Intelligent Design Class to be taught at Cornell University

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.[10] 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."[11]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[12] (thirteenth century), design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802), where he uses the watchmaker analogy, which is still used in intelligent design arguments. 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.Intelligent design in the late 20th century can be seen as a modern reframing of natural theology seeking to change the basis of science and undermine evolution theory. As evolutionary theory has expanded to explain more phenomena, the examples that are held up as evidence of design have changed. But the essential argument remains the same: complex systems imply a designer. In the past, examples that have been offered included the eye (optical system) and the feathered wing; current examples are mostly biochemical: protein functions, blood clotting, and bacteria flagella (see irreducible complexity).The earliest known modern version of intelligent design began, according to Dr Barbara Forrest, "in the early 1980s with the publication of The Mystery of Life's Origin (MoLO 1984) by creationist chemist Charles B. Thaxton with Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen. Thaxton worked for Jon A. Buell at the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) in Texas, a religious organization that published MoLO."[13]Intelligent design deliberately does not try to identify or name the specific agent of creation - it merely states that one (or more) must exist. While intelligent design itself does not name the designer, the personal view of many proponents is that the designer is the Christian god. Whether this was a genuine feature of the concept or just a posture taken to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from science-teaching has been a matter of great debate between supporters and critics of intelligent design. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court ruling held the latter to be the case.

Your post implied that there is some kind of progression from psuedoscience to protoscience to real science.

1. have to accept that the ToE has been a very sucessful theory so far.