Dave no they are not similar, although dawkins etc pretend it is. Intelligent design is based on the proposal that the universe is such a complex structure that there must be some life force behind it. Professor Fred Hoyle used to say the idea of the universe developing by chance was as absurd as saying a jet plane could develop by chance in a scrap yard. The most common analogy for ID is the blind watchmaker - to say that if you found a watch in the street, without ever having seen one, and you opened it up and looked at its mechanism, you would , upon seeing the beauty and symmetry and delicate workings of its mechanism, immediately, quite correctly, assume that such a complex mechanism must have been invented and designed by somebody. It could not be haphazard. So how on earth can you assume that the universe, which is massively more evolved and complex, was not also the work of intelligent design? That is the logic of it. It specifically does not deny evolution, or science, or the big bang. All of them fit comfortably into ID. ID proponents would argue that Evolution is better explained by ID than by chance, because there is a system to it, a mathematical chain traceable in it. It scares militant atheists like Richard Dawkins to death because of its logic and they try to rubbish it by saying it is creationism in another guise, which it isnt. As I presume you know, Creationism claims that the bible is literally true and the entire universe was created fully formed in 7 days by God, normally 6-10 000 years ago, and that evolution is a myth. Darwin, incidentally , would probably have considered himself a supporter of ID, since he always said that evolution could only ever happen because of procreation by two beings to create young new generations, and that evolution could not explain where this procreative system came from in the first place, since by definition it had to exist BEFORE evolution could take place... As with so many other things, people try to rubbish the arguments by feeding you half truths. Personally I have no particular faith, but I admire logic and I frankly find the ID argument more logical than the idea that everything developed by chance. Like somebody said, they don't want to know what happened after the big bang. They want to know what happened BEFORE the big bang. Atheists want to claim there was nothinng. So how did nothing become something? To that, there is no coherent answer, except that it was created. And something had to be the creator for that to happen, and it is beyond science to explain it. At that point, a truthful atheist will usually change the subject........

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