Scary....
I think its interesting that the supporters of this theory are generally people who had deep philosophical or theological objections to evolution anyway.....
Also amusing is the fact that their argument is that genetic code contains to much order to not have been INTELLIGENTLY designed (note the stress on intelligent) a theory which totally ignores the fact that this degree of order is quite expected after a billion or so years of evolution. The possibility that the design may not have been intelligent but the result of a genetically mutable population evolving to fill ecological niches which provide boundary conditions also seems to have been overlooked in their insistence on some form of guiding intelligence.
Also of note is that the article mentions that "design theory was finding adherents among doctors, engineers and people with degrees in the humanities". Now I don't want to rain on anyones parade here but note the absence of evolutionary biologists from that list, could it be that they know the scent of steaming bovine excrement when they detect its odor. This seems to be borne out by the passage that reads "Evolutionary biologists maintain that the arguments of intelligent design do not survive scrutiny, but they concede that a specialist's knowledge of particular mathematical or biological disciplines is often needed to clinch the point". Seems totally reasonable to me, Im a physicist so I wouldn't say I was qualified to discuss the fine points of biology. My point is this there is one group in the world with the necessary expertise and knowledge to assess this theory, they are as a product of their training objective, and yet they do not seem to find it a convincing argument even going so far as to say it doesnt survive scrutiny.
The most worrying thing about the article though is the stealth creationism factor, IDs principle adherents are the same people who argued against evolution in schools and for creation "science". This is worrying as these people have shown that they have no compunctions in attempting to replace science with theology in the school science curriculums, from this you can garner one important fact about them these people are fanatics and to them evidence is immaterial if it conflicts with their own beliefs....
[This message has been edited by joz, 11-27-2001]