Undue Weight clause of the NPOV policy which states: "NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views..." ID proponents say ID a scientific theory. The scientific community says no it's not. Since ID proponents are an extreme minority within the scientific community, something like less than 1%, the article is rather generous in the amount of weight it grants ID. Dictating a percentage of the article dedicated to criticism for "balance" as you propose is arbitrary; any accurate, complete and NPOV article will cover all significant viewpoints in whatever amount their significance demands.

You're mistaken in relying on the comments in the failed FAC. As a review of the FAC reveals, this article's FAC was scuttled by a few known ideologues and a good number of single-purpose accounts raising bad faith objections; knowingly tendentious and specious viewpoints. This will always be the case with this article. As long as those promoting the ID strategy of spinning facts edit Wikipedia, no genuinely neutral treatment of the topic will be accepted as balanced or neutral by ID advocates here. Experience by long term contributors has shown that those who object will never be satisfied by anything other than a perfectly pro-ID article. Our aim is for a genuinely accurate and balanced article, and the wide recognition outside of Wikipedia as such is proof enough the current article does that well. Just because ideological ax-grinders can scuttle its Featured Article status is no justification for sacrificing what we've achieved already.

Please seek and abide by consensus and not edit war over your proposed changes. FeloniousMonk 16:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Someone please request protection on this article to stop these various unconsensused mass edits? ... Kenosis 16:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Kenosis, my actual changes to the article are really just a large-scale copyedit, not a content change. I wasn't aware that prior consensus was required to even attempt to fix commas and clarify wordings. Is there a committee I have to go through to correct typos and fix wikilinks? :)

I'm also confused as to why you placed this request in this specific section. Nothing I wrote above has anything to do with any of the changes I made to the article; my proposal to slightly increase the amount of actual information about ID in the intro is entirely theoretical and long-term. Then again, I'm also confused as to why you didn't just ask me yourself, or point out some problem in any of my edits, if you wanted to discuss my recent copyedit... I thought protection was the last resort, not the first one? Odd. -Silence 16:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence, as you can readily see by looking through recent edits, there have within the last few days been numerous controversial and repeated POV edits (on both "sides" of the debate really). Sorry to see these all get tangled up together in a morass. No doubt your proposals will get properly parsed and sorted out, but given that there are many editors who've demonstrated continuing interest in this article it appears that it will take a bit of time. It would be much more feasible for the various editors to parse if each edit were implemented point-by-point with an edit summary attached to each. ... Kenosis 16:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, please read what I actually wrote above. You sound like you are responding to my suggestions on autopilot, blindly assuming that I am advocating that we remove any of the criticism from the intro (which I am explicitly not) and completely ignoring all of my actual suggestions, which are thought-out, 100% consistent with NPOV policy, and quite important for this article's future.

Secondly, please actually look at the edits I made to the article before you make wild assumptions and accusations regarding their nature. I have yet to make a single real content-related change to this article; my edits have been purely stylistic, grammatical, etc. consisting almost entirely of copyedits. My actual edits to this article have exactly nothing to do with my proposed changes above; I would not make such dramatic changes to an article like this without first heavily discussing the matter and achieving consensus (hence my making this thread). My changes to the article are almost without exception both obvious and minor.

Thirdly, please drop the patronizing attitude. I've read the NPOV policy page dozens of times before, and not a single thing I said above is even remotely close to contradicting any aspect of Wikipedia policy. I did not "rely" on any of the criticisms from the FAC (at least some of which were indeed valid), I simply referenced them. And my argument for making the intro a more balanced mix of description of the ID belief and movement, and criticism and reactions thereto, was based on utility to the reader (because providing a little more information on the beliefs/movement itself in the lead is worthwhile) and bringing the article more closely in line with NPOV (because NPOV says not to give undue weight to minority views in articles comparing different views on an issue, not to neglect adequately describing the actual topic of an article when that topic is heavily criticized), not on arbitrary percentages—I apologize if I gave that impression with the middle segment of my post. Thank you for your time. -Silence 16:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

When was the FAC? October 2005. This version was the FA candidate [11]. Since then the article has already been significantly rewritten incorporating what few good faith and relevant comments were made, so your attempt now is too late, overtaken by events. And considering the edits so far from you, I'm not convinced that you've a firm grasp on how undue weight applies to this topic and topic itself. You'd have gotten a lot further here had you used accurate edit summaries and sought consensus first. FeloniousMonk 16:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Again, don't assume I'm an idiot: I already realize that any high-traffic article is going to have been rewritten in the last 9 months. :P I did not base any of my comments on the FAC; I made my suggestion independently, then as an after-the-fact addition made note of the main issue brought up on the FAC. I wouldn't even have referenced the FAC if I hadn't thought that adding the tantalizing possibility of FAhood might impel others to more seriously consider my recommendation, giving an impetus not to assume that the status quo is wholely inerrant; if I'd known what scorn you apparently have for the FA voters, I would have realized it was counterproductive and not bothered. Live and learn..

Your comments are ridiculous, and again imply that you are profoundly unfamiliar not only with the edits I've made to this article, but also, oddly, with the post I made only a few inches above when I started this section. o_O; Nothing I said in my post is "too late"; you fixate on the fact that I made an offhand mentioning of a months-old FAC, completely ignoring the actual contents of my recommendation, which is really a useful "outsider's perspective" (the most important perspective for an encyclopedia!) from someone first reading the intro paragraphs: a typical outsider will correctly recognizing that, as I mentioned, the intro is "well-referenced, decently neutral, and accurate", but will find it unbalanced in that it spends too little time on actually explaining the belief system (and movement thereof) before it jumps into the critique. An outsider will not know or care that the current lead is a compromise that has been months in the making, requiring hard work and dedication from a variety of talented editors: what matters to readers is the result, not the process, and writing off this article's lead section's deficiency of balance just because the editors have Faith in it is counterproductive.

"And considering the edits so far from you, I'm not convinced that you've a firm grasp on how undue weight applies to this topic and topic itself." - This is a big accusation. Can you back it up with any substance? What about my edits has caused you to think that I don't know "how undue weight applies to this topic"? Have you even read my edits? It increasingly doesn't sound like you have, you merely assume that they must be poorly-balanced because you reverted them. :P

"You'd have gotten a lot further here had you used accurate edit summaries" - Every single edit I made had a 100% accurate edit summary, and I took pains (by spacing out my edits over several changes) to ensure that any user could very easily see every single individual change I made simply by using the "compare" tool. Again, your accusation is utterly baseless.

"and sought consensus first." - Routine (albeit thorough and expansive) copyedits do not require prior consensus. I would have gladly discussed any aspect of any of my edits which anyone objected to; instead, I was met only with blind mass-reverts and insinuated personal attacks. I'm still waiting to actually hear anyone say what it is about any of my edits that is so objectionable. Is correct comma usage a violation of NPOV? Is avoiding unnecessarily linking to redirects controversial? Is wording sentences in a clear and concise manner a sneaky, bad-faith maneuver? Amazing. -Silence 16:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence, I am unable to review all the points here at the moment. But I think you should know this. Some time ago (perhaps FeloniousMonk, ScienceApologist, or another long-term editor can give us a link) an agreement was made among many editors including those with pro, con and neutral views on the subject matter of ID. The agreement was, in essence, that the intro would consist of three brief paragraphs. The first would capsulate ID and who the proponents are; the second would summarize the position of the scientific community, and the third would summarize the current legal status of ID. If I am inaccurate in how I've represented this, could someone please correct it, or confirm it, perhaps provide a link to that archived discussion? ... Kenosis 20:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that accurately summarizes what was agreed upon here. It's in the archives, anyone who's actually interested can go find and read it. FeloniousMonk 21:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the information, Kenosis, but I could already deduce that from the way the intro is now. My point is that a more effective and useful summary for an article about intelligent design would spend more than two sentences in the intro on actually defining and explaining intelligent design itself! That is my only argument here: I have no problem whatsoever with the second two paragraphs, I simply feel that the first one should be longer, not because we should have a "balance" between pro-ID and anti-ID commentary (that would be silly and not helpful), but because we should have a healthy supply of actual description of ID and the ID movement before we jump into two full paragraphs of analysis, reactions, and criticism! I do not think that is a remotely unreasonable or odd suggestion, and I think most completely new users to the page, upon reading the current intro for the first time, would fully agree entirely with me that a slightly larger first paragraph, assuming it were just as well-referenced, informative, and neutral as the rest of the intro, would be highly beneficial both in terms of balance and in terms of informativeness. Just putting the thought out there. -Silence 03:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

We could do it in one: "God created eveything and we can prove it". Jim62sch 22:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

ID proponents and Disco instutite

Here at the evolution conference, there was a whole day symposium on the Dover case, and I asked one of the expert witnesses of the case about notable proponents not affiliated with the disco institute, and the answer by him was negative. There are not-affiliated proponents, but they have far less visibilty than the affiliated proponents. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 14:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

So there remains an arguable demarcation problem in delineating what is a "leading" proponent? What else is new. Suppose I were to say all the DI affilates were merely getting out in front of an already 2500-year-old position? Any real difference? I think not. Fact is, the DI affiliates merely latched onto an old idea, plopped a new name on it and added some additional pseudoscientific speculations that couldn't possibly be objectivly double-checked, then secretly agreed to a political plan to change the heart and minds of the next generation to protect them from, god forbid, METHODLOGICAL NATURALISM!. ... Kenosis 04:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, like, yeah. ;) Jim62sch 22:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

this article

is still a one-sided propagandaistic mess, good going folks--F.O.E. 04:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

By the standard of John 14:6, ID gets an "F". If you go by WWJD, at least be straight-up about Matthew 22:21, ID gets an "F". By the standard of methodological naturalism ID gets an "F". All these are POV's. Which standard(s) [choose one, or all of the above, or none of the above, or a write-in vote____________] is F.O.E. going by? Excuse me, I'm a bit PO'd right now. ... Kenosis 04:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I suppose the propganda would be better if it merely said, "God created everything, and Behe and Dumbski broke the Bible code that proves it". Jim62sch 22:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Problems at end of "controversy" section

(While I'm continuing to wait to hear any specific objections or criticisms of the copyedits I've made to the article (thus far, there have been none), I've continued work on the article at User:Silence/ID; as soon as someone explains what, exactly, is problematic with any of the edits so that the mess can be worked out through discussion, I'll return to making improvements to the article itself.)

In any case, while continuing to scan through the article, I came across the very first passage in the text which I've found to be significantly erroneous. At the end of the "Controversy" section (before the first subsection thereof), the referencing and clarity of the prose seems to take a sudden downward lurch in the last couple of paragraphs. Since this is a content-related issue, I decided to bring the problems up here:

"Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter," - This clause is misleading. It will cause readers to think that evolutionary theory is supposed to explain abiogenesis, but that it has tried and failed to. The reality of the matter is obviously quite different—abiogenesis and evolution are distinct occurrences, and evolutionary theory doesn't explain abiogenesis for the same reason gravitational theory doesn't explain the Big Bang. While copyediting, I thought initially to simply reword it to say "Even though evolutionary theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter,", thinking that the next clause would explain some IDer misconception that evolution and the origin of life are the same thing, but when I read on I found that the rest of the paragraph seems to address something entirely unrelated.
"intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically," - They cannot? Is this a command? To "infer" is "to conclude from evidence or premises; to reason from circumstance; to surmise". Inferences can be either good or bad, either valid or invalid; ID proponents can certainly "infer" that an intelligent designer is behind the non-understood parts of the process (and have been doing so for decades), they just can't logically or reasonably infer it (which probably requires a citation).
"since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred." - This is a different issue, related to the God of the gaps. If this paragraph is meant to discuss the IDer argument from ignorance, rather than to explain the common IDer misconception that evolutionary theory encompasses abiogenesis, then the beginning of the paragraph shouldn't mention abiogenesis at all. Instead, it should simply say "Even though there are certain aspects of abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, that remain unexplained or controversial among biochemists," or something similar. I think that's what the author of this paragraph intended to convey, anyway: it's meant to explain that assuming ID's correctness on the basis that we don't understand everything is fallacious (which I think is better-explained elsewhere in the article, and in irreducible complexity).
The subsequent "pyramid" analogy is acceptable, but somewhat weak. Analogies of this sort are often the poorest way of encyclopedically explaining something, because it is an absolute requirement that the reader already be familiar with the analogous topic (in this case, kooky theories about aliens building the pyramids), and, in this case, optimally, that the reader agree with the encyclopedia's assertion that the belief is bogus, etc. I suppose it's not a big deal, but eventually we should probably be able to link to an article explaining the whole pyramid mysticist thing, so the minority of people unfamiliar with the topic can quickly read up to catch up..
The paragraph after this is unreferenced, and makes a lot of sweeping generalizations. It also seems a bit POVed, in the sense that it sounds like subtle advocacy (especially in contrast with the much more critical paragraphs on ID): "Many religious people... support theistic evolution which does not conflict with scientific theories." Whether or not theistic evolution conflicts with scientific theories depends on your definition of "conflicts". By the same logic, "intelligent falling" (God, not gravity, is the cause of objects falling) conflicts with science, but "theistic gravity" (both God and gravity cause object to fall) does not. I can see good arguments being made for such a distinction, but I don't think Wikipedia should voice its own opinion on whether theistic evolution conflicts with scientific theories or not; a citation (or better yet, a quotation) would solve this problem. -Silence 07:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence, could you kindly number those entries to facilitate referencing them in discussion? The first you point out above ("Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter...") does not appear to me to be misleading on its face. ~~What is the proposed alternate language?.~~ Proposed replacement with "Even though evolutionary theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter" also seems OK to me. ... Kenosis 13:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

?? Number them? You mean replace my bullet-points with #s? OK... And, it most likely doesn't seem misleading to you because you aware of the fact that evolutionary theory and abiogenesis are two completely distinct biological theories, neither one dependant on the other. ID commonly conflates the two, assuming that the origin of life is just a part of evolutionary theory, but this isn't the case. Most people aren't aware of that: that's why it's an encyclopedia's job to clear such misconceptions up.
(Incidentally, this confusion of distinct concepts is why the article's intro used to not mention evolution at all, before I fixed it (though it's now been mass-reverted without explanation along with my other edits, so it'll have to be reinstated again when possible): because ID literature and activities are constantly presented as an attack on evolution, yet the actual idea of an intelligent designer being the cause of life is more relevant to the origin of life than to evolution; that's why creationism and evolution sometimes go hand-in-hand, as in theistic evolution, but you'll have a harder time finding "theistic abiogenesis" :) So someone misunderstood the fact that ID's attacks are more relevant to the origin of life than to its evolution, and improperly removed the much-needed evolution reference in the lead, even though the sentence in question is explicitly about what IDers claim ID is! The sentence begins, after all, with "Its leading proponents... say that intelligent design is...") -Silence 14:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

RE. #1: As I said, I don't see the current language as misleading, and also don't see how it would necessarily seem misleading to someone who's not familiar with the distinction. It's not misleading on its face because the language "evolution does not explain abiogenesis" makes no inference about whether evolution theory seeks to involve an explanation of origins as well as progressions. As I said, I do not see a problem with the words "evolution does not seek to explain", nor with "does not involve explanation of abiogenesis", nor with some other accurate way of saying it. But I'm just one editor. Thanks for numbering the issues; it makes it much easier to refer to them. ... Kenosis 23:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand the point Silence is making at #1, but I also agree with Kenosis that the existing content is not misleading. I have no objection either way. FeloniousMonk 23:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

RE. #2: ("Intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically.") The words "...cannot logically infer..." smacks of positivism. The words "...cannot reasonably infer..." may appear reasonable, but beg for argument about the term reasonable (to whom? Dembski? he obviously thinks such an inference is reasonable; Judge Jones? he obviously concluded it wasn't, etc. etc. ad nauseum with the same POVs that already permeate the discussion). The words "cannot properly infer", to try another phrase,may also be reasonable, but seems to me to beg yet further discussion.

RE #1, #2, #3 combined, all referring to components of one sentence. My conclusion, and please pardon me for jumping to it, is that there is one too many clauses in this sentence. As Silence already pointed out, that sentence must be taken in context of the entire paragraph which reads as follows. ... Kenosis 14:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. The inference that an intelligent designer (a god or an alien life force)^[1] created life on Earth has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids.^[2]^[3] In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable, and also violates the principle of parsimony. From a strictly empirical standpoint, one may list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques, but must admit ignorance about exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids. . . . 14:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The first sentence, incorporating Silence’s points #1, 2, 3 above, reads at present: “Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. “

Suppose that sentence were to read: “Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot properly infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically.“ In other words, what is the purpose of the clause “... since they have not shown anything supernatural to have occurred." ... Kenosis 14:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, rephrasing the "cannot infer" statement is necessary for accuracy, but doing so, as I mentioned above, "probably requires a citation" so Wikipedia itself doesn't have to judge the validity of inferences. Until we find a good one, though, I'll change "logically infer" to the vaguer "properly infer" to avoid some of the possible criticisms you mentioned above until we can fix the problem.
As for the latter clause, I don't think it's too complicated in context. Try reading the current version on the Intelligent design page (which I've rephrased a bit) in its context; I think the wording overall works, it's the factuality that is more potentially worrying. There are many longer or more convoluted sentences on the page.
The purpose of the "since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred" clause is to explain that if they did show that something supernatural has occurred (rather than merely attempting to discredit current scientific explanations for something, then leaping to the non-sequitur conclusion that it must have a supernatural cause), then it'd be perfectly fine to infer a supernatural cause, all the more so if there was no viable scientific rationale. The problem the paragraph points out is that in lieu of substantial evidence for such a supernatural occurrence, merely arguing against current natural ones is nothing but a fallacious argument from ignorance. -Silence 14:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I was hoping you'd catch this here, but the last clause (#3) is arguably circular upon analysis of its content. How does one show that something supernatural has occurred? that's what the whole ID debate is about, really (that and a political agenda of course). Also, perhaps the first clause (#1) belongs in a separate sentence or different place. If I recall correctly, that first clause was tacked onto the front of the sentence in order to attempt to provide further context for the reader (i.e. I think #1 was the last clause to be added). ... Kenosis 15:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

After I reverted Silence's lastest mass rewrite of the article without consensus, based on discussion here, I changed the sentence in the article "Even though evolution theory does not explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred." to read "Though evolution theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred." This was the only point so far discussed that possibly could need changing. By noting that evolutionary theory does not seek to address the issue of origins, we avoid the issue altogether. FeloniousMonk 15:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The sentence you just wrote, "Though evolution theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred.", doesn't even come close to actually making any sense. There is no meaningful link whatsoever been the "Though evolution" clause and anything that comes after "from nonliving matter". This is the sort of mistake that happens when you ignore the actual context and meaning of the sentence and discussion and just blindly change it to whatever version you (mistakenly) thing people most explicitly supported. Do you care about improving this article, or about devising a suitably elaborate and well-polished maze of bureaucracy for us to work through before we can make those improvements? The version that was actually on the page following the above discussion made logical and grammatical sense, was consistent, was factually accurate, and was sensible, relevant, meaningful, and significant. Yours is just subtly non sequitur-laden silliness, almost like a snippet from a Mad Libs ID book where random pretty-sounding words are strung together until they sound OK, but have no real meaning. -Silence 15:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Deconstructing the sentence:

Evolutionary theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis - True, no where does the modern synthesis claim to explain "origins."
ID proponents attempt to infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, -Correct, ID proponents are taking what they see as a "hole" in science and filling it with a "designer."
ID proponents have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. - True, ID proponents have presented no actual evidence of design; ID is a series of arugments supported by inferences, not evidence.

ID proponents insist that evidence shows an intelligent designer is behind the origin of life, which they say evolution (or more often "Darwinism"/"Neo-Darwinism") fails to address. But ID proponents misrepresnt two things they have no actual evidence of actual "design" (AKA: a supernatural occurance) and modern evolutionary theory, the modern synthesis does not address the issue of origins/abiogenesis.

There's no non sequitur there, that is unless you are unaware of or are ignoring what actual ID proponents are saying. FeloniousMonk 19:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In response to your claims in the "Copyedit" section: I actually went out of my way to create that section because it represents one of the only actual changes in meaning or message that any of my copyedits even touched upon, and you've been repeatedly berating me for not first discussing any content-related changes (mainly due to the fact that you haven't actually read most of my edits and thus mistakenly assumed that simple copyedits were content-related changes), so I'd have thought you'd be happy—but of course not, regardless of what I do, it'll be the wrong thing as long as it involves any new ideas that you haven't yet signed in triplicate and pressed your Royal Seal upon. :/ Oy.

So he who is allegedly so stung to the core by sarcasm [12] adopts to sarcasm and a not so subtle insult to mistate the reality of this article (oh, dear, I'm not acting in good faith, am I?). My, my, my, how the worm has turned in a mere twenty-four hours.

By the way, it needs my royal seal too. And Guettarda's, and Kenosis's and enough people to reach a little thing I'm not sure you apprehend, consensus. Jim62sch 20:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you even want me to explain how badly you misinterpreted the results of the discussion, how you were misled in the final version you settled on when you suddenly interjected yourself in the discussion after we'd already resolved most of the confusion and discussion related to the abiogenesis paragraph? It doesn't sound like you do, you're simply convinced that your version is the inerrant people's choice and mine is consensus-lacking (and yours isn't? o_O;) and flawed. The reality is substantially different. Your version, which I rejected immediately upon actually reading the entire paragraph in one go-through, is actually two unrelated paragraphs randomly smushed into one. The first two clauses is the start of a paragraph about one topic; and the rest of the paragraph is the end of a paragraph of a completely unrelated topic. The former hypothetical paragraph is about the distinction between scientific theories regarding evolution and ones regarding the origin of life, which are distinct, contrary to popular IDer misconception—and you corrected the factual inaccuracy in that respect; but at the same time, you left it bizarrely conjoined with the unrelated rest of the paragraph, which is actually about the argument from ignorance which IDers suffer from when they assume that any evidence against a scientific theory is evidence for intelligent design.

I can see how you could be misled upon a cursory examination of the paragraph, but I'm surprised that you'd be so hasty and unobservant as to go out of your way to choose a flawed, hybrid non sequitur paragraph over one which had actually been fixed by me! Bizarre. You didn't even discuss it, you simply assumed that your first-glance interpretation of the situation was 100% correct and mine was 100% incorrect. And you accuse me of acting against consensus? There's a difference between acting without explicit consensus and going out of your way to violate what several people have agreed to without any prior discussion: the former is what I've done, the latter what you have. -Silence 20:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Now see, here we have an example of the misunderstanding of consensus. See, we've gone through all this already. Read the archives (yes, they're a bit long, a bit tiring, but you can do it, I know you can). So, offer up your version (which you do below) and we'll talk about it. No timetables, no jumping to contusions that one person saying "I don't care either way", or no comment in an hour equals consensus. Jim62sch 20:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hypothetical paragraph 1 (first two clauses)

Hypothetical paragraph 2 (rest of para)

Although evolutionary theory does not seek to explain the origin of life, only the process by which organisms biologically diversified over time from some form of common descent, intelligent design advocates commonly conflate evolution with the various theories about life's abiogenetic development from inorganic matter. Arguments against evolution frequently take the form of arguments against abiogenesis, and vice versa. [elaboration here]

Although there are certain aspects of abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, that remain unexplained or controversial among biochemists, intelligent design proponents cannot logically infer that an intelligent designer must be behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. [pyramid comparison here]

Copyedit

It's been over 38 hours since User:FeloniousMonk and User:Kenosis mistakenly reverted many of my edits to this article, under the false impression that I was making significant content-related additions (in Kenosis' words, "sneaky insertion of new material without edit summary", though I both used edit summaries and didn't insert any new material; in FeloniousMonk's words, "edit warring for new content", though there was neither edit warring nor significant new content involved), when in reality my edits were essentially a large-scale copyedit and stylistic cleanup, and the only "insertions" I made were stylistic: a new, relevant-to-the-context image to help readers get through the many pages of text more readily, and clearer rewordings of already-present information. Kenosis and I have since worked out the unfortunate misunderstanding on our talk pages, but FeloniousMonk has been uncommunicative, so it seems I'll have to give up on waiting for a clarification from him (and from User:Jim62sch, who seems more interested in a fight than in discussion or cooperation) of what problem he had with my later edits.

I'll gladly discuss any aspect of any of my edits which anyone objects to, but since it's been almost 40 hours and I still have yet to receive even a single specific complaint or nitpick or criticism about any aspect of the last reverted edits I made, I will begin to resume copyediting the article unless anyone has such an objection. You are free, and always have been, to read through all of the changes I have made to the article; if for some reason you're having trouble using the edit history tools, then I'll simply provide all the edits in question below, which you can review at your convenience. You are similarly free, obviously, to either fix them yourself (without a blind mass-revert) or point them out so I can fix and/or discuss them; indeed, I welcome such criticism and feedback, as it is infinitely more productive than the vague personal attacks I've been receiving so far in lieu of specific complaints about the actual edits in question.

00:24 13/06/06 — Copyedit of lead and "intelligent design in summary". Clafiy wording, fix wikilinks, correct grammar, etc. (Note that the templates are returned to their original placement in my later edits, per feedback.)
06:45 26/06/06 — Reposting of my previous edit following #Bogus popups revert Talk page discussion, with a few minor changes, such as to spacing. (Note that the editor-note is restored in my later edits, per feedback.)
02:25 27/06/06 — Templates moved back, spacing change, fix typo ("Wikisouce"), restore much-needed and infinitely relevant link to evolution. (Universal probability bound link removed due to subtle edit conflict, subsequently restored.)
08:54 27/06/06 — Templates moved back (I apparently misinterpreted the #Template placement Talk page discussion as conclusive); rename "intelligent design in summary" to "overview" to eliminate unnecessary complexity. Copyedit and trim "Origins of the concept" of minor irrelevant dates, removing excess tangential details about the various philosophers referenced (that's what the wikilinks to their pages are for) which bloated the paragraph. Fix grammar, MoS adherence, clear wording. Remove unintended implication of the end of the second paragraph (that Darwin was somehow part of the proto-ID movement). Add links to more relevant and specific articles referenced (e.g. evolution of the eye, evolution of flagella), fix wikilinks.
09:06 27/06/06 — Merge two short, related paragraphs in "Overview" into one paragraph. Move a paragraph unrelated to the origins of ID from "Origins of the concept" up to "Overview", where it belongs. Add free-use image of Thomas Aquinas, the most famous postulator of the argument from design for the existence of God, to the "origins of the concept" section to liven up the section (thus drawing more readers into the article in general) and improve paragraph aesthetics a bit. Minor copyedits to "origins of the term", such as fixing wikilinks (didn't notice the "telological" typo until yesterday, though), clarify wording and sentence structure, correct grammar and style.
10:06 27/06/06 — Revert Jim62sch's previous edit, primarily because it had caused the "creationism" template to appear on the page twice due to sloppy page-checking.
12:19 27/06/06 — Resume copyediting the article now that Jim62sch has done his template-revert properly. A few edits to "origins of the concept" to compensate for some newly-added information (though this new information 82.31.176.160 had added was subsequently removed, so it didn't end up mattering). Copyedit "irreducible complexity", fixing grammar, wikilinks, consistent referencing style, and the unclear, redundant wording of "In the context of intelligent design, irreducible complexity..." Add "he asserts" qualifier to Behe's analogical claim that mousetraps are useless if you remove any of their components, since a later reference disputes this assertion.
12:29 27/06/06 — Reinstate previous edits to "irreducible complexity" after KillerChihuaha accidentally reverts them due to edit conflict. (He was attempting to revert 82.31.176.160's Thomas Browne-related insertions, but his edit came less than a minute after my own.) Also, continue copyedit, fixing a few errors in wikilinks, wording, and consistency in the "specified complexity" section.
15:01 27/06/06 — Continuing copyedit, fixing a few misplaced references in the "irreducible complexity" section, and adding link to universal probability bound in the article, since if it's noteworthy enough for the "see also" list (where it had recently been added) it's presumably noteworthy enough to mention in the article proper. Copyedit "fine-tuned universe" for clarity, word choice, wikilinking, and grammar. Rename poorly-formatted and unencyclopedic section title "The designer or designers" (the section itself doesn't concern itself with the question of singularity v. plurality, so it's also misleading) to simply "Intelligent designer". Copyedit this section as well, fixing wikilinks, sentence structure, consistency in a couple of areas. Change "from which intelligent design proponents can only escape by resorting to religious creationism or logical contradiction" to "from which intelligent design proponents can only escape by resorting to logical contradiction", because the former sentence incorrectly implied that religious creationism is somehow immune to the "turtles all the way down" infinite regress problem. Renamed "Intelligent design as movement" to simply "Movement", which works just as well and is clearer and quicker. Add spacing between image and first paragraph to make editing easier. Rename "intelligent design controversy" to just "Controversy" for the same reasons. Shrink overlarge TOC a tad by changing unnecessary subsections of "External links" into simple bolded lines, which work just as well but keep the article tidier.
16:00 27/06/06 — In response to FeloniousMonk pointing out the already-present error in the article which I unknowingly echoed when I reworded a certain line (and since no other problem in my edits had, or has, yet been pointed out), reinstate previous copyedits, but with the error in question (the first sentence of "Irreducible complexity") fixed. (This subtle error has subsequently been restored to the article when my edits were mass-reverted a second time, without justification.)

That's all so far. I'll reinstate my copyedit next, if there are no objections to any of the changes listed right above, and then continue with the much-needed changes. Thank you for your time. -Silence 06:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I looked over your copyedits and found nothing objectionable. Kasreyn 10:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm going to continue the copyediting now; if you, or anyone else, does find anything problematic in any of them, tell me about it, and I'll gladly make whatever changes are necessary. -Silence 10:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

There was only mild consensus for one single change, so I've reverted your mass rewrite of the article without consensus again.

Dumping a laundry list on us of what you think needs to be changed that's 5 or 6 paragraphs long and expecting us here to sort through it is ridiculous. Post your proposals one at a time, and work toward consensus for each, then place it in the article. That's how this article came to be where it is. Also, lack of response to proposed changes is not consent. FeloniousMonk 15:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Y'know, I tried explaining that, in almost those words, before. As far as concepts go, it isn't exactly M-Theory is it? Jim62sch 21:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

When I made my edits without writing up a detailed laundry list of exactly what changes I was making, I was bitched at for being sneaky and hiding all my changes (sure, having all the changes immediately and easily accessible in the edit history is "hiding" them... I guess that makes every Wikipedia editor in the world a lying sneak..), and my edits were ignored and dismissed. When I took the time to write up a detailed, elaborate rationales and lists of all the individual changes in each edit, I was bitched at for writing "pseudo-doctoral theses" and "dumping a laundry list on us", and my edits were ignored and dismissed. There is literally no pleasing you people.

So now I have to waste months of time (both my own and other users') painstakingly sifting through one or two comma-fixes and wikilink-hops and sentence-clarifications a week, to do what would otherwise only take a day or two? I'm fully willing to discuss any of the changes I make which anyone has any sort of specific objection to; I'm willing to compromise, I'm willing to reason, and I'm willing to accept new ideas and recommendations for how best to improve the article. But I'm not going to jump through hoops to pass uncontroversial, simple, and utterly routine copyedits which noone actually objects to through your arbitrary standards just for the privilege of being allowed to improve your article. There are a limited number of hours in a day. I'd rather spend them improving articles and discussing ways to improve articles than rephrasing my "laundry list" in 17 different ways and spreading them out over a ridiculously long span of time because you're too lazy to read them—or to read my actual edits to the article. I came here to improve an encyclopedia to the best of my ability, not to waste days sifting through meaningless bureaucratic hurdles. -Silence 15:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you think working with other editors in achieving consensus is nothing more than "sifting through meaningless bureaucratic hurdles," then you might want to reconsider your goal. Apparently you failed to read what it says at the top of this page - "This is a controversial topic, which may be disputed. Please read this talk page and discuss substantial changes here before making them." Your sense of entitlement for your personal edits is nothing more than a form of carte blanche. I can't begin to tell you how many hours, days and weeks I had to debate to get my early edits into this article. Kenosis can say the same. Are you special?

We're addressing the points you've raised here. We've nearly completed discussion on the first one already. Patience my friend. FeloniousMonk 15:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"Well, if you think working with other editors in achieving consensus" - Strawman. What I have been repeatedly asking for (and denied) is working with other editors to achieve consensus: I've asked for actual criticisms of any of the edits I've made that have been reverted, so I can respond and we can work out the problem together and come to an agreement, then move on to the next one. What you've requested in the exact opposite of "working with other editors in achieving consensus": you want me to waste months of time mining over trivial, simple copyedits that noone has any problem with because you're too lazy to read through a simple, easily-accessible list of 10 edits that I spent hours of time out of my day to provide you with. I'll gladly spend all the time you want going over each and every one of those edits, if you have a problem with any of the textual changes in them. If you prefer to work methodically and slowly, feel free to start off with problems in the changes I made in the first edit, then move on to the next one, etc., and I'll fully discuss the issues with you until we can come to an agreement. But I'm not going to waste both my time and everyone else's by listing, and relisting and rerelisting the exact same information over and over again, stretched out for no real purpose over ridiculous lengths of time when we could, instead, be continuing to improve the article. By wasting time on things we don't disagree on (such as, in all likelihood, 99% of the changes I made in my above edits), we leave ourselves no time to fully discuss things we do disagree on (such as the templates and images). Thus far, noone has objected to or in any way criticized any textual change I've made to the article; the only objections have been related to template-placement and image-placement, both of which I've stopped adding to the article now that there are concrete objects to talk over. So why waste so much time on such trivial, obvious changes? My edits are not "substantial" in that they make any major changes to the text! They only appear substantial because they're such a large number of minor, obvious grammatical fixes and style/consistency fiddlings. The topic of this article is controversial, but the Manual of Style and the grammar of the English language are not! And since just about all of my above edits relate to the MoS or basic English language principles, not to intelligent design itself, your concern is fundamentally misplaced here. I've made the exact same edits to hundreds of other articles, and never once have I received a major complaint. Ironically, I haven't received a complaint from here, either—noone's actually objected to any of my textual changes. You just objected to the fact that I dared to make them without The King's Royal Seal having been stamped on them after months of redundant bureaucratic haggling: you haven't cited any actual problems or substantial issues, you've merely protested that I dared to edit the article without your specific written approval. As such, your meta-objections are superficial and bureaucratic, not significant, article-related critiques. -Silence 16:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I think Silence has a point. Felonious Monk, you claim he has edited without consensus, but apathy is no excuse. I don't see many people in a big hurry on this talk page to substantively dispute Silence's attempted changes. When a person suggests changes on a talk page, waits a reasonable amount of time, recieves no reply, and goes ahead and edits the article in good faith, that is not editing "against consensus", because the consensus is apparently apathy. If the consensus fails to present its opinion in a timely manner, it follows that the consensus must not care much about the edit in question. Ignoring an editor cannot be used as a way to withhold consensus. If you're going to revert Silence's edits, it is your responsibility to provide a cogent argument against them here. Kasreyn 18:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but the assumption of "apathy" is a rather bogus one. Most of us have other articles we work on (as well as jobs IRL) -- we don't hover around this article waiting to see who edits it next, and whether their edits are valid. Besides, where's the fire? Is there a compelling reason Silence wants to design this article in his own image in less than 6 days?

Also, what, pray tell, is a "reasonable amount of time"? An hour? A day? A week?

Finally, that Silence edited the article "in good faith" is of course an assumption that may or may not be warranted (yes, yes, yes, AGF is one of the cornerstones of wiki, but as someone pointed out earlier, it is not a suicide pact). As far as editing against consensus, the statement at the top of this page, the statement pointed out by FM, covers that -- read the talk page, which, while not being pointed out specifically, includes the archives. Jim62sch 21:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Kasreyn. I don't exactly object to the fact that Felonious took: there's no time limit on objecting to edits, he's completely free to criticize any aspect of any of my edits whenever he wants. The problem, rather, is that he still hasn't done so: he's repeatedly reverted dozens of edits without ever even once pointing out any problem with the textual copyediting I (and, recently, Jim) have been working on. The problem isn't so much that he's apathetic to the changes as that he's apathetic to discussing them: he has had plenty of opportunity to do so, but he seems more interested in edit-warring and ultimatums than in consensus-building and compromise, despite his rhetoric to the contrary. I don't hold that against him: it's completely understandable to grow increasingly attached to a certain version of an article over time, when you've worked so hard on it. But at the point where it gets in the way of any real progress occuring, and where it has no basis in any real content dispute, it goes from being just an annoying diversion to being an actual harmful force freezing the article from any improvement. That's no good, chaps. :/ [unsigned by User:Silence 29 June 2006]

There's been ample discussion of the first of Silence's proposed changes at Talk:Intelligent_design#Problems_at_end_of_.22controversy.22_section. I'll tell you the same thing I told Silence at my talk page: It's his method that's the problem there. I actually agree with many of his points, but they need to be discussed as this is not a simple subject. Silence shouldn't assume that no one responding to all of his proposals after 36-48 hours indicates consent; to do is patently unreasonable considering the number of proposed changes he dumped here. There has been ongoing discussion there of the first of his proposed changes, with the result being there is no consensus on that first point. It was still being discussed when he decided to rewrite almost the entire article. Taking that to mean that he can yet again force in a massive rewrite of many points and it should not be reverted is what's causing his problems here, not me, or Jim, or Kenosis, or anyone else. Dumping a laundry list 7 or 8 paragraphs long on us of what he thinks need to be changed and expecting us here to sort through it in a day or two is ridiculous. One-point-at-a-time is the way it is properly done. Again, the absence of response to all proposed changes is not consent and discussion has been taking place. If you or Silence think that it's too slow then there's 1,221,217 other articles here that can be improved in the meantime. If some have ignored his proposals here, and it appears some have, it's not surprising considering his method of huge, mind-numbing proposals. I'll be happy to continue considering and discussing each of his points as I have been, but he's going to have to make the case for each, abide by consensus and work with the present long term editors. Particularly since none of his proposed changes addresses glaring factual errors, rather matters of nuance and style. Our goal here has always been an accurate and stable article, not editing for editing's sake. FeloniousMonk 19:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FeloniousMonk, there has not been "ample discussion" of my proposed changes, really, at #Problems_at_end_of_.22controversy.22_section: it's been a rather focused discussion of a single, solitary part of the article which I only recently changed after gathering support and feedback in the discussion section in question. Your characterization of that discussion is wildly off-base, skewed away from any real understanding of the exchange of ideas that we were having and towards a silly attempt to vilify me with misinterpreted "evidence" of my wrongdoings. I will respond to your misconceptions about that section in the section in question, where there's more room.

Furthermore, you are either horribly misunderstanding almost everything I've said so far, or deliberately misrepresenting my points; I hope it is the former. You claim that I "assume that no one responding to all of his proposals after 36-48 hours indicates consent"—this is patently false. I didn't expect anyone to respond to all of my proposals—I didn't, in fact, ask that anyone respond to any of my proposals! All I asked was a very simple, easy request: if you object to any of the textual edits I have made to the article, then say what is wrong with them. Give me an example, any example of all, of something specific you object to about the changes I've made to the article, so we can actually discuss the matter, rather than just trading blows over nothingness. And after what has actually been 16 days since I first started editing this article!, and 53 hours since FeloniousMonk first (deliberately) reverted my copyedits, I still haven't gotten even one substantial or specific criticism or complaint regarding the copyedit itself. This is remarkable. Surely there is something about it you disagree with—hell, even I admit that, as a matter of statistics, some of my minor edits were probably in error (though I've already corrected the ones I've noticed, such as "telological" and "wikisouce"). So why is there so much difficulty and melodrama in the simple task of concretely explaining what problems you've found with my copyedits, so we can work out a solution? I don't ask that people respond to my proposed changes, only that if they object to an edit, they say what's wrong with it rather than feebly dismissing it as "lacking consensus". (Since when do English grammar or the Manual of Style require page-by-page, incident-by-incident consensus approval anyway..?)
"it's not surprising considering his method of huge, mind-numbing proposals." - ... Which I would never have bothered with if you people hadn't forced me to with repeated threats, personal attacks, insults, and dismissals when I tried to improve the article without excessive jabbering about it beforehand. As I said above, I can't win: whenever I make a change without discussion, no matter how minor, it's rejected and ignored on principle alone, with no regard for what actually matters (that is, the article itself—remember?) and I get attacked for it, and whenever I try to start a discussion, it's rejected and ignored as too verbose or not verbose enough or too listy or too paragraphy or too X or too not-X, and I get attacked for it. Lose-lose situation. Pretty much the only way I can actually do anything productive is to give up on ever improving this article altogether, but just move on to somewhere else. And I get the very strong feeling that that's what would make FeloniousMonk happiest of all, since he's made it so clear that he finds my presence and my contributions an unpleasant burden.
"Particularly since none of his proposed changes addresses glaring factual errors," - Another example of a lose-lose situation. If I actually made substantial changes to the article, rather than lots of minor copyedits, you'd dismiss them for going against the status quo. But when I make the minor ones, you dismiss them as not important enough. (Incidentally, you are incorrect. I have pointed out at least two glaring factual errors. Both have been deliberately ignored.)
"Our goal here has always been an accurate and stable article, not editing for editing's sake." - You now owe me an apology, sir. -Silence 20:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You know, you'd get a lot further here were to be succinct and to the point in your posts. Like I've told you it's your method that's hampered your edits from finding traction here. It's absolutely no wonder no one wants to play ball when you post these long, rambling replies and proposals. Keep it brief or expect little response or support. FeloniousMonk 20:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I'll keep it brief: stop attacking me, stop insulting me, and stop pushing me around for the hell of it, and state some concrete problems with the copyedits I made so we can start working out how best to improve the article. Succint enough? -Silence 20:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You could have kept it even briefer had you refrained from accusing others of attacking, insulting, and pushing you around (for the hell of it???? excuse me????). No one has done any of those things, and with that removed from your post all that is left is "we can start working out how best to improve the article." which is all anyone ever wanted to begin with. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You are clearly unfamiliar with the discussions that have been going on here, or just have very selective memory. I have been trying for days to get people (specifically, FeloniousMonk, since he's the only user who's objected to them) to voice concrete points and criticisms of the copyedits that he's repeatedly reverted, and he's again and again evaded and ignored my requests for discussion in favor of dirt-digging, personal attacks, insinuations, and patronizing dismissals. I am starting to get a little bit tired of it. I realize that keeping a controversial article like ID clean of problems takes a lot out of a person, but that's no excuse to take it out on a random editor. If you want something to abuse, buy a punching bag or something. -Silence 20:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't even know how to respond to this. This is trolling and accusations, because you had to wait a few days for everyone who edits this article regularly to weigh in? Might be time for a cup of tea, Silence. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No one is taking anything out on you, Silence -- except maybe yourself. You fail to comprehend, even after being told the same thing by several different people in several different fora, that it is your methodology that is creating the problem. The victim bit only goes but so far. Jim62sch 21:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I have not made any trolling comments whatsoever, nor have I attempted to make accusations or cast blame; I am, quite simply, just not going to continue to ignore the abuse. How long I had to wait had nothing to do with it; being treated like a mass murderer for copyediting a Wikipedia article is what I am growing tired of. Your responsiveness is immensely refreshing, KillerChihuahua, but your criticism is immensely misplaced. -Silence 21:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

um... Mass murderer? Methinks thou dost exaggerate just a wee tad. Just a thought. I could be wrong... KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I haven't really been a contributor to this article, but I just ran across this and it strikes me as absurd. Since when is a whole process and votes and whatnot even required for simple grammar and such copyedits? What a ridiculous situation. Silence, maybe if you were more matter-of-fact on this talk page (more conciseness and less talk of personal attacks and what not), you'd get the discussion about the actual edits you so desire (Which I can't see anywhere on this talk section, despite a lot of other chatter from all the players). Folks like FeloniousMonk, why don't you just read that page of edit summaries Silence wrote up? Sounds like you're saying they're too long for you to bother, but you've spent more than twice as much time writing up replies explaining why you haven't than it would have taken to actually read it. It's a controversial topic but why can't it be handled as civilly as anywhere? I was thinking of doing some grammar and other minor copyedits to mistakes I noticed in this article myself when I came to it, but upon closer inspection doing so would take a hell of a lot more gall and constitution than I have. Kudos to all of you taking the time and mental energy to make a dent in this more difficult and dense sector of the Wikipedia. D. G. 18:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Images

Thanks for the help, Jim! I appreciate your recent edits, such as the wording fix at User:Silence/ID. However, I must respectfully disagree with your rationale for removing the two new images from the page.

The Thomas Aquinas image is relevant to the "history of the concept" section, because Aquinas was arguably the most important popularizer of the argument from design, which forms the core intellectual basis (such as it is..) for the entire concept of intelligent design. Additionally, on an aesthetic—yet still practical—level (I am both a wikignome and a wikifairy, you'll find), the image (or at least some image—I'd object much less to your replacing the image with a better one than with simply removing it altogether) is extremely useful for helping break up a long stretch of undifferentiated text, and thus helping draw readers into the article more, making it much more likely that semi-interested users will take the time to read further into the article and become more interested. On that ground, at least, one could argue that we should have an image there unless there's a good reason not to include it on the page, since if it does no harm and helps liven up a boring expanse of text a little for the sake of our readers, it's a win-win situation. And since the image is free-use, there cannot be any concerns about it ever being legally problematic, unlike the Time photo (I've seen similar photos removed from several pages on the basis that we can only use such covers if the article is discussing the cover itself, not using the cover to demonstrate or illustrate some idea) and the Phillip Johnson pic (which is less problematic than the Time image, despite also being fair-use).

As for the photo, I see no justification whatsoever for not including it (or (and/or?) something similar, like another major figure or a DI or CfSaC logo) in the article. The argument that "it's already included in his article, which we link to" is an exceedingly weak one; by the same logic, our Scientology article should refrain from including any image of L. Ron Hubbard in it because it already links to the article for L. Ron Hubbard! Putting a face to one of the key figures in the history of ID and the ID movement is an immensely practical and useful thing to do, not least because it allows people who have seen our article to recognize him. Also, the aesthetic benefits I mentioned above apply here as well (though less dramatically, since it's later in the article and since the Time image comes soon after). -Silence 10:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

We've discussed additional images here several times previously, each time there was consensus that they were unnecessary and added little, most recently last month. Please read the archives. The article is already large - way past the ideal article size, at something like 88 kb. This makes it slow to load for those with dial up. Including additional images which add little value only makes it worse. Instead of wasting that bandwidth on PJ, the cover of Pandas, the Hubble Deep Field or the like, something like a Design timeline or concept map would actually add value. FeloniousMonk 15:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

This article is actually really not that large. Many Featured Articles are much longer. Evolution, for example, is 80kb long, and has no less than 13 images. History of Poland (1945–1989), another FA, demonstrates the upper-limit of how image-heavy an article can be while still easy maintaining Featured quality: it has 30 images (and used to have several more, before the Time magazine covers were removed because they only fall under fair-use when the magazine itself is the subject of the article). The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia users will have no problem whatsoever with a 77kb-long article, and no problem with one that has 2–3 images rather than just 1. An image of the man considered the "founder" of ID is, in any case, surely much more germaine than an image of a random Time magazine cover that is never once even discussed in the actual article. Likewise, even Aquinas is discussed at one point in the article. If we're trying to cleanse this article of images for some bizarre reason, why be so inconsistent and arbitrary settle on a Time cover while ignoring both more concretely relevant images (e.g. the photo of Philip E. Johnson) and images of less dubious, fair-use provenance (e.g. the painting of Aquinas)? The current image selection seems arbitrary, and the decision to forever ban images from this article seems similarly arbitrary. Only an exceedingly number of readers will be noticeably inconvenienced if we add another image or two to the article, whereas almost every reader will be inconvenienced if we don't make the article's large amount of text more accessible by illustrating it with a few relevant images. It's more important, not less, to add images to longer articles! -Silence 15:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Whether it actually is more important to add images to longer articles is debatable. I've not seen any guideline to that effect. I'm not saying we can't have more images. I'm saying that if we do, because of the size of the article, they should add some value, be more than just smiling faces. FeloniousMonk 16:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

And you haven't cited any guideline saying not to use images in long articles, so I guess that tact is irrelevant. I thought it was just common sense, but maybe that's my background in page layout and design talking; not everyone is as familiar with the principles of a well-balanced page that incorporates both images and text. Regardless, the two images I suggested are not "just smiling faces", they are a photograph of the ID movement's "father" (arguably even more important than the picture of Charles Darwin on evolution is, since evolutionary theory has changed significantly since Darwin's day, but ID is still PEJ's clearly baby) and a painting of the scholar who formalized the argument from design ("the universe exhibits design, ergo there must be a designer") upon which Intelligent Design is based. I'll agree that we could find better images to illustrate ID with, but contend that these two are certainly better than nothing, and furthermore would point out that they're much more clearly relevant to and appropriate for the article than the Time magazine cover is. Aquinas and Johnson (especially Jonhson!) are both discussed in the article at various points, but the Time cover is not (nor should it probably be, but I'm just pointing out how arbitrary the image selection seems to be). -Silence 16:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I shouldn't have to, you've been around long enough to be familiar with policy. We simply do not agree, and this will be decided by consensus. FeloniousMonk 20:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason for the pics of Aquinas and Johnson. If we add any pics to this article, they'd best be explaining something, not fluff. Jim62sch 21:51, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In-depth copyedit analysis and discussion, part 1: Lead section

User:FeloniousMonk has requested (more like demanded) that I go through each and every single one of the hundreds of trivial edits I've recently made to the Intelligent design article before he will permit them to be added to the page, even though noone (himself included) has actually objected to any aspect of even one of these textual copyedits, and even though I've already spent hours providing an in-depth, useful, easy-to-navigate, and concise listing of links, timestamps, and detailed and accurate descriptions of all my edits at #Copyedit in response to requests for such a detailing of my changes to the page, which he immediately ignored out-of-hand as "dumping a laundry list". Assuming the rest of you agree that this inane bureaucratic exercise is necessary (if not, do feel free to speak up), I will now begin listing off all of the edits, one group at a time, for in-depth discussion. Here are the lead section (a.k.a. "intro") edits I've made (first wave):

Delink universe in first sentence. This is a very broad article that is only tangentially related to what is being discussed in this section. Overlinking is explicitly and strongly discouraged by Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context.
Delink living things in first sentence. Same rationale as "universe". Having too many links clutters up the page, whereas by having only a few links, you focus readers' attention much more on the links you do chose to include, thus making it much more likely that they'll check out the truly relevant and significant pages in question. By not overwhelming readers with vague links like "universe" and "life" from the get-go, you increase the changes that they'll pay attention to links like intelligent designer and Discovery Institute.
Change piped link [[Argument from design|intelligent cause]] to [[intelligent designer|intelligent cause]]. First of all, argument from design is just a redirect to teleological argument. Second of all, this is an unnecessary violation of the principle of least surprise, in that no user will be able to predict that they are being directed to a page on the teleological argument from the context of the link. If anything, they will expect a link to an article about the "intelligent cause" which ID believes is the source of the design in the universe, and the article for that topic is intelligent designer. If we want a link to teleological argument in the lead, we should make it explicit and readily available to new readers, not buried behind layers of subtext. I've also already addressed this issue at #Bogus popups revert.
Move comma from after ref number ("Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute[2], say that") to before it ("Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute,[2] say that"). Standard style (including in this article already) for inline refs of this sort is to have the comma, period, etc. before, not after, the ref marker. No reason to be randomly inconsistent here.
Restore link to evolution in the intro. For some reason, all references to evolution were removed from the lead section at some point, even though ID is by far most noteworthy for its opposition to and criticism of evolutionary theory. I suspect that someone misread the line that linked to evolution as saying that ID's theories actually are on equal footing with the theory of evolution, when it actually says that that's what ID proponents claim to be the case (which is true): "Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute, say that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the evolution and origin of life." Bolded text is the addition. I've also already addressed this issue at #Bogus popups revert.
Change "An overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design not as a valid scientific theory but as pseudoscience or junk science." to "An overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design as pseudoscience or junk science." Not really necessary and quite redundant in the context of the overall lead, as it immediately follows what was already the explanation that ID falsely claims to be a scientific theory. The reason this is unnecessary is the same reason it is unnecessary to say "Sally thinks the flower is red. Billy thinks the flower is not red, but blue." Simply saying "Sally thinks the flower is red. Billy thinks the flower is blue." is usually sufficient; English grammar accounts for the rest, it's implied in a normal situation—and "scientific theory" directly contradicts "pseudoscience/junk science", whereas it's hypothetically possible for a flower to be both red and blue, so the example is even weaker than the actual situation. However, if there are worries that the lead isn't quite clear enough without being 100% explicit about ID not being a scientific theory, I could see an argument for keeping the clause; I just don't think it's really necessary, the text flows more smoothly and is perfectly clear without it. I've also already addressed this issue at #Bogus popups revert.
Remove space between end of first sentence of second paragraph and accompanying ref, again in keeping with inline-ref conventions. "as pseudoscience[5] or junk science. [6]" becomes "as pseudoscience[5] or junk science.[6]".
Change piped link [[scientific experiment|experiment]] to simply [[experiment]] There is no scientific experiment article, it's just a redirect to experiment.
I created the eighth ref/note (to more clearly back up the third paragraph's claims than a subtle, well-hidden interwiki link), and then fixed a typo in it. That typo (Wikisouce rather than Wikisource) is currently still on the main page, thanks to Felonious repeatedly mass-reverting most of my edits.

If anyone objects to any of these changes, I'll gladly discuss them at length. If not, I'll move on to the next group, and then the next, and then the next.. I do love efficiency, mm. :F -Silence 17:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

9 new points to discuss? You've got to be kidding me. We're still trying to hammer out the first point from your first five from yesterday. Thanks for just proving my point:[13] Oh, and WP:POINT. FeloniousMonk 20:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence, your whole tone ("[FM] has requested (more like demanded) that I go through each and every single one of the hundreds of trivial edits I've recently made...no one...has objected") is adversarial. While I appreciate your desire for efficiency, running roughshod over longstanding editors on this article is hardly worth the "time saved." Making a stack of edits and then merrily proceeding to make more because no one has had time to figure out what you've done and whether or not they object is not productive. Complaining because it has been suggested you allow people the necessary time is counter-productive. I am delighted to hear that you have made such progress on efficiency. Perhaps you might consider working on patience, civility, and respect for your fellow editors. Quite frankly, I suggest you take the time to discuss your changes, one at a time, not in wholesale lots, instead of your blitzkrieg method of editing. This is not a forgotten article which was pasted in as an essay and received little attention since, where your boldness would doubtless be welcome. Nor is it an article which is badly organized, unsourced, and the muddled result of an army of POV pushers, where any organization and copyediting would be an improvement. If you have suggestions which will improve the article, I am certain I speak for all editors here in saying we welcome them. We welcome them being posted on the talk page, for discussion, and acheiving consensus before and not after you have made them. One puppy's opinion. Now I'm going to go read over each of your suggested edits, taking the time I need to evaluate them. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My tone sounds adversarial because I have been treated as an adversary. Read the other conversations on this Talk page (not to mention Template:Intelligent Design and the Intelligent design edit history). If my breathing sounds heavy after I've been dodging attacks for days straight, assume it's out of weariness, not aggression.

"running roughshod over longstanding editors on this article is hardly worth the 'time saved.'" - I have done no such thing. My criticism is of the time and energy wasted in listing hundreds of trivial edits which noone has objected to, and which are already easily accessible in the #Copyedit section I took the time to create (upon request) if anyone is remotely interested. I would rather spend time discussing disputed edits than listing dozens and dozens of profoundly mundane and obvious ones. Unfortunately, I cannot know which edits are disputed when noone has yet disputed them! You are the first user to take the time to actually criticize any change I've made; for that, I thank you very much. If you had been here in the first day of this silly power struggle of FM's, I have no doubt that we'd have been able to easily resolve the issue and spend our time on improving the article, as I hoped, rather than pointless arguing.

"Making a stack of edits and then merrily proceeding to make more" - The edits are almost without exception simple and stylistic (and the exact same sort that I've made in the past, without any complaint or controversy, to hundreds of articles, including many that are much more contentious and heavily-vandalized than this one by far!), and I went to great lengths to ensure that every single one of them could be easily viewed by simply comparing two versions of the edit history. I have no doubt that anyone could skim over most of them in a half hour (or less) and isolate the significant ones. It is the in-depth analysis of the trivial comma-placement and wikilink-redirecting edits that will waste time, whereas simply looking over the actual edits in question would allow one to immediately isolate whichever ones anyone feels are worthy of discussion. If anyone wanted me to slow down so they could take the time to look over my past edits, they easily could have said so: not once did anyone say, for example, "hey, Silence, wait another three days before making any more edits, so we have time to look over the ones you've just made in detail, OK?", or "hey, Silence, hold off on editing for the next day or two, we need some time to go over these first." The only response was complete silence, for days at a time, to the extent that it was painfully obvious that noone was ever going to bother to check over my edits; they found it much easier simply to mass-revert them (with a threatening and antagonistic message, just to be nice) and then move on to more important matters. That is not how Wikipedia editors are meant to interact.

"Complaining because it has been suggested you allow people the necessary time is counter-productive." - Nobody has suggested this. You are the first person. And certainly nobody has ever asked for a certain length of time in order to go over the articles. You are making a lot of dramatic, and profoundly incorrect, assumptions about how people have been responding to my edits over the last few days. Your mistake is understandable, because what you're describing is how one would expect any reasonable people to respond in such a situation. It simply didn't happen. I guess people were having an off day or two?

"Perhaps you might consider working on patience, civility, and respect for your fellow editors." - You would be most wise to direct this comment to certain other peoples involved in this dispute. I have gone to great lengths to attempt to diffuse the problem, to point out how much respect and good faith I have for the other editors on this page, and to avoid responding to the countless goading, barbed attacks I've been barraged with lately, without provocation. You have essentially walked in on a man who was just slapped in the face nine times, and did nothing, and now raises his hand to stop the soon-to-come tenth slap, upon which point you cast judgment upon the slapped man for raising his hand in violence. I am not saying that I am blameless, but your comments are unintentionally hilarious in their timing and misdirection. I feel like I'm in a Sylvester & Tweety cartoon or something; quite surreal.

"where your boldness would doubtless be welcome" - Boldness is welcome on all Wikipedia articles. That's what Wikipedia is about. No article is "finished"; all need improvements. I am glad to discuss and compromise on my various suggestions (as I've said dozens of times already on this page), but I need to hear critical feedback, not the vague insults and threats I've gotten so far, in order to be able to discuss or compromise on anything.

"Nor is it an article which is badly organized, unsourced, and the muddled result" - I never said it was. It's an excellent article. That's a big part of the reason I took the time to try and make its excellentness more even and thorough. And it's a big part of the reason most of my edits have been exceedingly minor and simple; I deliberately went out of my way to avoid making any significant changes to just about any of the content of the article.

"I am certain I speak for all editors here in saying we welcome them." - Then, if my experience here so far is an indication of anything, you're certainty is misplaced, I'm sorry to say. :/ I appreciate your kind words, though. -Silence 21:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I officially give up on discussing things with Silence. Despite being asked to be brief he still insists on posting War and Peace every 20 minutes. More like Ulysses, actually. If he starts discussing the article, starts making sense, and keeps it short and factual I'll participate. FeloniousMonk 21:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey, don't insult James Joyce, Ulysses is one of my favorite books! ;) But yes, until the neredlessly long posts end, there's no point in talking anymore. Sylvester and Tweety? Jim62sch 21:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Silence's remarks seem to make sense to me. He was discussing the article until the topic became his own edits, then he discussed that. He appears to feel he's under attack. In such circumstances, I don't see how he can be blamed for a desire to rebut his opponents. And I don't think you have any right to dictate terms on his writing style. I have a tendency to be verbose myself. Such wordiness often arises from an intense desire for precision, for one's words to be incontrovertible and impossible to misunderstand. I understand that perfectly. I've seen both you (FM) and Silence in action on other articles, and I think you're two of the best editors at this place. You really ought to both chill a bit. I propose that you both start over, swallow your pride a bit, and work together. This contentiousness serves no purpose. Silence, please stop thinking you're under attack; FM has a good point that we need to consider every change very carefully, in my opinion because of the constant pressure the article is under from would-be POV pushers who wander in. FM, please take the time to read what Silence has to say; since you asked for him to be very detailed, it ill behooves you to now refuse to read it. Best to you both, Kasreyn 23:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Again, thanks for the support. I'm OK with them criticizing me for my verbosity, though. You are correct that it arises from a desire on my part to not be misunderstood, but in practice, as seen above, it seems that such efforts are useless. It is true that it is an unfortunate vice of mine, and while they did request that I be detailed, they also, apparently, want me to be detailed in bite-sized little bits spread out over a long span of time, so I suppose they're at least being consistent in their requests now. I don't care so much if they want to criticize me, as long as they take a look at my edits at the same time so we can make some actual progress on the article in the meantime, and, thank god, that's now happening for the first time thanks to KillerChihuahua's arrival. So I can take a little more chastisement if it means finally getting down to business with respect to the article itself; sticks and stones. I will take your words to heart, and "chill". :D There is no real point in all this drama and angst and squabbling over a simple copyedit. If discussion is needed, then we will discuss. I eagerly await more feedback on these edits, and as soon as y'all want me to move on to the next batch, I will do so.

Incidentally, you are a great mediator. Although both you and Chihuahua provided a very valuable outside perspective into the matter, unlike KC, you were able to criticize both sides of the dispute, and your words have been moderate enough to be the sort of advice people will take to heart, rather than putting them on the defensive (as KC inadvertantly did by vilifying me as the sole offending party in the dispute, though I don't hold it against him). If you haven't already, you should totally try out mediation, you're a natural. :D -Silence 08:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

My take on edits 1 - 9:

Delinking universe: I am agnostic on this change.
Delinking living things: Mild Object: This article is about a proposed explanation of the development of living things, and as such the link is appropriate.
intelligent cause to intelligent cause. Works for me. I think the old redirect went elsewhere, and it made more sense when first implemented.
Comma before ref. Style issue, support.
Support linking first instance of evolution.
Strongly object. At least 5 pages worth of the archives are on this one line, and the clarifier is necessary. (Overwhelming majority, everyone's favorite line.)
Style issue (extra space) support.
Again, must have been a change in redirect. In this case I think it would be better left as is, so if it is split again the link still directs to correct article. (scientific experiment|experiment)
I will need to follow the ref and compare, no comment currently on proposed change. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

2. It's equally about a proposed explanation for the origin of the universe (the intelligent designer is almost always proposed to have created both life and a universe to accomodate it—hence the fine-tuned universe concept—so I see no strong reason to link to one and not the other. A link to origin of life (which we already have in the lead anyway) is much more relevant, specific, and useful than one to the vague topic of life.

6. Alright, if you want. I think it's clearer in the simpler format, and I don't see listing archive numbers as a very strong argument (remember to imagine justifying things to a reader, not a fellow editor; readers are the ones we are writing for!), but I don't have any strong opinions about this change. Feel free to revert it. (It's currently implemented in the article, because Felonious's revert was so haphazard.)

8. I'm guessing that it will never be split again. The ~~evidence~~ experiment article is solely about ~~evidence~~ experiments in a ~~philosophical and~~ scientific context~~, and it's stub,~~ so it's highly unlikely to be divided up in the foreseeable future. If it makes you feel better, though, I'll put the ~~"evidence"~~"experiment" page on my watchlist, and if it ever gets split into scientific/non-scientific pages, I'll make the change to the more specific article. OK? -Silence 21:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry, mixed up evidence and experiment momentarily in the above paragraph.) -Silence 12:58, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, tell me when you want part 2 of the copyedit posted. -Silence 21:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

On 2: Then link both or link neither, I will go with consensus on this one. As it is currently both, leave as is unless there is strong consensus to change.

On 6: The archives were mentioned because a great deal of work and editing back and forth went into this, certainly not as some kind of argument. The arguments are in those archives.

On 8: Stand by my position. It goes where it supposed to now; it will go where it is supposed to if the article is ever split.

On part 2 - wait until others have voiced their positions on these edits. One step at a time, I promise the world will not end. Go rewrite something neglected off of Wikipedia:Cleanup to pass the time, eh? KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

2: Actually, currently neither one is linked—check the Intelligent design page. As I mentioned, the revert was haphazard. Some of the earlier parts of my copyedit got left on the page. -Silence 22:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

KC is ONE editor. ONE. We're going to need a lot more than ONE editor agreeing on item number two. And you may have to wait a bit before everyone weighs in. Relax. Jim62sch 22:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It was just a simple question. You can chill on the caps. I'll wait as long as it takes. -Silence 22:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My opinion on proposed edits above:

1. This delink of universe in first paragraph is apparently already done at the moment. If it had been done by itself with an edit summary containing, say, "rem unnecessary link", or with the same justification as just offered above on talk, I think your change would have remained.

2. This link could stay or go and makes very little difference to the article.

3. This link (superimposed on the words “intelligent cause”) is unnecessary, period. As with many unnecessary links, commonly we tolerate them.

4. comma? absolutely yes.

5. The link to evolution makes more sense to me, much more sense than any link at all from the words “intelligent cause”. Links come, links go. NP by me as long as it doesn’t pipe to, say Lamarckian evolution, feces, etc..

6. I wouldn’t recommend even trying. This sentence has been hashed, rehashed, re-rehashed, and re-rehashed yet again, as well as yet yet again, as well as ... .

7. Absolutely, NP.

8. Link directly to esperiment? Absolutely, absolutely yes! These are the kinds of edits that if made one at a time with a quick edit note, are appreciated by virtually all unless there’s some overriding reason for the contrary.

9. By all means correct the misspelling in the footnote. Anyone who disagrees with such a change will have to deal with all the rest of us.

That said, these are not the changes that attracted all the attention. Seeing an image of Aquinas and Phillip Johnson suddenly appear, however, along with other more significant changes implemented simultaneously, as you might imagine, caught some attention and raised a few questions. ... Kenosis 12:21, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Note that the only reason "universe" and "living things" are currently delinked on the main page is because I made that change, and it was one of the few changes that got missed during FeloniousMonk's mass-reverts. And, the main reason we don't need a link to "life" is because we already have more specific links in the lead for the two most relevant aspects of life in ID: evolution and the origin of life.
As for 8, yes, I don't understand KC's objection to a direct link; I'm glad we agree that just linking to experiment is simpler and more convenient for both editors and readers. The reason not to link to a nonexistent, hypothetical article like scientific experiment is the same reason we have no reason to link to an article like scientific theory: the theory article is scientific, and almost certainly always will be. Let's reserve the "scientific X" links for articles that actually do have separate pages for that concept, like scientific evidence.
So, to sum up so far: it sounds like everyone agrees on changes 4, 5, and 7 at this point. (Though note that User:LexCorp briefly objected to 5 a week ago, though his rationale has been refuted several times since.) People seem to be mostly neutral on changes 1 and 2, though KC has a "mild object" to 2 (which I think I've addressed by pointing out that we already effectively link to the "development of living things" via origin of life and evolution; a link to life would thus be superfluous). KC supports 3, whereas Kenosis thinks we should eliminate any linkage from "intelligent cause" altogether (though both agree that the current link to argument from design is off-base). There is agreement not to mess around with 6 because it's been overdebated so much in the past to come to the current state, so that edit should probably be rejected, at least for now. Kenosis strongly supports 8 (as do I), whereas KC seems to have a slight objection (though I don't see the grounds for it; there is no possible benefit in linking to unlikely hypothetical article titles that will probably never exist). And Kenosis agrees with fixing the "Wikisouce" spelling error, but so far no comments on the 8th ref itself, so that's currently a "neutral". Looks like we'll need a few more users' comments before we can settle on which changes to implement. -Silence 12:58, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me, Silence, but this is already too much arguing over these in my opinion. Please make these edits one at a time with a reasonable justification for each. All on this list of 9 appear to be fair game except for #6. The ones other editors disagree with will be reverted, and if yet others agree with you some may get reinstated-- that's just the way it is in a controversial article, or any article. Keep it down to a manageable number of specific small edits per day (as an example, say, no more than three or four individual, specific small changes per day at this stage of the article's development, or a single substantive change per day) and give the other participants a chance to look at them and respond if they choose. That would be my recommendation. Other than #6, these edits above obviously are different from suddenly seeing Aquinas and Johnson pop up out of nowhere and footnotes changed and the introduction changed, etc. Sure there is a technical right to make mass edits, and there's also a technical right for many other editors to say "no way". ... Kenosis 13:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, why the hostility? I'm not "arguing", I'm discussing. I already agreed with you on 6—even though I think the sentence flows a bit better shortened, there's clearly enough opposition to it that there's no need to implement it. I don't see how any of the comments you made above are relevant to anything I said, nor how I have ever disputed that this article is "controversial" or that other editors don't have the right (free speech?) to say "no way". Maybe you misunderstood my tone or message..? I was just replying to comments, then summing up where we're at (since others might have trouble keeping up with the discussion) so as to more easily address the remaining points... You've been extremely helpful so far, so why does it sound like the above comment is trying to pick a fight? O_o; And why do you keep referencing the Aquinas and Johnson images? We already have a thread for discussing those above, and consensus seems to be to at least hold off on adding new images for a while. You seem to somehow blame me for bringing up these changes on the Talk page because they're so minor, even though I'm only doing exactly what FeloniousMonk and others have instructed. Stranger and stranger. -Silence 14:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Hostility? There was no hostility in Kenosis' reply to you. That you noted any where there was none might be part of the problem here -- you'll get much farther with your ideas if you don't play the victim card so often, especially when there's no evident to support its use. As I told you elsewhere, you have some good ideas, but the presentation of those ideas is problematic. And before you accuse me of being hostile, or jumping all over you, or whatever, let me assure you that I am merely sharing my analysis of what has happened here. Jim62sch 10:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm still trying to figure out what you're asking me to do here, but it sounds like you're saying "we've discussed these too much already, just make the changes (except for 6), one at a time, with clear justifications and explanations in the edit summary for each". But that's in direct contradiction to what Jim just said: "We're going to need a lot more than ONE editor agreeing on item number two. And you may have to wait a bit before everyone weighs in." So you chastise me for discussing the changes too much before moving on, and Jim chastises me for discussing them too little before moving on. I'm starting to get used to this pattern... -Silence 14:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Are we on the same talk page? Maybe my computer is displaying something different than that of other participants--must be a malfunction. Well, have a good day, OK?... Kenosis 14:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

??? OK... You too. -Silence 14:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Pattern? You mean like "good cop, bad cop"? There's no pattern -- while the regular editors argee on many things, we do not march in lock-step to the tune of some hidden dark agenda that includes "beating up on Silence".

In any case, since we have a section (and rightly so) on Fine-tuned universe, I disagree with delinking universe (Item # 2).

Item # 6 -- I agree with KC and Kenosis -- not a good idea. The others are OK. Jim62sch 10:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

By the same logic, Jim, we should have a link to movement and controversy in the article, since those words are also used in section titles. Your criteria for including a link, especially a link in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph of the article, seem to be rather too low. It is sufficient to have a link to universe in the fine-tuned universe article—that is an example of proper distribution of wikilinks, where universe is clearly specifically relevant to the fine-tuned universe article, and fine-tuned universe is clearly specifically relevant to the intelligent design article, but that doesn't make universe specifically relevant to intelligent design, for the same reason that plant links to life, and botany links to plant, but botany doesn't link to life: specific relevance, for the purposes of wikilinking, is not inherited via related topics. However, if you strongly feel that we need a link to universe somewhere in the article, why not just add a link to it in the "Fine-tuned universe" section, rather than in the very first sentence of the article, where it's especially important that we not flood readers with vaguely relevant links and have them miss more specifically relevant ones? -Silence 10:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, the universe article doesn't even mention fine-tuned universe, or, indeed, anything related to creationism, much less ID. Much like life doesn't mention anything related to ID or creationism in the article, though evolution does. That gives you an indicator of how irrelevant such a vague, general article is to a distantly-related topic like this, and how unnecessary it is to link to it in the first sentence of the article. -Silence 11:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Items 1-4 were already implemented. I implemented #5 (link to first instance of "evolution", which is in third paragraph). Items #7 and #8 were already implemented. Item #9 is already covered by a direct link to the case in the body text. ... Kenosis 16:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I will assume that you simply misunderstood what #5 is, and are not intentionally deceiving anyone. You have not implemented #5. Edit #5 is to link to evolution at the end of the first paragraph, at the same point where origin of life is linked to ("the evolution and origin of life."). I don't see why you linked to a later mentioning of evolution rather than either implementing the change that was actually discussed, or voicing your own opinion as to whether (or how) you feel it should be implemented. I guess you were just confused, again..? And, #9 is implemented (along with several of the others) because it's one of the changes I made that wasn't reverted. (Or rather, it was half-reverted, hence the "Wikisouce" error, but FM has recently fixed that mistake.) #6 is also implemented for the same reason, so, whether or not the change has already been implemented is not a fair determinant of whether the edit is accepted; which edits were and weren't reverted seems to have been random. -Silence 17:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

RE #5: Then change it, or instead continue to find reasons to argue about it with everybody. ~~Caveat emptor for buying into this particular discussion in the first place. My mistake. But it's all there in the relevant edit histories.~~... Kenosis 17:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Um? I don't understand the meaning of the above comment. Could you clarify what you are suggesting, exactly? I'd rather discuss it then change it, because I figure I'll be jumped on at this point if I make any edit whatsoever to Intelligent design, and it'll just be reverted. -Silence 18:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

"I guess you were just confused, again..?" -- the again was unnecessary, thus Kenosis' "caveat emptor" was rather apropos. Caveat lectores redactoresque: verba tua miscontruant, ergo volite illa pensitare.

My opinion on points 1 thru 9:

OK.
No.
OK.
OK.
OK.
No.
OK.
OK.
No, already fixed.

FeloniousMonk 19:18, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

So we're mostly agreed on the changes, except for #2. I say the link to life is as redundantly vague as the universe one, and that we don't need it because we link to evolution and origin of life in the same paragraph. Kenosis says it makes "very little difference", and is neutral. Chihuahua agrees with you, saying "This article is about a proposed explanation of the development of living things". However, if ID is a proposed explanation of the development of living things, then the links to evolution and origin of life, which describe that development of living things (in both senses of the word), are all that we really need to provide readers. So, I think not linking to "life" here would be preferable. However, I don't have strong feelings on the matter, so if you strongly prefer the link, I won't push.

Incidentally, a side-question: how many minor changes would you prefer I list in each "chunk" for discussion? I don't want to list too many, and have people overwhelmed, or too few, and waste too much time. -Silence 19:28, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Please list your next four. Thank you. WAS 4.250 21:29, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Next four? OK. I'll go make "part 2" now. -Silence 06:25, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

"Non-ID perspectives" linking concern

Fellow Wikipedians,

I have a concern about a link under the section titled "Non-ID perspectives" on this Wikipedia 'Intelligent design' article.

The linked titled "A Criticism of Intelligent Design", described as an "Article analyzing ID Theory," is a website that, in my analysis, has disqualifying concerns:

Not factual. --- The site venomously trashes Sir Issac Newton, who, ironically, is the one thinker credited with elucidating the very idea the site is trying to promote (see the lead line and following of the Wikipedia article Intelligent falling for more).
Not relevant. --- Intelligent-forces.com is listed as a ""Anti-Gravity" parody website" in the external links of Wikipedia's "Intelligent falling" article, and this spoof site contains accounts of claimed historical events and which apparently never happened (e.g. there seems to be no "Road Telecommunications Bill," touted here, they do not actually sell the clothes they say they have "in stock," and their Book of the Month, "Newton: History's Greatest Monster," is not a book in print, etc.).
Not ethical or lawful. --- The site's author(s) claim to exercise practices that violate US federal laws, and probably state and international laws as well. According to their events page, the group claims to "use targeted kidnappings where appropriate."
Not compliant to FM's standards. --- Additionally, it is not clear how intelligent-forces.com satisfies the criteria demanded of ResearchID.org by FM to Campana during a recent discussion.
Not accessible. --- Intelligent-forces.com also seems to negatively answer the guideline questions Wikipedia:External_links, "Is it accessible?" or "Is the link, in the context used, likely to have a substantive longevity?" since the page linked to that critiques ID is not accessible through any of the "outer shell" pages at intelligent-forces.com, and ostensibly serves as a "hidden" page on the Intelligent-forces.com site.

Based on the above observations, and according to FM's criteria and the above cited guidelines page, the link to Intelligent-forces.com seems to fail the tests for inclusion under a number of the qualifiers, especially "Any site that contains factually inaccurate material or unverified original research."

As such, it seems the link to Intelligent-forces.com does not belong on the Wikipedia article about ID.

Also, since neither Intelligent-forces.com nor ResearchID.org comply with FM's stated standards, yet intelligent-forces.com is currently utilized as a link, why is ResearchID.org excluded from the External links section?

Replies to these concerns would be appreciated. Please let me know if I have mistaken the facts on any points. Kind regards, Joseph C. Campana 19:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC).

Um, it's a parody site... But you knew that, right? ID has generated several parodies, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Intelligent Falling, which are notable in their own right, worthy of their own articles here. This seems to be one of those. Why don't you come back making your case using Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, not "FM's criteria," whatever that is. FeloniousMonk 19:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FM, thanks for your reply. Yes indeedee, I am aware that the site is a parody, thank you for checking in with me on that; you are a considerate gentleman. The fact that it is a spoof is why the link doesn't belong on a Wikipedia article. So say the Wikipedia conventions on external links that I already gave above, which state that "Wikipedia articles should heed these rules," including the prohibition on linking to inaccurate material. I don't see in the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines where it says that non-factual parodies can be linked to. However, as you and everyone can observe, the page linked to is a fictitious spoof containing counterfactual material not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Perhaps we can start a 'humor' page for such entertaining fiction. Thank you again for your very prompt reply; the speedy responses always make this page a pleasure for discussion. Kind regards, Joseph C. Campana 20:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It's clearly a parody and Wikipedia:External_links does not preclude parodies and it take some significant stretches of logic to conclude that it does. Is this post of your's a parody as well? If not and you're serious then you're wasting our time and yours. FeloniousMonk 20:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My, Joseph C. Campana, I've never seen such a venomous yet courteous post. Kudos.

Joseph C. Campana, FeloniousMonk, et all, please review your recent posts. Try to remain civil and patient. Some things are not worth replying to, while few are worth getting brusque over. -- Ec5618 20:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Ec, I know that this article has a long and bad history of conflict. I want no part in that aspect of this talk page. Typed words are easy to misinterpret, and this page is incredibly heated.

I have no hard feelings against anyone here.

My only intention is courtesy. I have no desire to fester distrust or venom. Please know that civility is my first priority. There is no sarcasm intended in my tone. As far as my own capabilities, I have tried everything to remain civil. If I am coming across as negative or venomous, please tell me how I can avoid this. If necessary, I will resort to smilies, but even those can be misinterpreted. I know it can be hard to believe sometimes, given the battles that go on here, but there are people that appreciate the work that goes into making a wiki community work together, trust me, I know this fact very well.

I really do give all of the editors here props, including FM. This is a genuine compliment I am offering. I hope it can be taken at face value, and the work of this article can continue without hostility. Kind regards, Joseph C. Campana 21:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FM, wow, you really are fast!!! Nope, this post is not a parody, it is a legitimate concern. The parody page under discussion, quoting from the conventions, is not "accessible," lacks "substantive longevity," and is indeed "factually inaccurate material."

As the Wikipedia policies state, "Wikipedia is first and foremost an online encyclopedia." Encyclopedias typically do not have humorous material; that type of material is typically reserved for joke books and comics. Or for articles that are explicitly humorous in nature. Given recent court proceedings and the curriculum struggle going on the US and abroad, the topic of intelligent design does not qualify as a humorous encyclopedia article.

Is the inclusion of this parody an attempt to "strive for accuracy," as the first pillar of Wikipedia states we should do?

FM, I want you to know that I am not trying to be legalistic, nor am I antithetical to this Wikipedia article. I think it is a valiant attempt at consensus, as online consensus goes. I really and truly think that the link is not appropriate for an encyclopedia article that is seeking factuality. Please do not misinterpret my discussion here. I am not a railroading ID advocate. Far be it from me to throw a wrench in the works of a wiki, I know how annoying spammers can be. As you can see, I am fairly discussing changes. Additionally, as you know, I help administer a wiki myself. I think the link under discussion is misplaced and should be removed. Can you squarely see any of the issues I am bringing up? Kind regards, Joseph C. Campana 21:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I see your points, and I agree it needs to go, but for the reason KC brought up below actually.

While you're here I do want to compliment you on your timeline though:[14] It's rather good. FeloniousMonk 21:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree - the parody should go. Its not against policy but it is linkbloat, and might be confusing for those not anticipating a parody. Its cute but does not add to the understanding of the topic at hand. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

There are indeed a lot links. We should be selective here considering there are some much more relevant ones that are missing and need to be added. So yes you're right; it should go. FeloniousMonk 21:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FM, thank you for the compliment on the timeline. Even though many think the opposite, I think you have been gracious and fair in our exchange. I expressed my views, you expressed yours, others expressed theirs, and a workable solution emerged. Just how a wiki should work!

FM et al, I'm glad we could agree; albeit for different reasons. I'll remove the link in about a half an hour if there are no objections from others. That is, I will remove it if someone else doesn't beat me to it. Kind regards, Joseph C. Campana 22:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Knock that off. You're ruining my rep, and I worked too hard for it. If you feel I was gracious and fair at all it's your own fault. You were a very good sport when I expressed my opinion recently that your ID wiki isn't yet notable enough for mention in this article. Many others would have flown off in a rage; you responded with grace and humility and that did not go unnoticed. I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day soon it will be wildly notable and successful. If the DI has any sense they'll bankroll you. I still think your post here was a parody, though. FeloniousMonk 23:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In all honesty, I wouldn't mind linking to that timeline, even though I agree with FM re the link to the full site. (Hey, is that wishy-washy on my part?). Jim62sch 10:50, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

There's a few POV and possible NOR issues with the timeline, but, with Joe's permission, we could reuse its code as a starting point for wikipedia's own ID timeline. FeloniousMonk 15:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for my delay in replying, I have been visiting remote localities where internet connections are buggy and slow. I would be very agreeable to Wikipedia using the ResearchID.org timeline as a starting point. I would require a citation with a link in the form of Wikipedia's Example notice (or a suitable modification thereof). -- Joseph C. Campana 12:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

That would be excellent! Thanks, Joe. Jim62sch 14:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Important content dispute reminder

Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man --FloNight ^talk 22:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Very cute. I have acrophobia by the way...seeing that picture has scarred me for life. ;) Jim62sch 22:06, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

This talk page scares me! FloNight ^talk 22:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Its terrified braver puppies than I. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Come on, Flo... worse than the Zhu articles and Webex? You cut your teeth at wikipedia debating tough subjects, I saw to that. Jump on in... the vitriol is fine. FeloniousMonk 23:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

LOL. It's true, I learned the fine art of Wikipedia consensus editing by skirmishing with (self-described) pedantic blowhard Larvatus and the living legend FeloniousMonk. ; - ) FloNight ^talk 03:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

FeloniousMonk has improved since becoming an admin. WAS 4.250 03:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

IDCAD, part 2: Overview

Changes 1-4 (2)

Continuing the "In-depth copyedit analysis and discussion" here, now that we've gone over the first 9 edits (for the lead) fairly thoroughly. These copyedits are to the "Intelligent design in summary" section, which was renamed to simply "Overview" in my edits. Per request, I'll start with the first four, then move on to the next four, etc.

1. Rename section title "Intelligent design in summary" to "Overview". Simpler, tidier, quicker. Conveys all the same information, but lets readers instantly know what the section deals with: an overview of intelligent design. Also, "summaries" often apply to stories, not topics and beliefs in general; "overview" is more general, and better encompasses the "origins of the concept" and "origins of the term" sections, which don't really "summarize" ID, per se.
2. Merge first two paragraphs ("Intelligent design is presented as..." and "This stands in opposition to...") into one. Both are extremely short, only one sentence long, and they are on exactly the same topic, with a smooth transition from the end of the first sentence to the beginning of the second.
3. Change "[[Biology|biological science]]" to "[[biology|biological]] science". Minor wikilink clarifier, so users are less likely to be confused into thinking that there's a "biological science" article distinct from our biology article. (Life science also redirects to biology, incidentally.)
4. Shorten "which relies on experiment and collection of uncontested data to explain the natural world" to "which relies on experimentation to explain the natural world". Conveys the same basic information, but much more quickly, simply, and accurately. "Uncontested" is ambiguous, and addresses a (relatively) complex issue (validation of scientific data under the scientific method) that is beyond the scope of this article; if an IDer contests scientific data, that doesn't make it unscientific. "Collection of uncontested data" is also too vague to be meaningful or useful here; simply "experimentation" suffices for the very basic overview of science which is all this article requires.

By the way, Kenosis has removed {{Intelligent Design}} from the entire article without discussion. It used to be in the "Intelligent design in summary/Overview" section. Anyway, comments and feedback on the first four changes for this section? -Silence 07:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Just poking my head in here quickly... if you look again at the edit, it was a partial template when I removed it. ( {INtelligent design}} ) . Status quo was unknown at that point, whether it should be re-included or not. ... Kenosis 15:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I noted below that the template was broken at the time. However, it was never intentionally removed; the first { was removed due to a typo. Looking over the edit history, it seems that this typo was caused when FeloniousMonk accidentally deleted a { in one of his edits. This error was subsequently fixed, but was restored during your revert-spree around 16:00 June 17. Since this change seems to have resulted from a simple mistake on FM and Kenosis' parts, unless there are any objections, can the template be restored now? -Silence 15:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I prefer "Overview", but only as part of the title "Overview of intelligent design". I realize it's no shorter than what we currently have, but while I agree re summary, I think we need to say what it's an overview of.
That's what's already there (at least as of 6:57 AM EST).
biological science will work fine -- biological redirects to biology.
We've gone over that one before and consensus was to let it stand, so I'm opposed to that change at this time.

Once we get these four items squared away, we'll discuss the template. Jim62sch 11:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

1. It is not necessary to include "intelligent design" in every section header for the article named Intelligent design. In fact, it's phenomenally unnecessary, and makes the article a lot less easy to navigate for brand-new readers, since they have to read 4 times as much text to get the same information that they would from simpler section titles. There is no reason to violate the Manual of Style here when all it does is inconvenience our readers. The MoS explicitly states: "Avoid restating the subject of the article or of an enclosing section in heading titles. It is assumed that you are writing about the same subject, so you usually do not need to refer to it again." Makes sense to me..

2. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but that fact isn't relevant. I've already stated in my previous edit that which edits of mine were and weren't reverted was 100% random, based solely on chronology. Nobody has specifically verified the new edits, regardless of whether they're currently in the article or not, so whether the edits are in the current article has absolutely nothing to do with whether they should be (or have been) accepted or not.

3. Although I understand where you're coming from, it is preferable to link to [[biology|biological]] rather than [[biological]]. It is more convenient, speedy, and simple for our readers. There are many users on Wikipedia that go around fixing links to redirects by replacing them with links to the redirected-to article; I see no value in making their job any more difficult.

4. OK, but just "this has been discussed" isn't really satisfying (especially sans a link)—can you explain why the current version was settled upon? I have a pretty good idea already of why that section was added to the sentence in question, and it seems a misguided effort to me, for the reasons I mentioned above (it doesn't add useful information for the reader, complicates the sentence, and has the potential to be misunderstood). Anyway, thanks for the feedback! -Silence 11:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

My opinions:

Yes. Shorter is better. I can grok the article structure at a glance.
Yes. Let's discuss changes, if you please.
Yes.
No, for many reasons. And no it isn't "satisfying" to read a past argument when you wish to engage in one yourself. WAS 4.250 13:06, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Puppy's take:

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
No. KillerChihuahua^?!? 13:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

WAS, #2 is a change. The problem is that when FeloniousMonk reverted my changes, he missed a number of my early ones; not mentioning them now, along with the others, would be dishonest and wouldn't make any sense, since they're no more or less likely to be accepted than my other changes, they just randomly happened to slip through the cracks of FM's reverts. For example, change #6 (in part 1) was (and still is) implemented even though people seem opposed to it, because it slipped through those cracks. Same for #4 in part 2, which you three object to as well. So the fact that a change hasn't already been reverted doesn't seem a reliable indicator of whether it will be accepted: the paragraph-merge, consequently, is a change, and Felonious specifically asked me to list them all individually so that they can be checked over. What have I done wrong?

Anyway, it sounds like there's agreement to accept 1-3 and reject 4. I can live with that (though it would be nice to hear some real rationale or justification for #4, if only as a footnote.. oi). Should I list the next 4 now, or wait a while longer? There are a total 13 more changes in the "Overview" section. -Silence 13:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

"next we'll discuss the template" says Jim62sch. So either that or the next four or both. WAS 4.250 13:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

For the template discussion, we'll need Kenosis' input at least to reach a consensus. I'm not so sure that the template really adds anything to the article. Thus, since I'm a bit ambivalent about it at the moment, feel free to explain why you think it needs to be there and others can disagree (if they wish) and the most compelling argument will get my "vote".

re #2 -- "That's what's already there" means I have no objection. Had I an objection, I would have stated it.Jim62sch 14:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we'll need to hear from Kenosis to find out why the template was deleted. Looking at the edit and its context, it looks to me like the removal was a simple mistake, perhaps caused by the fact that the template was missing its first { bracket at the time and thus wasn't working (which in turn was caused by Kenosis' recent revert to FeloniousMonk's typo-heavy older version).

As for whether it's useful or not, it's no more or less useful to this article than the {{creationism2}} template is to the Creationism article; they are the same concept, providing a series of links between significant daughter articles to improve navigability. Though certainly the ID template is vastly more useful to this article than the Creationism template is, since it provides easily-accessible links to other ID-related articles. Personally, I prefer a vertical template at the top of the "hub" article (e.g. Scientology for the Scientology series, Intelligent design for the ID series) and a horizontal template at the bottom of most of the other articles in the series, but that doesn't really matter here.

As for #2, Jim, you misunderstand. I understood perfectly that you were approving the edit by saying it's "already there". I was simply pointing out that you were giving the wrong impression with that comment—a wrong impression which subsequently misled WAS into thinking that #2 was somehow unusual for being "already there", presumably because he didn't take the time to look at the actual article, where he'd have discovered that all 4 of the above edits, except for #1, are "already there". That's simply a historical accident, and is irrelevant to a discussion of the edits' validity. -Silence 14:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

On the proposed changes:

OK.
OK.
OK.
No.

About the ID template: My opinion is that adds little to this article, since the links it contains are already present in the article. FeloniousMonk 15:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

But scattered throughout the page at varying junctures. And the links are more than ten times more relevant to the article than many of the general creationism articles (e.g., an extra link to Discovery Institute or Irreducible complexity on Intelligent design is infinitely more important than a link to Islamic creationism or Old Earth creationism), so two links to one of them is potentially very helpful to users, who will find tracking through the entire article to find a certain centrally important link (e.g. intelligent designer or wedge strategy) less convenient than a compact, organized series-box. Your opinions applies equally to the "See also" section; by your reasoning, we should delete both the template and almost all of the "See also" section. -Silence 15:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Within the article, many of the links on the template appear as main article links — that should be enough to stress their import. I am not altogether convinced that all of the remaining links are as important, though all of them certainly appear at several junctures on the page. Presumably, a reader who is interested in exploring those topics can click on the links, though if they need to be emphasized, they should appear in the see also section (that would seem to be its purpose). ^iggy_talk 15:54, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, only 5 of the links appear as "main article" links; the other 6 (theistic realism, Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture, Wedge strategy, Teach the Controversy and Intelligent design in politics) do not. I don't see how you can dispute that these links are "as important"; several are more important than the "main article" ones. You are also incorrect in saying that "all of them certainly appear at several junctures on the page"—Intelligent design in politics appears nowhere at all in the page now that {{Intelligent Design}} has been mistakenly removed.

However, I agree with you that there isn't really a need to have a "see also" section, as long as we have the template to use. The arguments both you and FeloniousMonk used to claim that the template isn't very useful are much more effective when applied to the "see also" section: anything that is linked there and already linked in the article probably doesn't need to be repeated at the very bottom, where relatively few people will see it anyway (unlike the more useful template near the top of the page), and the articles linked in "see also" that aren't linked anywhere in the article are probably so minor that their being linked to at all in the top-level ID article should be disputed. Additionally, unlike the listing in the ID template, which is carefully-trimmed and lists no stubs or dubious pages, a lot of the articles linked to in "see also" and nowhere else in the article also seem to be pretty poor-quality dubious pages, such as argument from evolution, clockmaker hypothesis, intelligent falling, and orgel's rule, or aren't really significantly related to intelligent design, such as cosmological argument, Raëlism, and evolutionary algorithm. At the very least, if the "see also" section isn't removed altogether (or better yet, merged with the template where relevant), it should certainly be severely trimmed and cleaned up. There are much stronger arguments to be made against the "see also" section than against Template:Intelligent Design. -Silence 16:25, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

RE: "we'll need to hear from Kenosis..." above: I disagree that this input is necessary to form consensus. Substantively to the current points:

1. yes

2. yes

3. yes

4. Qualified yes. The use of the phrase "uncontested data" in the relevant passage here has already been changed, and should remain as is.

The issue was framed above (by Silence) as follows:

4. Shorten "which relies on experiment and collection of uncontested data to explain the natural world" to "which relies on experimentation to explain the natural world". Conveys the same basic information, but much more quickly, simply, and accurately. "Uncontested" is ambiguous, and addresses a (relatively) complex issue (validation of scientific data under the scientific method) that is beyond the scope of this article; if an IDer contests scientific data, that doesn't make it unscientific. "Collection of uncontested data" is also too vague to be meaningful or useful here; simply "experimentation" suffices for the very basic overview of science which is all this article requires.

The relevant paragraph currently reads as follows:

Intelligent design is presented as an alternative to natural explanations for evolution. This stands in opposition to mainstream biological science, which relies on experimentation to explain the natural world through observed physical processes such as mutation and natural selection. ... 19:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I would maintain the current reading is appropriate, and should remain in place. ... Kenosis 19:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Kenosis, the current reading is already in accordance with my suggested changes. Of the above 4 changes, only #1 has yet to be implemented. So, currently the plan seems to be "add the section-change mentioned in #1, and revert the textual change mentioned in #4." Consequently, since you support the current version, it sounds like your support for change #4 is more "unqualified" than "qualified"; the paragraph on Intelligent design at the moment is exactly what changes 2-4 request. -Silence 19:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

My qualification is based upon the fact that it was not made clear in #4 above whether the sentence was intended to stop with the words "...explain the natural world." Given recent experience here, my comment remains thus qualified. ; { ... Kenosis 20:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The sentence wasn't intended to stop there for the simple reason that the original sentence didn't stop there; if a change is not explicitly stated in one of the above edits, then it should be assumed that the change is not part of the suggestions. You had no reason to think that the sentence could end there; the original sentence, which was referenced as analogous to the new one in edit description #4, ended at exactly the same point that the original one did, yet the original didn't end mid-sentence, as indicated by the fact that a period was not enclosed in quotes in either version. Moreover, if you had any doubts about what, exactly, edit #4 entailed (and I don't see how you could if you read the description above carefully, though I apologize if I was unclear), you could have simply checked the edit history change I provided at #Copyedit: the very first edit demonstrated what the proposed change would (and does) look like. In the future, if you have any questions about any of the edits I'm proposing, or are unclear as to what any of them entail, feel 100% free to ask me about them and I'll try to explain. Regardless, the ambiguity's been cleared up now, so there's no reason to qualify your support when you support exactly the edit that was suggested.. -Silence 20:57, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

RE "The sentence wasn't intended to stop there for the simple reason that the original sentence didn't stop there; if a change is not explicitly stated in one of the above edits, then it should be assumed that the change is not part of the suggestions.": My recent experience with this discussion provides inadequate evidence to believe this assertion, indeed my experience provides evidence that I should make sure we are talking about the same thing. I stand by my statement of support thus qualified as above. ... Kenosis 21:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

reduce indentKenosis has a very good point. It seems that if things are not spelled out explicitly to the point of absurdity the intent of the editor is misconstrued and and argumentum ad stultitiam ensues. Jim62sch 22:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 5-8 (2)

We've pretty much established that 1-3 will be accepted and 4 rejected, and Kenosis has explained the mistake that resulted in the ID template being deleted, so here are the next four changes:

5. Change "through observed impersonal physical processes" to "through observed physical processes". Again, more concise explanations are better when they convey the same information, and "impersonal" isn't meaningful here. How could a physical process be "personal"?
6. Change mutations to mutation. This is describing a physical process, not a series of specific occurrences, so "mutation", not "mutations" is appropriate here. Also, mutations is a redirect.
7. Clarify "The stated purpose is" to "Intelligent design's started purpose is" at the start of the next paragraph. There's no reason whatsoever not to state the name in this context and avoid potential ambiguity; in fact, using "The" here is semantically incorrect.
8. Change "empirical evidence" to "empirical evidence". The link goes to empiricism either way, but readers will be misled by the original style into thinking that the link goes to an article specifically about empirical evidence, not about empiricism in general.

Again, comments and criticism welcome.

-Silence 15:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

5 -- fine
6 -- link? I'm not going through the article to find it.
7 -- "The" is semantically incorrect? Why? How so? Did you mean "syntactically" or "grammatically"? If so, that would be an incorrect assertion. And again, link? I searched for that and couldn't find it.
8 -- fine

Jim62sch 22:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

5. yes.
6. yes. (I assume you are still talking about the first paragraph.)
7. The sentence is complete garbage and should be replaced by the quote in the reference. What is the stated purpose of E=MC2? People have stated purposes. Further, the actual purposes of people are rarely the stated ones.
8. yes.

WAS 4.250 06:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

WAS, the quote in the reference is not relevant to the sentence in question. It is malplaced: the reason it was put after the "stated" is as a snide, subtle way to refute ID's claimed goal, when any reader at all would expect a footnote after "stated" to back up or explain the source of ID's stated goal, not sneakily attack it. There's no reason to be sneaky or easter egg-ish about pointing out the disjunct between ID's claimed goals and it's actual goals, after all, as long as it's cited. :) At this point, I'm recommending that the 9th reference be simply moved to a later paragraph, where it's actually relevant and actually backs up a certain claim made in the article. It would go great at the end of the last paragraph of "Origins of the concept", for example (a paragraph which, incidentally, I will recommend we move up to the "Overview" section in a later edit, because it doesn't actually have anything at all to do with the ID concept's origin).
Jim, it is semantically incorrect because its coherent meaningfulness, not its grammar or word order, is flawed. A statement can be grammatically and syntactically correct, but still fail to be a good English sentence in a specific context. And, simply look at what is currently the second paragraph of the "Overview" section to see change #7: "Intelligent design's stated" has been changed from "The stated". For change #6, look at the end of the first paragraph: "physical processes such as mutation and natural selection" has been changed from "physical processes such as mutations and natural selection". -Silence 06:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

You had damned well better be able to back this up -- you are ascribing motives, and quite frankly I've had about enough of this: "the reason it was put after the "stated" is as a snide, subtle way to refute ID's claimed goal, when any reader at all would expect a footnote after "stated" to back up or explain the source of ID's stated goal, not sneakily attack it." Your attitude needs to change.

Sadly, you are wrong in the first instance: there was not a damned thing semantically wrong with, "The stated purpose of...", it means precisely the same thing as what is currently there. As for the second example, I said nothing other than that you need to specify where the sentence is. Jim62sch 11:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

5. Yes. This edit has been stable since here
6. Yes. This has been done for awhile too, with no apparent objection.
7. Yes. Apparently there was no serious objection to this more specific way of starting this first sentence of the second paragraph of the section Intelligent design#Overview, previously Intelligent design#Intelligient_design_in_summary. (Whichever of these two section titles is the latest preference, I'll support either).
8. Yes. Either empirical research or empirical is equally appropriate to link to.

... Kenosis 07:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 9-12 (2)

It sounds like there's rough agreement to approve the previous four edits, so I'll move on to the next four. However, feel free to continue to discuss or critique the above edits if anyone who hasn't looked at them yet finds a problem; all discussions remain open, I am simply listing the next four (which are all minor and formating-related), from the second and third paragraphs, in the interest of expediency:

9. Delink "life on Earth" to "life on Earth". No reason to link Earth here, not relevant to context.
10. Change ""signs of intelligence"" to "signs of intelligence". It is redundant to both italicize and scare quote-ize a new term (and doesn't look good either).
11. Change "[[physical properties]]" to "[[physical property|physical properties]]" to avoid unnecessary redirect.
12. Change "he may (ID proponents argue)" to "he may, ID proponents argue,". Works just as well, but more smoothly and simply. (I'll explain this one further if anyone has a problem with it.)

-Silence 12:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

. 9. Yes. The article on Earth is superfluous to the subject of Intelligent design.
10. Yes. "Quotalics" are unnecessary.
11. Yes, link directly to target article wherever an unnecessary redirect is noticed.
12. Yes, do replace the parentheses with commas.

... Kenosis 16:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Kenosis.

Nota bene: there are no temporal limitations as implied in the edit summary.

For #12, the parentheses are actually wrong, so the commas not only work as well, they are actually the correct punctuation. Jim62sch 21:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Support 9-12 inclusive. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 13-16 (2)

And here are the last 4 for part 2, the "overview" section.[15]

13. Add comma after "that the statue was designed" to indicate a pause.
14. Correct spelling error "identifiy" to "identify".
15. Merge 2nd- and 3rd-to-last paragraphs (the ones dealing with "signs of intelligence") into one. Exact same topic being discussed, short paragraphs, no reason for split.
16. Simplify convoluted grammar in "Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence, states:" to just "Dembski states in Signs of Intelligence:".

Again, comments and criticism welcome. Once all the part-2 issues have been pretty much settled, I'll move on to part 3, the "Origins of the concept" section. -Silence 08:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

13. It's already there but I don't think it belongs...no pause is needed -- in fact, a pause breaks the flow of the sentence.
14. Yes.
15. No. The break in paragraphs is for emphasis.
16. It could be changed, but preferably to "In Signs of Intelligence Dembski states, ..." as that is pretty standard writing, but so too is "Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence, states:" (although I think the colon should be replaced by a comma). Jim62sch 09:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any strong opinions about 13; if others agree with you, it can be removed. I don't think it "breaks up the flow" any more than it should, though. As for 15, I don't see how the break effectively emphasizes anything; if anything, it's too abrupt of a breaking-off point for what's being discussed, cutting off the paragraph's natural flow much more so than a mere comma could.
And, I don't really care whether we use "Dembski states in Signs of Intelligence" or "In Signs of Intelligence, Dembski states", but we should use a comma after Signs of Intelligence if we go with your version. I don't think it makes a difference whether we use a comma or colon at the end; whichever looks better. As long as we don't use "Dembsi, in Signs of Intelligence, states", I'm fine with it; the original structure is just too unnecessarily, jarringly convoluted. It may be grammatically correct, but it's not "standard". -Silence 10:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The purpose was to emphasize irreducible complexity, information mechanisms, and specified complexity. Plus, upon further reading, I don't see it as a natural fit in the preceding paragraph.

Agreed. (BTW: the usage in the article is more standard than you might think). Jim62sch 14:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Can we dispense with spelling errors? Just fix them - they're errors. KillerChihuahua^?!? 15:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, they're errors. So are most of the other things I fixed. What's your point? A spelling error is not inherently "worse" or "easier" than a grammatical one; there are consistent, established rules for spelling and grammar alike. Anyway, it is not a big issue, as there aren't many spelling fixes in the total edits; this page must have been spellchecked many times, as it was better than most. It's flow, clarity, wording, and grammar that was (and, after the reverts, still is) a larger issue overall.

When I pointed out earlier that many of my changes were extremely simple error-fixes, my point was repeatedly dismissed and I was accused of being "sneaky", of "edit-warring", of "trolling", and of "editing for editing's sake". When I pointed out that monotonously listing every single change, no matter how simple or trivial or unobjected-to, was little better than "sifting through meaningless bureaucratic hurdles", FM strawmanned me with "Well, if you think working with other editors in achieving consensus is nothing more than 'sifting through meaningless bureaucratic hurdles'..." Any attempt at all to delineate between the edits based on importance has been met with accusations and needless squabbling (on my part as well as others'), and I have been repeatedly instructed by FM and others to list each individual edit "one at a time", "bit-by-bit", etc. So, I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm done with the silly idea of focusing on important edits rather than listing trivial ones. :) I'd rather spend time discussing minor changes to the article than waste it fighting over which ones to discuss; at least something productive is being done this way. -Silence 16:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Spelling is essentially objective (unless we're going to get into a row over American v. British v. Australian v. Canadian English, etc.). A number of the other items identified as errors are not necessarily so. While grammar rules are somewhat fixed, many are not absolutes. English is generally (at least in the active voice) SVO, but other variations are quite acceptable. In most cases, it's really a matter of taste.

As for the second paragraph of the above comment, the sarcasm is not likely to a productive way of garnering support for the more substantive changes you appear to have in mind based on this: [16]. Jim62sch 22:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Using a Hypostatization to Hide a Theology

According to the Discovery Institute, "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." This assertion is totally illogical. A theory cannot hold an opinion. A theory cannot assert "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause."

The Discovery Institute poses the question, "What is the theory of intelligent design?" Then, rather than providing a definition of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute offers a DESCRIPTION of intelligent design. That description is a hypostatization.

Hypostatization means "treating an abstract entity as if it were concrete." Intelligent design is an "abstract entity" and, as such, intelligent design is absolutely incapable of holding the opinion that intelligent design is the "best" explanation. However, the Discovery Institute's description of intelligent design turns intelligent design into a "concrete" person named Intelligent Design, who purportedly "holds" the opinion that intelligent design is the "best" explanation. This is trickery and utter silliness.

The debate about intelligent design goes around and around because the proponents of intelligent design are never required to actually define intelligent design. Instead, they are allowed to put up a straw man, Mr. Intelligent Design, and allege that he holds the opinion that he is the best explanation.

Intelligent design is the assertion that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer. It's really just that simple. Intelligent design is not a theory, it's a theology.

The Wikipedia page about intelligent design should be revised to make it clear that the Discovery Institute is offering an opinion about intelligent design, not a definition of intelligent design.

Scott G. Beach 09:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that the assertion is illogical, the source is a direct quote, so it cannot be changed. And personally, I'd rather not see the article waste additional bytes on the philosophical or semantic incorrectness of DI's statement.

As for ID being a theology, while that may in fact be true (see Kitzmiller for verification of that view), since we're constrained by the rules of WP:NPOV, we'd need to be extremely careful in expressing such a view. As the article stands now, there is sufficient sourcing that alludes to ID theological bent. Jim62sch 11:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia's main content policies WP:NOR, WP:V, and NPOV as a guide, the article is handling this issue exactly right. FloNight ^talk 13:23, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The Discovery Institute defined the concept, term and issues as they exist today. Their definition of ID is definitive, and quoting it here is appropriate and necessary. FeloniousMonk 14:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Scientific Consensus Statement

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds the statement 'the scientific consensus is that life evolved' to be a very problematic one. Primarly; it reaches beyond verifiable sources available. I would propose that stating that 'prominent scientific organizations including the NABT have stated that no debate exists, and that the scientific consensus is that life evolved.' is a far more verifiable statement. Comments welcome! Cheers Jgarth 23:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Why is it problematic? Claiming it "reaches beyond verifiable sources" means that you think that every biology text that makes this statement isn't a verifiable enough deluge of sources. What a lark! --ScienceApologist 01:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with the statement. FloNight ^talk 01:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I still argue that the comment needs to be modified. Within the context of the paragraph into which this statement is inserted; the very issue at stake is whether or not a debate or controversy exists. The term 'scientific consensus' is used to support a truth claim that no debate or controversy exists. However, this reaches beyond the cited evidence available. I believe my proposal is far more verifiable; as it rightly states that the NABT (and other scientific groups and organizations) have issued statements on behalf of their membership supporting the integrity of evolutionary theory. However, if it is then inferred, on the basis of that quotation alone, that 'scientific consensus' exists, that's simply going beyond the cited evidence.

Your point is taken with regards to the deluge of sources in biology textbooks; which I agree are present in ample and voluminous quantity. However, this is not the issue at hand. The issue is not the number of textbooks which describe or espouse the details of the theory; but it is the issue of whether the theory itself is a source of debate in the minds of the scientific community. Certainly; based on the cited evidence; a sizeable majority of scientists from prominent organizations do not believe a serious debate exists. But casually dropping the term 'scientific consensus' goes one step further; until this statement is moderated; the article runs the risk of being accused of POV pushing. Jgarth 03:46, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Although I understand your concerns, I do not see the statement as "problematic". It is hardly "casually dropping the term" to point out that the scientific consensus is that life evolved, considering it is foundational to just about all biological studies. Would it be "casual" to point out in intelligent falling that the scientific consensus is that gravity exists? If you don't think that evolution is supported by scientific consensus (or if you think that this issue is in doubt), then you should review the requirements of consensus: "In its strongest form, the term [scientific consensus] is used to assert that on a given question scientists within a particular field of science have reached an agreement of rational opinion without substantial doubt, through a process of experimentation and peer review". That seems to fit evolution extremely well.

On the other hand, I do agree with you that we should back up such a bold assertion with more references, especially since intelligent design advocates may doubt it and need some good associated references to read up on in order to clear up their misconception. If there is a "deluge" of literature (and there is), we should have a fairly easy time citing at least 5 or 6 examples of it, not just a single one, as we currently do. We use similar methods in other parts of the article; for example, footnote 4 lists half a dozen or so references. That seems appropriate here as well, if we can find some good ones. -Silence 08:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

There's certainly nothing wrong with the statement as it stands -- scientific consensus is that life evolved. If we need more sources to assuage IDists, fine, but I don't know that it's truly necessary to lend credence to the statement. Jim62sch 09:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of whether we need more sources, certainly noone would dispute that it would be useful to have at least a few more sources in footnote 48, since the statement that there is scientific consensus for evolution occurring is such a significant one in the context of this article (and probably would be a pretty easy one to more definitively support), refuting, as it does, the entire "Teach the Controversy" aspect of ID's wedge strategy. I don't see it as a top-priority or absolutely required change, just as a beneficial one—not just to allay possible future criticism, but to provide some more sources for interested readers to check out and clear up their misconceptions. -Silence 10:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. FeloniousMonk 16:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

RE: "... the article runs the risk of being accused of POV pushing." above in this section: Yes it does run the risk. As can be readily discerned, in the section above it is accused of POV pushing of the speculation of intelligent design, and in this section it is accused of POV pushing of the fact of biological evolution. Next: Is the "round-earth" theory a POV?... Kenosis 16:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional references; they strengthen the claim of this significant statement, in the context within which it is placed. Jgarth 17:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

RE: "round-earth theory a POV?" - It would only be POV pushing if the round earth article neglected to put sufficient references to justify its claim of consensus. (in the case of this issue; I agreet that references would be pretty easy to obtain!!)

As an aside; I think the analogies that people have drawn by placing evolutionary theory into the same category as gravity or the round earth theory are not quite appropriate; as these categories relate to observable objects or events in the present. I would suggest a better approach is to place evolutionary theory in the same category as the 'Standard Inflationary Theory' regarding the origin of the universe; which a plausible reconstruction of the past, supported by a degree of forensic evidence; and consistent with the regular laws that we know to be in operation today. Jgarth 17:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Inflationary theory would be more analogical to a theory of abiogenesis than to evolution. I think you conceive of evolution too narrowly: the definition of evolution used on Wikipedia, derived from scientific usage, is much broader and is, in fact, observed on a day-to-day basis, just as much as gravity is "observed"—in that, when you see an object fall from a tree, you are seeing an effect of gravity, you aren't literally observing a gravitational force. Likewise, when we see bacteria evolve new resistance or immunity to certain antibiotics, we are observing the effects of the process called evolution, not literally a "thing" called evolution. -Silence 17:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

We might also point out that this tends to be cited often as evidence for the scientific consensus: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. --ScienceApologist 19:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

On editing this article

I've read through this page and looked at Silence's copyedits. I cannot believe the amazing amount of rhetoric that has gone into discussion of these changes. Most of them are rock solid improvments to the article. I am going to start doing some copyediting as well. I will make edit summaries as I go, but hope not to have to get approval for each comma, as he has. Sunray 19:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Godspeed. Don't be disheartened if they're all reverted, though. I've resigned myself to spending months of work on what would otherwise take a couple of days; if it's the only way that progress will occur at all, then so be it. It is admittedly inefficient and laborious to spend so much time discussing uncontroversial, undisputed changes while there are so many more significant matters to be building consensus on, but most frequent editors here seem to agree that it is necessary, so I will adhere to that. I stayed up all last night writing up a detailed, systematic overview of most of the various changes I recently attempted to make to a single section of the article, "Origins of the concept", which I plan to spend the next few weeks slowly unveiling, 4 edits at a time, in the hope that as many as possible will be accepted without undue conflict; 43 edits in total, in that section alone. But in any case, I wish you better luck than I had; like some (but not all) other controversial articles on Wikipedia, this is a page very set in its ways, having been forged in the fires of many past disputes and hard-won compromises, and pushing through new ideas is an uphill battle—indeed, in some cases a Sisyphean one. :) There are good people here, though, and you seem to be one of them. Hopefully we can work together in a productive and cordial manner, through compromises on both sides. -Silence 19:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd just post your proposed "Origins of the concept" section for discussion as a whole here or on a subpage in your userspace for discussion. Dragging it out piecemeal over a period of weeks only appears like you're flouting WP:POINT out of spite for having to justify your changes to long-standing, well-supported content. FeloniousMonk 19:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no intention of violating WP:POINT; indeed, nothing would make me happier than being able to post the entire thing immediately. The sole reason I was going to spend weeks doing it is because you have specifically criticized me heavily, on several occasions, for providing you with a "laundry list" of changes (even though the list in question, #Copyedit, was actually quite short, succinct, accurate and useful) and have strongly recommended "patience". So I've taken your words to heart, not to "disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point", but to avoid unnecessary conflicts. If you would prefer that I move quicker with my proposed changes, than I am overjoyed—I've been dreadfully bored going through them 4 at a time, waiting a day or two to list the next 4. No reason not to list them in groups of 4 without the time constraints, and let people sort through the changes at their leisure, then. You want me to post the contents of User talk:Silence/ID ("IDCAD part 3") to this page all at once, then? Or in larger chunks than 4? (Say, 15?) Or to a subpage? (Though I'd be worried about a subpage getting enough attention from editors... Then again, I don't want to spam any comments off of the page with a lengthy list.) -Silence 20:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

That's only half the story. It was Silence insisting on making more significant undiscussed content edits to the article, [17] [18] [19] and so on, that prompted editors to insist he make the case for them on talk, not the simple grammatical purposals he finally ending up submitting here. If ultimately he only chose to propose punctuation changes changes instead of actual content changes, that's hardly the fault of the long-term editors here. Who's goal is an accurate and stable article I'll add. FeloniousMonk 19:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Each one of those edit history comparisons is actually a misrepresentation in terms of how many changes I made in each individual alteration. I spaced out the changes I made over a number of edits, as can be seen even by looking at the first wave edits alone. If you had been interested in presenting accurate depictions of how many changes I made in each edit, you would have provided comparisons more like this, this and this, rather than deliberately seeking out the few edits where I was restoring previous edits' information (often because the revert was explicitly in error, such as Kenosis' mistaken reverts and your edit-conflict revert) for rhetorical effect. You should be able to make your point just as well without distorting the nature of my edits, since even my small edits were too much for your liking.
In reality, my edits were indeed almost without exception minor grammatical and style-related ones. I made no major content-related changes whatsoever, and the minor textual content-related changes I made (such as moving a misplaced paragraph from "origins of the concept" to "overview") were obvious, uncontroversial improvements. Your problem is that you assumed they were major edits simply because there were so many of them; now that I've actually started listing them, you realize that almost all of them are extremely trivial (which you could have figured out much sooner if you'd taken 5 minutes to read through the edits I was making, or glance over the #Copyedit list I made at your request :/), so now you're assuming that I'm "hiding" the big ones from you? FeloniousMonk, I'm going down the page in order from the highest change to the lowest one. :/ Some parts of the page received more attention than others, depending on their needs; that is an inevitable aspect of any copyedit. In particular, often thorough copyedits end up making a lot more changes lower down in the article than higher up, because the higher-up sections tend to receive more attention from more editors, and thus are often in better quality and consistency than the nether regions. :) That's just part of any routine copyedit.
(A side-note: "Stability" is only a virtue if the article is already as high-quality as we can make it. Most stubs are stable; does that make them better than unstable stubs? Surely everyone can agree that stability should help keep in place what's already as good as we can make it, not prevent future improvements; otherwise it's not stability, it's stagnation.) -Silence 20:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Stability will be nice once this article has FA status. Improvements, however, are what this process is all about. Sunray 21:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but even FAs need improvements. :) A Wikipedia article is never finished!

I understand where FM is coming from in being extremely conservative on article changes, though; it is very easy for an article like this to quickly degrade if it is not carefully watched for bogus additions. We must, however, be able to strike a balance between protecting the article from degrading under pressure from POV-pushers and vandals, and keeping it moving forward when problems and shortcomings are spotted; one should not get in the way of the other. -Silence 21:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You'll likely have to settle for accurate, complete and stable. It's very unlikely a contentious pov-magnet like the ID article will make it to FA status. This has been extensively discussed previously a number of times. As long as this article presents ID in what ID pov-pushers consider to be an unfavorable light - in other words any article that is accurate and complete presenting both sides of the topic - pro-ID lurkers, of which there are a number who have had issues with abiding by NPOV, will scuttle FA attempts with bad faith objections, just as they did last time.

Reading over the previous objections, most can be categorized as sour grapes. Some are based on an incomplete of flawed understanding of WP:NPOV, and others I recognize as being raised in just plain bad faith to discredit the article from known troublemakers we'd encountered. I have no reason to see why the outcome of any future FA nomination would be any different no matter how the current content is rearranged. FeloniousMonk 21:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, points well taken. FA would be tough. However, I presume that you are in favor of further improving the article, no? Sunray 21:46, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, anything's possible. We have featured articles for such controversial topics as evolution, space opera in Scientology doctrine, Yom Kippur War and Roe v. Wade; with enough time and effort, just about any article become Featured. Don't overestimate the power of the POV-pushers, either; ID advocates are a small (and, percentage-wise, dwindling) minority on Wikipedia, and if their objections are not reasonable or actionable, certainly Raul will be willing to discount them.

Certainly we should be more concerned with improving the article in general than with getting it FAd, though; that's just one of the carrots on a stick. I don't think the thrust of any of the above comments was meant to be that we should fixate on bringing this article up to Featured status, rather than just work on making whatever improvements we can. Personally, I couldn't care less about FA, though I do like the idea of someday seeing this article on the main page, just to show off all the amazing work that's gone into the page already. :) But that's a distant possibility. What matters now are the concrete, specific problems yet to be fixed. -Silence 21:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)\

Most of the examples you cite only made it FA status by strong sheparding, not free editing, looking at their histories. "What matters now are the concrete, specific problems yet to be fixed." Which are mostly punctuation and minor grammatical issues, according to you. Why the fuss? FeloniousMonk 22:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

And this article doesn't have "strong sheparding"? :) It's the most conservative, slow-to-change article I've ever seen in two years of Wikipedia experience. By comparison, making major, revolutionary edits to many times more active articles like the monstrously controversial Jesus and the well-attended Featured Article Wikipedia was like sliding my fingers through water—editing this one, even in extremely minor ways, is like sliding them through concrete. :)

"Why the fuss?" - More to the point, why all the fuss about preventing the edits, if you're starting to realize now how surface-related, not content-related, they are? I'm a copyeditor; it is in my nature to be driven crazy by trivial errors that would be exceedingly easy to fix if someone spent 30 seconds to try. That's why I edit Wikipedia: unlike normal reference works, it's easy to correct spelling, grammar, and wording errors whenever I spot them with a minimum of hassle. Unfortunately, here the opposite has been the case. :) -Silence 22:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course, but just not at the expense of accuracy or completeness, which is always a risk in trying to appease the bad faith objections of pov-pushers when striving for FA status. Which is why I reverted your change of the section heading "The designer or designers" to "Intelligent designer." The previous wording designer or designers was the result of compromise when several ID advocates here objected to the singular intelligent designer, saying ID made no such distinction, which is partially correct. "Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up" the old saying goes, and that is why I direct new arrivals with proposals here to first become familiar with past discussions and consensus by directing them to the archives, which are partially indexed. Discussion of matters that have been previously settled and enjoy consensus should only be resurrected again if new evidence is available, etc. FeloniousMonk 22:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Certainly it is reasonable to point out that past agreements have been reached. But it should not be assumed that just because an agreement or compromise was reached in the past, it will always be the best option in the future. There are a great number of problems with the "The designer of designers" section title, even more than with the original title "Intelligent designer" (though I hoped to avoid the issue altogether with the compromise version Jim and I came up with a while ago, "Intelligent cause", that got lost in one of your mass-reverts).
First, it violates the MoS by starting the section with a "The" unnecessarily. Jim and I have discussed this already; Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings) makes it clear that "'The', 'a' and 'an' should be omitted from the beginning of heading titles."
Second, it has sacrificed coherency for the reader ("Intelligent designer" is perfectly clear; "The designer or designers" is not) in order to avoid potential criticism, a common problem I see on Wikipedia, where all the debating sometimes makes people forget that Wikipedia is ultimately written for its readers, not its editors.
Third, it is simply not very well-worded. Even if we really needed to explicitly mention the possibility that the intelligent designer is plural in the section title, which we don't, there are better ways to go about it.
Fourth, it is potentially misleading and inaccurate with respect to actually describing the contents of the section, which never once directly or explicitly discuss or mention the possibility that there is more than one "intelligent designer" (probably because it's such an insignificant and trivial aspect of the overall belief). The title of the section will make pretty much every reader who comes to this article think that the section is a discussion of the plurality or singularity of the intelligent designer, when in reality it's nothing of the sort—it's just a general section of the intelligent designer/cause in ID, with no emphasis (indeed, no mentioning whatsoever, except as vaguely alluded to in the "alien" quotation) placed on the question of plurality or singularity.
Fifth, it is inconsistent with the intelligent designer article; if there is some huge problem with alluding to the obvious fact that the overwhelming majority of IDers believe in a singular "Designer", not a plural one, then the change should be made first of all to the title of the main article, before we should have to start worrying about changing section titles. Why is a problem in one article not a problem in another? -Silence 22:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

One, I agree with the point on MoS and "the", but that's not really such an issue. Two, true the overwhelming majority of IDers believe in a singular "Designer", not a plural one. But it's also true that the the overwhelming majority of IDers believe the designer is God as well, but you seldom catch them saying that in public. The point is, is that the way ID is presented it's a game of self-limiting givens. Take Dembski for example: as the article points out he says ID is not concerned with the designer or his identity or characteristics. Another time he says the designer may be aliens, yet another time the designer cannot be wholly natural. The fact is there is no one stated viewpoint that is definitive; ID proponents have shifted their statements to suit their particular argument. To fail to note that is to agree to play their game of self-limiting givens and shortchange the reader. I wouldn't be surprised if sooner rather than later another pro-ID editor shows up here objecting to the use of the singular again, that's all. I'm not going to argue any further over this here, now because it's largely a stylistic change. FeloniousMonk 22:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, as long as we can agree on the "intelligent cause" term for now, that's good enough. If an IDer objects to that one, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I don't expect it to cause any problems, though; "cause" is tremendously vaguer and more inclusive than "designer" (heck, it even avoids personalization). -Silence 22:44, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Let me first say that I am deeply impressed with the way the editors of this article have handled NPOV. The guide provided on this talk page is a model for other contentious articles in Wikipedia. I’ve seen my share of POV pushers in my time around here and can attest to the wisdom of the way you all have applied Wikipedia policies. However, one must always be careful to distinguish POV pushing from effective editing.

There are a number of problems with the heading The designer or designers. I pointed out two in my edit summary: "1) [it doesn't] coincide with main article, and 2) to correct [an] error - one designer; not several." In the edit summary accompanying TM's revert, he said: "ID proponents say there may be more than one, such as Dembski's aliens quote.” That isn't what the article says. It refers to an "alien culture" (one culture) and then quotes Dembski as saying: "... no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life." Dembski is referring to one agent. If you can bring references to show that a significant body of people believe in “intelligent designers” fine, but otherwise my change should stand. Sunray 23:46, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, it doesn't appear that the proponents believe in there being more than one designer. But the argument is intentionally structured to include "one or many". If you just follow the logic through and remove all the spurious terms/terminology, ID is Christian creationism. But it's specifically crafted to be vague, it's specifically crafted to include the "what ifs". If we want to write an NPOV article we need to at least pretend that there is some merit to what they have said. It's easy to write an anti-ID polemic. The challenge here is to write one that is both honest and NPOV. "The designer or designers" does a far better job of walking that line. Guettarda 00:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I've looked for a source that speaks of "intelligent designer" in the plural. Other than one blog which was clearly opposed to intelligent design, I can find no references to "designers" except to refer to believers in intelligent design. Do you have any cites? Sunray 00:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It's really pretty simple, I think: "an alien culture" is simply another way of saying "aliens". [20]. Note: '"It could be space aliens," said William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University in Texas and author of "No Free Lunch," a new book on intelligent design. "There are many possibilities."'[21]. Does this resolve the issue? Jim62sch 17:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Guettarda is right, and the current wording, in which as one of a number of contributors at the time he had a say, is accurate. In areas where a particular individual or group says conflictng things the best practice is to just provide all the relevant statements for the reader and let them decide. That is what we have done here in the designer section. FeloniousMonk 01:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

All I am asking for is to have some cites that show this usage. I've never seen it. Sunray 03:11, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Rereading the first paragraph of the section, it fails to make clear that ID proponents have been intentionally ambiguous in defining the designer; it merely implies that they are in the conflicting Dembski quotes. This needs to spelled out more clearly in the article, I'll go through Demsbki's books and articles tonight and tomorrow and find some relevant supporting cites as well. FeloniousMonk 04:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Per this discussion as well as the submission by Scott G. Beach two sections above in Using a Hypostatization to Hide a Theology: When talking about ID we should not, the way I figure it, dismiss the angels too lightly. Such intermediary representatives (including of course, Son(s), Daughter(s) and/or children Thereof) might be our only hope. Duly acknowledging WP:MOS, in my estimation "The designer or designers" is one of a number of reasonable titles for a fundamentally theological position. Good to see Sunray here, incidentally. ... Kenosis 05:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Just a thought: would "The designer(s)" convey the same point, de-emphasising the importance of the plural? ..dave souza, talk 06:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I considered "Designer(s)" or something similar a while ago, when I was considering the various obvious possibilities for renaming the section. It's not really a good choice either, though, because the "(s)" ending is somewhat informal and still potentially ambiguous or misleading. "Intelligent cause" resolves all of the problems involved in both the plural/singular title and the "intelligent designer" title, and clearly we don't have a problem with it since we mention the term several other times in the article, including in the first paragraph. I'm surprised and disappointed that Jim reverted the title without any discussion and with no comment except "NO!"; he had seemed to be perfectly fine with this version when we were working on the title for this section a few days ago. For that matter, now that I've explained the numerous problems with the "The designer or designers" title to FeloniousMonk, he doesn't seem to have a big problem with "Intelligent cause" either, as the only reason we adopted that title to begin with was to appease some creationist complaints from a while back, and this does an even better job of that. And I know Sunray is fine with "Intelligent cause", even though right now he's pointing out some of the problems with the original grounds for rejecting "Intelligent designer" (i.e. we still don't seem to have any ID sources which explicitly argue for there being more than one intelligent designer..). So what's the problem? -Silence 11:26, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Consistency of terminology may be an issue. The term is always intelligent designer, with the occasional statement from an ID proponent that it is "designer or designers". The Wikipedia article about the unidentified being(s) thus named is Intelligent designer, not Intelligent cause, for that precise reason. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed with KC about problems of consistency. As FM and others have pointed out on many occasions, though, these are conceptual problems arising out of the inherent conceptual problems of ID. I would add that in addition to Dembski's framing of the issues as singular or plural, these kinds of conceptual problems occur with all views of the supernatural. By the way, haven't trinitarians tended to resist the concept that "God is One" in favor of a three-Person view of the almighty? Or are they just talking about "God the father" here? On the other hand ID supposedly doesn't speak to the point. And to try to justify the contention that ID doesn't speak to the point, its advocates have framed it as "well, could be plural too, we're not speculating about that." Reminds me of David Hume's speculation that it could have been a "committee of dieties". I suspect there is no perfect solution here. ... Kenosis 16:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The very first sentence of the article defines intelligent design as the belief that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection". That's a direct quotation from the official Discovery Institute website. So clearly the term "intelligent cause" is in use by IDers, even if it's much less common than "intelligent designer". As such, I see no reason not to use the more general "intelligent cause" for the section title, if "intelligent designer" is for one reason or another objectionable. -Silence 16:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If Inteligent designer is used more often, it should remain under that as we want to make it accessible to people who look for information.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally I have no problem with any of these titles. WP:MOS, unlike the "big three", is merely a widely-agreed-upon guide. ... Kenosis 16:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Then let's use "Intelligent designer". I agree with Kim—the ideal title here is the simplest and most intuitive one. The complaint that a tiny minority of IDers might, in theory, endorse plural "designers", and that ID itself doesn't necessarily assert plurality or singularity, is a trivial, even irrelevant, one: "intelligent designer" is what IDers themselves most commonly use, so we should simply follow common usage rather than accepting quasi-original research, ambiguous, uncommon, and needlessly complicated terms like "the designer or designers". However, my main point is that if we can't use "Intelligent designer", "intelligent cause" is the second-best option available, as it is acceptably common and comprehensible and resolves all possible issues of plurality. In fact, the current intelligent design article uses "intelligent cause" more times in the text than it uses "intelligent designer"! That makes it clear enough that if we can't use "intelligent designer" as the section title, "intelligent cause" is the ideal solution. -Silence 16:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I should also have said I will back whatever the consensus is. Thus far I do not see a mandate to change it. ... Kenosis 16:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Please do not alter my post by adding an unnecessary additional indent to it. I was explicitly responding to User:KimvdLinde's post, not yours. We do not need a "mandate", we already have plenty of reasoning and argumentation pointing out the numerous problems with the "The designer or designers" title. The only remaining question is what to replace it with; as I see it, "Intelligent designer(s)" still has most of the same problems as the current version, so if we can't use "intelligent designer" (even though there's apparently no problem at all with our article on the topic being named Intelligent designer, and with it never even once alluding to the possibility that there might be more than one designer... oi), "intelligent cause" seems to be the best available option. -Silence 17:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that inteligent cause is better, as mentionad above. That the text goes in detail, explains it and than uses it is something different that the header text which should be easy to find. I think Intelligent designer(s) is the best as it makes clear that it can be either, which is a crucial aspect. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Crucial? It's a fantastically, overwhelmingly trivial aspect. If it was "crucial", we'd discuss it in this article, or at the very least discuss it in the intelligent designer article itself. I agree that "Intelligent designer(s)" is a slight step up from the current version, if only because it doesn't imply that the entire section is just a discussion of whether the designer is plural or singular, but it's still a pretty poor title. I'd rate it a 4/10, the current title as a 2/10, "intelligent cause" as a 7/10, and the simplest and most easily understandable title, "intelligent designer", as a 9/10. -Silence 17:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, because they make a big fuss of it to show they do not limit it to the designer they actually have in mind. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Specific ID advocates who have POV-pushed on this article in the past have made a "big fuss of it". The ID movement itself does not make a "big fuss of it", from what I can see; they couldn't care less about whether we use "intelligent designer" or "intelligent designer(s)", it means the same thing either way. They themselves usually use the former. -Silence 17:26, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

From what I have read everywhere, not only here, they try to make a big fuss of it, but fail often because they actually have a different idea on their mind. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

<reduce indent> How about "Source of intelligent design" ....dave souza, talk 17:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I am fine with that. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

How about "intelligent cause"? It has the exact same meaning as "source of intelligent design". Again, if we aren't going to use "intelligent designer", I see no reason not to use an only slightly less common, recognizable, and simple term for the concept rather than a dramatically less common, recognizable, or simple one. -Silence 17:26, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Repeat, see argument above. To vague. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No. Period. You've flogged this horse enough, haven't you? "Intelligent cause" changes the agency of design, and misses the point regarding ID being no more than creationism with a veneer of crappy scientific-sounding slop. And by the way, designers is quite applicable based on the quoute from Dembski contained herein (in case you missed it above): [22]. Note: '"It could be space aliens," said William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University in Texas and author of "No Free Lunch," a new book on intelligent design. "There are many possibilities."'[23]. Jim62sch 17:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It is perhaps representative of the office politics around here lately, that this talk section started out as an observation about the lengthy discussion of minor changes to the article (avoiding link redirects, a couple of spelling errors, and other such miscellany), and ends up in a lengthy discussion of one particular substantive edit, one of many that were initially implemented en masse. As I said twice before, along with several other editors saying a similar thing, minor changes such as any remaining obvious link errors and the like can readily be implemented without further discussion, one or two changes at a time with a meaningful edit note (e.g. "avoid link redirect", "spelling", "minor syntax adjustment", etc.) Section title changes, as we have seen, are not minor edits, and it was heartening to me to see this issue discussed more thoroughly. Possibly one of the editors can now start a new section about additional sustantive issue(s) on that list of 43 edits mentioned above? Just a suggestion--by one editor. ... Kenosis 19:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

This has been an illuminating discussion and I agree with Kenosis that as much of the discussion has been about a Section title (and an important one at that), it has overshadowed the agreement to proceed with copyediting changes a few at a time. The discussion has been complicated by the lack of clarity in Dembski's presentation. His writing is, at times, opaque, and he doesn't seem clear on whether "designers" is a real possiblity. (Thanks to Jim62sch for providing those links). In the first one ("Elliott Sober's Independent Evidence Requirement for Design,") after going on about aliens being the "designers," he concludes by saying:

"But once independent evidence for design needs merely to establish that there exists a designer with the causal power and opportunity to produce the effect in question (as in the alien thought experiment and in the gambling example)..." (emphasis mine).

I think that this aliens stuff is a red herring. In most religions worldwide there is a creator god or fundamental source of life. Kenosis mentions trinitarians. However, both the Christian and Vedantic Hindu trinities have one creator. I would submit that the idea of Creator is the very basis of Intelligent Design. Nevertheless, I asked for cites and Dembski is certainly one. If we think his work reflects a significant aspect of Intelligent Design thinking, then we sould go with the plural, or as Silence has suggested "Intelligent cause." While that term is an elegant way around the problem, some object to its use. I'm fine with the consensus. Would a vote be useful at this point? Whether or not we vote, I think we should get on with the editing process meanwhile. Silence? Sunray 20:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The level of contradiction and inconsistency here is remarkable. If there is a problem with using the term "intelligent cause", then why do we use it more often than "intelligent designer", in all of the following places in the page, several of them direct quotations from the ID movement?:

Intelligent design (ID) is the concept that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause,
Intelligent design proponents say that while evidence pointing to the nature of an "intelligent cause or agent" may not be directly observable,
"Proponents of intelligent design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes.
Note that intelligent design studies the effects of intelligent causes
and not intelligent causes per se."
one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed)
lacking a natural explanation for certain specific aspects of evolution, we assume intelligent cause.

If there is a problem with alluding to the predominance of belief in a singular "designer" in this specific section, why it is unproblematic in the title of the article Intelligent designer or in any of the following excerpts from this page? Here's just a few of them, not even listing any of the dozens of singular uses in Intelligent designer:

best explained by an intelligent cause
physical properties of an object that point to a designer
the nature of an "intelligent cause or agent"
questions concerning the identity of a designer
does not try to identify or name the specific agent of creation
does not name the designer
is that the designer is the Christian god
that it was produced by an intelligent cause
they argue, an intelligent designer of life was needed
intentionally avoid identifying the intelligent agent they posit
that God is the designer,
the designer is often
that they believe the designer to be the Christian God
asks why a designer would... and why he or she wouldn't...
were not placed there by a designer
that we are simply incapable of understanding the designer's motives,
"have been placed there by the designer
or the intelligent designer is
the need for a designer of complexity
"what designed the designer?"
the claim that the designer need not be explained
"what designed the designer?"
avoid positing the identity of the designer.
in their view the designer of life is God.
a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options for the identity of the designer.
that an intelligent designer is behind
that an intelligent designer (a god or an alien life force)

Heck, even when the article mentions that an "alien life force" or other potentially plural entity is the intelligent designer, it still explicitly refers to the being as "the designer"! That shows that the term is fully applicable regardless of whether the designer is ultimately plural or singular, hence the article title "intelligent designer"!
If "intelligent cause" is an unacceptable term, despite its wide and clear usage and its avoiding the "singular designer" problem, then we should remove all its other incidences from the article; if it is unacceptable to mention a singular designer or cause without also explicitly stating that it "could be more than one", then we should certainly edit all of the above examples of a single intelligence being alluded to with more inclusive ones, like "best explained by an intelligent cause or agent" replaced with "best explained by one or more intelligent causes or agents". Oy vey. -Silence 14:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, here's an idea: why not rewrite the enite article in your user space and let's see how that goes. No doubt you could do a much better job than the inconsistant fumbling idiots who've been writing the article and trying to incorporate the opinions and assuage the minds of almost every person who's complained about something or other so far. Take your time. This article will still be here.Jim62sch 17:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Hook, Line, and Sinker

In the United States, when a person is tricked into accepting propaganda as truth, that person may be described as having intellectually swallowed the propagandist's bait "hook, line, and sinker."

The Wikipedia page about intelligent design is an example of propaganda being swallowed hook, line, and sinker. The first sentence of that page begins with an opinion about intelligent design. That opinion is mistakenly presented as a "concept". An elaborate discussion of that "concept" is then presented.

The mislabeled "concept" serves the purposes of intelligent design propagandists. They are allowed to present their opinion of intelligent design as though their opinion is a definition of intelligent design. This trick relieves them of the obligation to provide a definition of intelligent design.

Wikipedians should not be subjected to such trickery. The first paragraph of Wikipedia's intelligent design page should be revised to read as follows:

Intelligent design is the assertion that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer. According to associates of the Discovery Institute, this assertion is justified by "certain features of the universe and of living things." The associates believe that those features "are best explained by an intelligent cause."

The foregoing suggested paragraph appropriately separates the definition of intelligent design from the opinion of the proponents of intelligent design. The trickery is thereby eliminated.

Scott G. Beach 21:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Consider though that 'assertion' suggests belief, whereas ID portrays itself as a science. If I assert that the universe was created by an intelligence, I state that I believe that to be true. :Please, in future, try to make your point less elaborately. -- Ec5618 22:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Ec:

You wrote, "ID portrays itself as a science." Intelligent design is not capable of portraying itself as a science.

A person can express the opinion that intelligent design is a scientific theory. For example, associates of the Discovery Institute regard intelligent design as a "theory." In contrast, I regard intelligent design as a theology.

Is English your native language? When you participate in these discussions, please try to avoid using intelligent design as though it has the capacity to express an opinion or make an assertion.

Please note that we English speakers sometimes make assertions "for the sake of discussion", not necessarily because we "believe" those assertions to be true. An assertion may also be presented for the purpose of proving that the opposite is true. The logical method known as reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity) can be used in this way.

Scott G. Beach

I think that "assertion" in place of "concept" is a good idea. We argued about this a number of months ago and I don't think that anyone offered this as a possibility. --ScienceApologist 02:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

So the assertion here is that the first paragraph should read as follows?: ,,, Kenosis 03:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Intelligent design (ID) is the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."^[1] Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute,^[2] say that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the evolution and origin of life.^[3] ... 03:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I am quite capable of speaking English, thank you very much. Are you honestly trying to dismiss my point on the basis that I might not speak English? You may want to consider making your points without going off on irrelevant tangents.

We English speakers should look up 'assertion' in a dictionary. According to dictionary.com, for example, an assertion is "Something declared or stated positively, often with no support or attempt at proof." Assertion often connotes belief. Now, you may not have been around here long, but I predict that at some point in the not too distant future, someone will object to ID being portrayed as an assertion. ID is a science, after all, n'est ce pas?

Certainly, 'concept' is not perfect, but assertion will be regarded as point of view. -- Ec5618 04:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry Scott, but why is "concept" inaccurate or less accurate than "assertion" as it applies to ID? Exactly how does saying ID is a concept "serve the purposes of intelligent design propagandists"?

Your objection would make some sense were the ID article to present ID as a scientific theory (which is what ID proponents say it is after all), but the article avoids that issue by calling it a concept. And all three definitions in the common definition of 'concept' ID are extremely apt in applying to ID I think. [24] FeloniousMonk 04:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the use if "assertion" makes it less NPOV as assertion has certain negative connotations, whereas concept is more neutral. Had the article said "theory", allowing some possibility that it was perhaps a "scientific theory" your argument might have some validity.

Additionally, I don't think that any of the regular editors here have swallowed anything "hook, line and sinker"; rather we abide, to the best of our ability, by NPOV. Writing this article has been a delicate balancing act, and while we may occasionally fall into the netting, I think we've spent far more time walking successfully on the wire. Jim62sch 09:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Jim, Monk, Ec:

The Discovery Institute rhetorically asks, "What is the theory of intelligent design?" Then, instead of answering their rhetorical question by providing a definition of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute asserts that intelligent design is the "best" explanation. Their opinion of the merits of intelligent design should not be referred to as a "concept." It should be made very clear that they are stating their opinion rather than a definition.

I have previously suggested that the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page about intelligent design be revised in a way that "separates the definition of intelligent design from the opinion of the proponents of intelligent design." I suggested that this could be accomplished by revising that paragraph to read as follows:

Intelligent design is the assertion that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer. According to associates of the Discovery Institute, this assertion is justified by "certain features of the universe and of living things." The associates believe that those features "are best explained by an intelligent cause."

This revision would take the value judgment "best" out of the definition of intelligent design and present that judgment separately as a belief held by associates of the Discovery Institute.

I believe that the Wikipedia page about intelligent design should begin with a simple, value-free definition of intelligent design.

Scott G. Beach

What the Discovery Institute actually says is "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[25] Calling it a concept here, acknowledging that ID being a legitimate "theory" is strongly rejected by the majority viewpoint, is a fair compromise and does not play into the institute's game. FeloniousMonk 18:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Removal of edits

202.173.128.90 has posted the following on my talk page. I am placing it here for open discussion in the appropriate forum. ... Kenosis 07:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Sir.

Regarding your removal of my edits from the Intelligent design article, I am curious as to the reason you reverted to a previous version. Being a Wikipedia newbie, I certainly concede to more experienced users, however, I feel it appropriate to defend my edit.

"Intelligent design is presented as an alternative to natural explanations for evolution. This stands in opposition to conventional biological science, which relies on experimentation to explain the natural world through observed physical processes such as mutation and natural selection..."

The preceding quote is the reason for my edit. The following statement, "which relies on experimentation to explain the natural world through observed physical processes" seems to imply that "conventional biology" has evidence that living cells can evolve from non-living elements, when in fact, no such evidence exists. Laboratory experiments involving the "accidental" creation of an amino acid are a long way from demonstrating spontaneous generation of living cells, and so the claim that evolution-supporting biologists rely on experimentation and observed physical processes is misleading. If only observed physical processes were considered, then evolution would have to be excluded from viability as spontaneous cellular generation has never been observed.

And so it seemed appropriate to add the following:

", although ID proponents and critics of evolutionary theory have cited a complete absence of observable phenomena demonstrating abiogenesis (which is needed for the evolutionary model to be viable)."

If my manner, or positioning of the edit was flawed, I apologize, but I stand by the edit. I believe it has value as a balance for the paragraph.

Thank you,

W. Jones

Dear Mr.or Ms. Jones: Actually your edits had already been removed by two other editors. I reverted to the last known consensused version, then re-implemented an edit that Dave Souza apparently considered reasonable. I believe your edits started here and went through here, then were sequentially reverted by Scienceman123 and Dave Souza. I might speculate that the content you added was reverted because the framework of evolution does not necessarily address the question of abiogenesis, just as, for example, the study of expansion_of_the_cosmos might not directly address the question of the dynamics of the Big bang. But I would prefer to hear from Scienceman and Dave Souza to know better about their reasons. If I had noticed it, though, I too would have reverted the changes you made. Regards, and thank you for the note. ... Kenosis 07:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I've responded at inordinate length to a similar comment on my talk page, and have no particular problem with "conventional" instead of "mainstream". dave souza, talk 08:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

There are, of course, semantic differences between the two words, but probably not significant enough to raise a major ruckus over. Abiogenesis is, however, a separate issue. Jim62sch 09:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem sentence

Intelligent design's stated^[4] purpose is to investigate whether or not existing empirical evidence implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents.

A concept has stated its purpose? When? Where? Says who? The only source in the sentence has an unclear connection to the sentence. May I delete the sentence? What is trying to be communicated here? What source backs that up? Why not just delete it? WAS 4.250 16:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't delete the sentence, find a better reference for it and move the reference to a part of the page where it's actually relevant. It has absolutely nothing to do with its current context. I recommended such a move at the bottom of User talk:Silence/ID. -Silence 16:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it's necessary. It originally, before some recent editing, illustrated an important point, though perhaps it doesn't clearly enough now and needs to be expanded and clarified.

It originally illustrated that though ID proponents say to the public the purpose of ID is search for design, they say to their constituency and each other that the goal of ID is to "overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies" by reinstating "The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God." [26] That ID proponents are demonstrably speaking out of both sides of their mouth, that the stated purpose of ID is merely a pretense is an important point that any complete ID article will need to cover. FeloniousMonk 18:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The overview section as it currently stands communicates nothing of the sort. It merely repeats the propaganda of its proponets without adequately addressing the misinformation. Someone needs to rewrite it so it again addresses the misinformation as it did originally. Care to give it a try, FM? WAS 4.250 18:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

As I said, it doesn't clearly enough now illustrate the point. I'll either rewrite it, or more likely look for an additional or better cite where the point is made. FeloniousMonk 18:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

FeloniousMonk, the article does explain that, quite clearly. Read Intelligent_design#Movement. If you want to expand the first paragraph of "Overview" to briefly mention that as well, that's perfectly fine. The problem is that the "expert testimony" reference has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. And contradictory quotations from the ID movemenent's leaders are much more compelling and direct than external criticism, no matter how valid. -Silence 18:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Best handled in the Overview section by a footnote to a better quote from the same source or a new source, I'd think. FeloniousMonk 18:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine, do it. ... Please. WAS 4.250 18:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I've added some clarification in the footnote with several new cites. I'll add an additional cite or two tomorrow from Kitzmiller as well. FeloniousMonk 05:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Intelligent Design Truthfully Defined

The Discovery Institute rhetorically asks, "What is the theory of intelligent design?" Then, instead of answering that rhetorical question by providing a definition of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute asserts that intelligent design is the "best" explanation for the existence of the universe. So the question "What is the theory of intelligent design?" remains to be answered.

I propose that intelligent design be defined as follows: "The theory of intelligent design holds that America's moral decay can be reversed by (1) discrediting the theory of evolution by natural selection and (2) promoting a proposition which infers that the universe was created by God."

The proponents of intelligent design are trying to put their theory into practice. They may therefore be described as a "revitalization movement."

Revitalization movement: political-religious movements promising deliverance from deprivation, the elimination of foreign domination, and a new interpretation of the human condition based on traditional cultural values...

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, http://www.bartleby.com/65/re/revitali.html

Scott G. Beach

What you are describing is a polemic basis for intelligent design, not intelligent design itself. Please see Wedge Strategy for more. --ScienceApologist 19:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia page about the "Wedge Strategy" describes intelligent design as the "controversial conjecture that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as natural selection." The words "controversial conjecture" accurately describe intelligent design. However, that description does not constitute a definition of intelligent design. I still believe that intelligent design can be defined as "the assertion that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer." Please note that this definition does NOT include the value judgment "best." Scott G. Beach

It does however include the word 'assertion'. Have you ignored everything we've said? -- Ec5618 04:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Ec:

You have objected to the word "assertion". The word "proposition" means "a subject for discussion or analysis." The word "proposition" could be used in place of "assertion." However, this is not my primary concern. I strongly object to intelligent design being defined in a way that includes a value judgment. Inserting "best" into a definition of intelligent design transforms that definition into an opinion, and doing that is just silly because an opinion CANNOT be used as a definition.

If the IDists want to present intelligent design as a "theory" then they should refrain from putting their own opinion into the statement of their "theory."

A theoretician who puts a value judgment into the statement of a theory thereby makes his "theory" into an opinion. Scientists do not put value judgments into theory statements but propagandists do, and when they do that they know that they are engaging in anti-scientific trickery. They are defiling science and should be condemned for doing so. Scott G. Beach

The point of the current wording was to use the Discovery Institute's own words to describe Intelligent Design, and it has been quite effective at stopping people from wantonly changing the wording.

You propose to change the wording on the basis that the current wording includes the word 'best', however your proposed wording does something similar, as proponents of Intelligent Design do not officially state that "the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer". They state that they have uncovered evidence that suggests it is likely. So, "Intelligent Design is the assertion (or proposition) that scientific evidence suggests that it is likely the universe was designed and created by an intelligent designer." This seems a rather elaborate way of putting it, though.

And for the record, ID proponents should be condemned. But we are not the people to do it, not here. Here, we describe the phenomenon, and try to explain why the scientific community can not embrace ID. Here, we make note of the apparent duplicity in statements made by ID proponents. But we do not condemn. -- Ec5618 08:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

To Scott G. Beach: I truly appreciate your observations and your assertion that the logic in the first paragaph of the article is significantly flawed. Even a very astute grouping of editors, such as have clustered around this particular article, will occasionally miss important points that take yet another astute participant to point out. This issue you've raised, however, is irrelevant in the first paragraph of the article. The reason is that some months ago, after extremely extensive debate, an agreement was made involving numerous editors both pro-ID and anti-ID, and/or of mixed opinion or ostensibly neutral on the subject. The first paragraph of the introduction was agreed to be a brief paragraph with a faithful representation of the concept of ID as framed by ID advocates, as well as of who the principal advocates are.

Such a consensus can of course be re-consensused. But it appears to me it would requrie an extremely lengthy new debate and need to be an equivalently strong consensus involving the entire introduction. And I don't see any new information that requires an extremely lengthy new debate, new set of compromises, and new consensus on the entire three-paragraph introduction. Perhaps you've observed that even the relatively minor items regarding this subject can involve a great deal of debate. Your points are nonetheless very well taken, by me at least. ... Kenosis 06:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd certainly prefer to not go through that process, nor do I see any compelling need to do so. I understand Scott's points, but I agree with Ec that it is most certainly not our place to condemn ID. In fact, were we to rewrite the intro to emphasize the propaganda point we'd not only violate NPOV, but we'd in essence be creating what might be construed as an attack article.

Thus, the introduction as it currently exists -- i,.e., using DI's words to define ID -- sets up the remainder of the article quite well. Jim62sch 09:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Kenosis:

Thank you for letting me know that my points are "very well taken." The reason for my strenuous objections to "best" grow out of what I learned in the 8th grade. Social studies teachers throughout our school district were required to teach us the techniques of propaganda for the purpose of inoculating us against pro-communist propaganda that was being published by the Soviet Union. Since that time, I have been on the lookout for instances of propaganda, and when I find it I deconstruct it and try to expose it for what it is. And I may then try to reconstruct it so that people can clearly see the truth. You and other editors have worked out a peace treaty with the IDists. Okay, I accept the terms of that treaty in this context. Scott G. Beach (P.S. When I spell-checked the foregoing text, my spell-checker flagged "IDists" and suggested that I use "Idiots" instead. I was tempted!)

Scott: I'll be sure to pass this onto the DI for their analysis. Perhaps they would be disturbed to learn that you misunderstood your 8th-grade teacher's intentions. The intention was for you to deconstruct only communist propoganda. ... Kenosis 17:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, if we've managed to anger both ID advocates and critics here, we must have done something right. FeloniousMonk 17:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm probably wrong (or possibly being uncivil), but I beliee it's called NPOV. Jim62sch 00:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

IDCAD, part 3: Origins of the concept

Parts 1 and 2 of the "in-depth copyedit analysis and discussion" have been inactive for quite a while now (even though we haven't gotten enough feedback on changes 13, 15 or 16 yet), and FeloniousMonk has encouraged me to hurry up with the listing (though he has yet to specify how he'd prefer me to do so), so here's the next part.

The "origins of the concept" section was the first part of the page where significant changes were required just for a first-run copyedit. The beginning of the section suffered from bloat due to accumulation of trivia; the end of the section was completely unrelated to the rest of the section, summarizing specific ID beliefs without any information at all on the history or origins of the ID concept; and some of the middle, dealing with natural theology's relationship with modern creationism, required moving around to fix some poor organization and flow of ideas.

There are still a fair number of evident problems with this section even after my copyedit. For example, the characterization of intelligent design as just "a modern reframing of natural theology" smacks of potential original research to me, and will probably require a reference of some sort to give this segue solid ground to stand on. In the sentence in the middle of the section which I moved, there seemed to be a subtle pro-theistic evolution advocacy leaning that had developed (similar to what happens at the end of the "Controversy" section further down the article), which I tried to dull down a bit. There's also not much information on the modern "origins of the concept" of ID, which are surely more directly significant and clearly relevant than quoting Cicero or Heraclitus, and what little there is needs a bit of work: the paragraph on the "earliest known modern version of intelligent design" is short and consists almost entirely of a single quotation from Forrest, even though rephrasing is generally preferable to direct quotations when describing a factual event rather than a personal opinion. (Sometime after we're done going through my initial copyedits to the article, I have some useful supplemental references that may be able to help in this respect.)

Still, the edits here will remedy most of the simple, obvious problems that are evident in a read-through of the section, and should provide us with a very valuable starting point in terms of tidying this section up and making it more consistent with the rest of the article's quality and tightness.

Changes 1-4 (3)

These changes deal with the beginning of the first paragraph:

1. Change "[[Ancient Greece|Greek]] philosophy" to "[[Greek philosophy]]".
2. Replace scare quotes with italics for new/foreign term "Logos".
3. Remove tangential biographical details from "is typically credited to Heraclitus ~~(c. 535–c.475 BCE), a Pre-Socratic philosopher~~, and". It is completely unnecessary to provide estimated birth and death dates on the Intelligent design article for a philosopher who was not even a part of the ID movement; providing a link to his article is completely sufficient, as anyone interested can visit that page. Likewise, "Pre-Socratic philosopher" is a distinction that will be meaningless to those of our readers who are unfamiliar with Western philosophy historiological terms, and one that is not relevant here, especially since we don't mention Socrates anywhere (because he isn't directly relevant to early ID-like concepts). Several people have complained that this article is already too long; trivial biographical factoids like these are a part of the reason why, and in any case will bore the heck out of readers who just came here to learn about ID, not to get a crash course on the history of Western philosophy. Only the relevant information should be included.
4. For the same reason as Heraclitus, remove "(c. 427–c. 347 BCE)" after Plato's name is mentioned.

After the first four have been discussed, I'll move on to the next 4. As always, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. -Silence 14:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

My opinion:

yes
yes
no - Dates are relevant when detailing the history of the concept.
no

WAS 4.250 15:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

And mine:

OK
OK
No per WAS.
No

FeloniousMonk 15:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding 3–4, I am afraid you are both mistaken. Yes, this is a history section, but it is not a history section about the history of Western philosophy, it is a history section about the history of intelligent design! Consequently, a date is only relevant if it is the date of an important event in the history of intelligent design.

If any date at all were relevant simply because a section deals with history, it'd be madness; we'd have more numbers than letters in Wikipedia's history sections! This is obviously not the case, despite WAS's claim. Rather, a date is included or not included based on how directly relevant it is to the topic being discussed. There is a continuum of progressively less relevant dates. For example, the date of the publication of Of Pandas and People is clearly relevant to an article on intelligent design. The date of the publication of Paley's Natural Theology is arguably relevant to an article on intelligent design. And the date of Heraclitus's birth is clearly irrelevant to an article on intelligent design.

At most, including the year or century in which the relevant work in question (e.g. Plato's Timaeus, Cicero's de Natura Deorum, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, etc.) was written might be appropriate; but including the estimated birth and date years for every single half-mentioned person with a conjectured, obscure link to one or more of the concepts of modern ID, even though we don't even go that far with people actually involved ithe ID movement (surely Phillip E. Johnson's date of birth is dozens of times more relevant than Cicero's!), is inconsistent, arbitrary, and contributing heavily to trivia-bloat. We have other articles for these dates. -Silence 16:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine, Greek philosophy is an improved link
Although these are not, and do not appear to have been intended to be, "scare quotes", do change "logos" to logos.
No. The dates give a perspective on the time period involved. The concept of logos was a lifelong preoccupation of a many of the Classical philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Plato, with Aristotle making very good use of the legacy in his syntheses.
No, for the same reason as above.

Kenosis 18:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Stating what century or general period the events in question occur in would more than suffice. For example, one could easily include that Cicero wrote in the 1st century BC without going into the irrelevant level of detail (as we currently do) that he was born in c. 106 BC and died in c. 43 BC. Specific birth and death dates are unacceptably trivial and do not contribute to a better understanding of intelligent design, the topic of this article. Numerous significant, directly relevant details about ID have been left out for the sake of conciseness in this article; including so many irrelevant factoids about ancient Western philosophers is horrifyingly inconsistent and arbitrary. -Silence 18:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

You argue for consistency. This section of the article consistently gives lifespan dates. I you want dates of the works referred to, here they are: Plato's Timaeus is typically dated "circa 360 BC"; "4th Century BC" would not be unreasonable here either. Aristotle's Metaphysics was written "between 336-323 B.C." (historians arrived at this by fitting pieces of the overall puzzle together), so "also 4th Century BC" is acceptable here. Cicero's de Natura Deorum was written in 45 B.C, and "1st Century BC" is fine too. If that is what you want to put in place of lifespan dates, fine. Leave Heraclitus alone, or put "6th and 5th Century BC". Inconsistent? Gimme a break. This whole discussion is completely unnecessary if you ask me, which you didn't, but I'm saying it anyway. ... Kenosis 19:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Puppy input:

Yes
Yes
Leaning towards no: I would be comfortable with 1st century if only so many people who might be interested in this topic did not know when that occurred. I hope that is clear enough without being too pointed.
No, per Kenosis et al. KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a misunderstanding at work here. I am not proposing that dates be removed from the section. I am proposing that they be fixed: rather than providing irrelevant birthdates and deathdates for philosophers only tangentially related to the modern ID movement, why not provide exactly enough information to put them in their historical context, as Kenosis correctly noted is the only purpose of using dates in this part of the article at all? The only reason we could possibly want to note when Cicero was born and died is so users would know that he lived in the 1st century BC, not the 5th century BC or the 14th century AD or the 1980s or whatever. For the purposes of the ID article, users only need to know that fact, at most; they do not need to know whether he died in 43 BC or 44 BC. Consequently, it only makes sense to provide exactly as much detail as the article merits; mention the century when the events take place when it's unclear exactly when they did, and kill two birds with one stone mentioning the date of publication of the work in question (if it's known with relative certainty), e.g. for Cicero and Paley. Here is a comparison of the original paragraphs and the revised version (ignore the other changes I made, like defining Logos for our readers so they understand its significance and fixing some wording, for now; I'll get to those alterations later, just compare the greatly-simplified and much more useful and consistent dating).

Original version (1st para, start of 2nd)

New version (1st para, start of 2nd)

For millennia, philosophers have argued that the complexity of nature indicates the existence of a purposeful natural or supernatural designer/creator. The first recorded arguments for a natural designer come from Greek philosophy. The philosophical concept of the "Logos" is typically credited to Heraclitus (c. 535–c.475 BCE), a Pre-Socratic philosopher, and is briefly explained in his extant fragments.^[5] Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BCE) posited a natural "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus. Aristotle (c. 384–322 BCE) also developed the idea of a natural creator of the cosmos, often referred to as the "Prime Mover" in his work Metaphysics. In his de Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Cicero (c. 106–c. 43 BCE) stated, "The divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature."^[6]

The use of this line of reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae^[7] (thirteenth century), design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802),^[8] where he uses the watchmaker analogy, which is still used in intelligent design arguments.

For millennia, philosophers have argued that the complexity of nature indicates the existence of a purposeful natural or supernatural designer/creator. The first recorded arguments for a natural designer come from Greek philosophy. The philosophical concept of the Logos, an inherent order and rationality to the universe, is typically credited to Heraclitus in the 5th century BC, and is briefly explained in his extant fragments.^[9] In the 4th century BC, Plato posited a natural "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus. Aristotle also developed the idea of a natural creator of the cosmos, often referred to as the "Prime Mover", in his work Metaphysics. In his de Natura Deorum, or "On the Nature of the Gods" (45 BC), Cicero stated that "the divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature".^[10]

The use of this line of reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae,^[11] design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and by William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802),^[12] where he uses the watchmaker analogy, an argument still used by intelligent design proponents today.

-Silence 21:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If these changes were made as one group with an edit summary, there's a strong chance other editors would back you up, I iwould magine. But I can only speak from myself. They're very reasonable changes, Silence. Two things: Heraclitus was already 64 years old when the 5th century came around. Thus he is of the 6th and 5th Century BC. The other thing is that most people don't remember when Aristotle came, in my experience. He came just after, and actually overlapped Plato for many years, writing concurrently with each other (as all the editors here already know, of course). Do mention "also in the 4th Century BC" or some similar qualifier to at least roughly refresh the readers' perspective on the timeline here. Very reasonable changes in my opinion. ... Kenosis 00:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Heraclitus was only about about 35 years old when the 5th century BC began (the year 500). It is doubtful that he had done much philosophizing by this point, so it seems safe to date the popularization of the logos idea to the 5th century. As for Plato and Aristotle, the fact that they were contemporaries is implied by the fact that they are both mentioned in the context of the "In the 4th century BC" dating scheme. It is redundant to restate the date when there is no significant time lapse; we should reserve mentioning dates for when a different time period is being discussed, for the same reason we don't restate "In the 20th century" every other paragraph when discussing the modern ID movement. And, thanks for the support. Hopefully the others will agree that so many specific, tangentially-relevant dates are unnecessary here. As for the other changes, I'll get around to them after we're finished discussing the dates. -Silence 00:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, correct about the 35 years (duhh, LOL at myself). So most of his productive work was early 5th Century BC. Either way, this is a reasonable way of doing it. If there are going to be consistent references to the century rather than lifespan, I support it. Also, I would support a shot at quickly stating roughly what the logos means (no capitalization needed). It actually is a multifaceted and broad concept with multiple meanings, so I wouldn't wanna surmise that someone won't come along and mess with that definition. But it's a reasonable interpretation you've offered, and I wouldn't object to trying it in those few words. Therefore, I change my #3 and #4 above to support a consistent change such as you've offered. ...Kenosis 02:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

My two cents:

Yes
Yes
I don't mind either way!
same as 3

Jgarth 02:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

All looks good to me. A minor point, while some people hate "over-linking", in this case it would be worth linking 4th century BC, for example, to show the context, imo. ..dave souza, talk 09:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

1 and 2 yes. 3 and 4, yes, assuming the new version is adopted (which it likely will). Agree with Dave regarding the linking. Jim62sch 10:19, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no opinion regarding whether or not to link to the centuries. Although I'm sure that a lot of people would disagree that a link would be relevant to context here, If you think it would be helpful, feel free to add it. -Silence 18:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 5-8 (3)

These changes deal with the end of the first paragraph (and with defining logos near its beginning, which I forget to mention earlier):

5. For the same reason as Heraclitus and Plato, remove "(c. 384–322 BCE)" after Aristotle's name is mentioned (replace with "In the 4th century," before Plato and Aristotle are mentioned, to put in historical context) and remove "(c. 106–c. 43 BCE)" after Cicero's name is mentioned (replace with a simple note of when On the Nature of the Gods was published, 45 BC).
6. Add quotation marks to translated title, "de Natura Deorum ("On the Nature of the Gods")".
7. From what I can tell, Cicero's quotation is not a full sentence in the original text, but one clause of a much larger statement. As such, it should not be treated here as a complete sentence: replace "stated," with "stated that", ""The" with ""the", and "nature."" with "nature".".
8. Clarify what logos is—"an inherent order and rationality to the universe", put simply—so readers will understand its relevance to a discussion of ID.

-Silence 18:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Silence, I'm just going to go ahead and implement this version you presented on the right-hand side of the table above. If I'm wrong, I'll get reverted and/or corrected. I will leave out the words "and rationality" because the idea of the "word" (logos) does not necessarily equate with rationality-- too debatable I would think. ... Kenosis 18:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The logos article itself speaks of "Logos as the inherent rationality of the universe", and I think the implication of rationality is carried over in derivatives like logic, but if you think this is inaccurate or disputed, feel free to remove that bit. If you're planning to implement the rest of the changes to the first and early second paragraph now, then I'd better list the next few changes here as well so they can also be looked over and discussed. -Silence 19:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I was raised fundamentalist Christian and the word logos was primarily identified, as indicated in our article on the subject In Christianity, the prologue of the Gospel of John calls Jesus "the Logos" (usually translated as "the Word" in English bibles such as the KJV) and played a central role in establishing the doctrine of Jesus' divinity and the Trinity. (See Christology.) The opening verse in the KJV reads: "In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God." Since this whole issue is the entire world view of people who have this as a main association with logos versus others who do not, I do not recommend we get into telling people what logos means, as it means different things to different peple in a way that is significant in the context of this article. WAS 4.250 21:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

If anything, that is a reason to explain all the common meanings of logos, not to explain none. If a complicated topic is relevant, then we shouldn't ignore it, we should explain it so that readers are not confused. For example, if we don't explain what Heraclitus originally meant by logos (or at least how it was taken by the ancient philosophers we go on to discuss), then readers who come from a heavily Christian background, like you, might mistakenly assume that Heraclitus was speaking of the Christian form of the concept, not the classical one. That's part of the reason it's so important to define the term in this context. The other reason is that many people will have no idea at all of what logos means in this context, and will need its significance explained. If logos is significant in its modern Christian context, not just in its ancient Greek philosophical context, to this article, then explain both meanings of the term here. Don't cause unnecessary ambiguity by shirking the topic altogether. -Silence 22:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

That is certainly one approach. I have heard hundreds of sermons dealing with logos as Christ; especially in the context of the question "who goes to heaven when only those who accept Christ go to heaven". This Bible passage is used to show that Christ revealed himself as "logos" to ancient Greeks and those who accepted logos accepted Christ and are now in heaven. Even now, decades later, even as an atheist, I can't see "logos" without my mind partly equating it to "Christ". Indoctrination of the youth is powerful. My concern is that by the time we adequately bridge the culture barrier on the word logos we will have changed the subject. I feel it's a road best left untraveled; perhaps by leaving out the word logos altogether. Then again, reiterating the content of logos is indeed another possibility. WAS 4.250 13:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I would object less to removing the word altogether than to leaving it undefined. There are valid grounds to not address that topic at all on the ID page, as its specific relevance is debatable. However, if we do include it, we should certainly define it. It is our encyclopedic duty to keep readers informed, and not leave deliberate ambiguities in the text just because it's "easier". -Silence 16:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The philosophical concept of the Logos, an inherent ordering in the universe, is typically credited to Heraclitus in the 5th century BC can be seen as refering to Christ's revelation of himself and its inclusion in the history of Intelligent design can be seen as God himself revealing that Intelligent design is true and atheist's unwitting use of this historical fact is just another example of God making the worldly wise foolish. Communication is more than just writing for those who already know the material, but it is also writing for those who see through cultural filters that change the meanings of what we write. There is a mystic sense of Heavenly involvement with Earthly things directing the course of human lives that pervades interpretations. WAS 4.250 13:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 9-12 (3)

These changes deal with the beginning of the second paragraph:

9. Replace awkward and inconsistent "(thirteenth century)," from after Aquinas' ref with "in the 13th century" before "by Thomas...".
10. Then move the comma to before the ref: "in his ''[[Summa Theologiae]]'',<ref>".
11. Add "by" before "William Paley" for grammatical consistency.
12. After the mentioning of the watchmaker analogy, clarify and tidy up the wording of "which is still used in intelligent design arguments." to "an argument still used by intelligent design proponents today."

-Silence 19:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't do #12. ... Kenosis 19:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

OK. Do you think we should? (Sooner or later, that is.) -Silence 19:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the need to mention proponents here. "...which is still used in intelligent design arguments" is adequate in my opinion. ... Kenosis 22:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Your version is more ambiguous than mine, and I don't see any reason to be ambiguous here. Intelligent design isn't what's making the argument; ID is an idea, not an arguer (or even an argument, per se). Rather, ID proponents (or advocates, or Believers, or whatever other word you prefer) use arguments based on the watchmaker analogy. I agree that the difference is not a huge deal, but I also don't see any advantages of the original wording over the proposed wording. In context, it's grammatically simpler and more clear. -Silence 15:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not ambiguous nor is it anthropomorphizing ID, as the present version states "in" not "by". Re "still used ... today" -- the today is rendundant: given that we're in present tense, the only when to which still can refer is today. Jim62sch 17:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing "today" from the end of my version. -Silence 17:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes 13-16 (3)

These changes deal with the end of the second paragraph:

13. Add comma after "In the early 19th century".
14. Uncapitalize "Natural theology" to "natural theology".
15. Replace bizarre word choice "search" with "way" or "means" in "the study of biology as a search to understand".
16. Replace "[[Charles Darwin|Darwin's]]" with "[[Charles Darwin]]'s"; there's no reason not to state his full name here, after we've stated the full names (as they're used in their Wikipedia article, anyway) of the other people mentioned in the history, like William Paley.

-Silence 15:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

13 fine
14 fine
15 means
16 fine

Jim62sch 17:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm ready to post the next 4-8 changes now. Should I do it here, or, since this section has now been scrolled up by 5 or so rather large newer sections, should I start a new section to ensure that involved users don't miss the addition? I can add an "IDCAD part 3b" or similar to the bottom of the Talk page if that would be more convenient; if not, I'll simply continue adding them right here. Preferences? -Silence 07:24, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Defining intelligent design as science

Some time ago a relevant link to naturalism (philosophy) was removed from this section, leaving only the scientific method which, despite my request here at the time, still makes no reference to the supernatural. I therefore propose the following modified first paragraph. Note that natural philosophy is linked to ID here and here, and natural theology has a link to "IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN A FORM OF NATURAL THEOLOGY? by ID proponent William Dembski".

The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for the investigation of phenomena and the acquisition of new knowledge of the natural world, without assuming the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural, an approach sometimes called methodological naturalism. Intelligent design proponents claim that this can be equated to materialist metaphysical naturalism and have often said that their own position is not only scientific, but that it is even more scientific than evolution, and want a redefinition of science as a revived natural theology or natural philosophy to allow "non-naturalistic theories such as intelligent design"

Any comments welcome, ..dave souza, talk 10:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Two more links: [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1556666/posts here] and here ..dave souza, talk 11:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Given the lack of response I can only assume that this proposal is completely uncontroversial, and I'll implement the change shortly. ..dave souza, talk 07:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

by all means, implement it. however, there are a lotta slippery, tricksy words in there, coming from both sides. I have been thinking about it, before making a hasty reply. Sillygrin 08:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd appreciate if there any words you can point out that could be better phrased, but as you suggest I'll put it in the article fairly soon and allow normal editing to resolve any further issues. ..dave souza, talk 11:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean that you have phrased it badly, but that the words that are available to use are slippery (by design (as it were), I am inclined to believe). I realise that there is a modern school of philosophy that uses the term "methodological naturalism", so that it almost has to be used here, but that is rather unfortunate; not many words are more ambiguous or loaded than "natural". nudists? tree huggers? field biologists? decent? I am a little familiar with Thomism, so to me, using the words "matter" or "material" and "spirit" rather than "natural" and "supernatural" feels like calling a spade a spade. they are also very much more precise terms - and neutral, to boot.

"methodological" also looks like a bit of a dodge to me - "we are going to have trouble proving it, so why don't we agree to formally regard it as hypothetical, but behave as if it is true?"

again, from a somewhat Thomist perspective, it looks much more straight-forward to just say "empirical" instead of "such and such methodological", and then one doesn't go poking around dodgy mucky theories, or load any metaphysics on to the science (Ockham's razor and all that, eh?). it also seems to be what the scientists I know do - nobody at the bench rabbits on about "methodolocial whatever". it just experiments, i.e., "empirical".

and now its time for bed, and I can't be bothered writing about the ID part of it, but I don't think I need to for the audience of this page, do I?

I agree with you that this topic is pertinant to the page, and you should put it in, and I might hack it around later. BTW, I think there are less problems in this paragraph than in methodological naturalism. cheers, Sillygrin 14:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it reads fine. As the two terms Sillygrin seems to object to the most are wiki-linked, and are terms used commonly in science, I see no reason to not use them. Jim62sch 17:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's it done. As to references, I've given some above but not added any, take your pick. I did go over the naturalism (philosophy) article and thought it now had methodological naturalism pretty much pinned down and referenced, but will have another look. For the "proponents claim that this can be equated to" I think Meyer probably comes to that conclusion in the linked article, but reading him is doing my head in: too many distractions lately. Talk:British Isles has got a bit interesting: anyone know how to do a RfC? ..dave souza, talk 20:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Origins of the concept

the footnote seemed to be garbled, and I thought, misexplained Aquinas in ID terms (as did the main text, by implication). I put a quote of Aquinas' fifth way, and a quote from faithnet.org.uk (which was already referenced) explaining it.

in a similar vein, I think the origins of ID do not lie in peripatetic - Aristotelian or Thomistic - philosophy; ID proponents are typically evangelical protestants, and few, if any, of them are peripatetics. the origins of ID seem to lie in the 'scripture alone' idea, which tends to lead to a literalist interpretation of the Bible. thus, Genesis is interpreted as direct creation of each species, and evolution then necessarily contradicts the Bible; so that either the Bible or evolution has to be false. this is the origin of ID, not a philosophical concept of design.

unfortunately, since my background is molecular biology, I do not know of any published sources saying this, so it would be original research to put it in the article (unless somebody knows of a fig leaf!!). but I do think that this subsection could reasonably (and much more accurately) be called "historical antecedents".Sillygrin 07:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

This section is currently under active discussion just above. I replaced the last edit of it with the longstanding version and am placing the last version by Sillygrin here for consideration: ... Kenosis 11:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The use of this line of reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed by Thomas Aquinas and William Paley. In his Summa Theologiae^[13] (thirteenth century), Aquinas gives design as the fifth of his five proofs for God's existence. He argues, on a rather abstract level, that there is order, or design in the universe, and that this order cannot have originated in innanimate things, but rather in an intelligent being, which "we call God." William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802),^[14] gives the rather diferent watchmaker analogy, which argues that a complex thing can't have just happened by chance, but must have been made. This is still used in intelligent design arguments in favour of the direct creation of each species. In the early 19th century such arguments led to the development of what was called Natural theology, the study of biology as a search to understand the "mind of God". This movement fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens that ultimately led to Darwin's theory of the origin of species. Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer is embraced today by many believers in theistic evolution, who consider modern science and the theory of evolution to be fully compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer. . . . 11:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes:

[13] Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologiae. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" "The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God."

In faithnet.org.uk :"Aquinas' Design Argument here is slightly different from the traditional view as presented, for example, by William Paley (see Paley's Watch). Aquinas agrees that there is order and purpose in the world but adds to this that inanimate objects (e.g. Planets), could not have ordered themselves, lacking the intelligence to do so, and so have been ordered by a Being with intelligence who could (which would be God)." This seems to be misunderstood by ID proponents thus: He framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.

[14] William Paley: Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (London: 1809), Twelfth Edition. . . . 11:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I have bolded the stuff I added. Sillygrin 09:44, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Beware of implying that "Natural theology" led the passion for investigating biology: Linnaeus studied nature with similar intent in the mid 18th century, and widespread interest then led to discoveries including James Hutton's findings of deep geological time that created problems for a biological understanding in line with literal biblical interpretation before Paley coined the term and "Natural theology" was promoted by the Duke of Bridgewater. However, Paley's argument no doubt helped the respectability of such studies which led to Cambridge dons doing natural history courses in addition to the main study of the university, which was theology to equip students for ordination in the Church of England. Thus Charles Darwin's education included attending the Reverend John Stevens Henslow's Friday evening soirées for naturalists as well as later having him as a theology tutor. It might be better to change the sentence to read "In the early 19th century the study of biology as a search to understand the "mind of God" was reframed in the context of such arguments as Natural theology."..dave souza, talk 07:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

^ Cite error: The named reference Design Inference was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Michael J. Murray, n.d. Natural Providence (or Design Trouble) (PDF)
^ Dembski. What is the position of the NRCSE on the teaching of intelligent design [ID as an alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution in Nebraska schools?]
^ "ID's rejection of naturalism in any form logically entails its appeal to the only alternative, supernaturalism, as a putatively scientific explanation for natural phenomena. This makes ID a religious belief. In addition, my research reveals that ID is not science, but the newest variant of traditional American creationism. With only a few exceptions, it continues the usual complaints of creationists against the theory of evolution and comprises virtually all the elements of traditional creationism." Barbara Forrest April 2005 Expert Witness Report. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. [27]
^ Heraclitus of Ephesus, The G.W.T. Patrick translation [28]
^ Cicero, The Latin Library
^ Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologiae. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk, He framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.
^ William Paley: Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (London: 1809), Twelfth Edition.
^ Heraclitus of Ephesus, The G.W.T. Patrick translation.[29]
^ Cicero, de Natura Deorum, Latin Library.
^ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" in faithnet.org.uk. He framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.
^ William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 1809, London, Twelfth Edition.

[Design_Inference-1] Cite error: The named reference Design Inference was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[2] Michael J. Murray, n.d. Natural Providence (or Design Trouble) (PDF)

[3] Dembski. What is the position of the NRCSE on the teaching of intelligent design [ID as an alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution in Nebraska schools?]

[4] "ID's rejection of naturalism in any form logically entails its appeal to the only alternative, supernaturalism, as a putatively scientific explanation for natural phenomena. This makes ID a religious belief. In addition, my research reveals that ID is not science, but the newest variant of traditional American creationism. With only a few exceptions, it continues the usual complaints of creationists against the theory of evolution and comprises virtually all the elements of traditional creationism." Barbara Forrest April 2005 Expert Witness Report. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. [27]

[5] Heraclitus of Ephesus, The G.W.T. Patrick translation [28]

[6] Cicero, The Latin Library

[7] Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologiae. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk, He framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.

[8] William Paley: Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (London: 1809), Twelfth Edition.

[9] Heraclitus of Ephesus, The G.W.T. Patrick translation.[29]

[10] Cicero, de Natura Deorum, Latin Library.

[11] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" in faithnet.org.uk. He framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.

[12] William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 1809, London, Twelfth Edition.

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