BBC Horizon documentary on Intelligent Design

Not strictly within the scope of this site but I thought I'd submit a comment or two on last nights' programme anyway. I was overly critical of their treatment of space tourism a couple of weeks ago (I was having a less than perfect day). This analysis of the ongoing battle between proponents of Darwinian theory of evelution and the newcomers on the side of Intelligent Design has restored my faith in the producers of Horizon

Ah yes, I was wondering if anyone was going to mention this "intelleigent design" stuff, I found horison did a good job on explaining it, I'm not surprised this kind of spoofology (in my humble opinion) has come up. Its a classic example of "I cant explain it so it must be god doing it".

That's the reply I was hoping to read

I've moved this thread over to this forum as the "observing equipment" forum is not the place for this discussion.

Oooh ... what a lovely can of worms we've opened!

I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this recently after an article in Physics World sparked some rather hot debate (as hot as Physics World gets anyway) and appart frome everyone obviously agreeing that the IDers are not scientists but philosophers at best and extremist nut-jobs at worst a lot of scientists also came in for some bad press from the physics world readers. Our fightback against ID has not been that great and has resulted in some very very bad science from so-called scientists too including people saying that evolution is a fact and that it proves there is no god etc.

This is just insane.

There would be no problem if people didn't look to the wrong place for answers. Science is there to answer HOW the universe works and spirituality/religion/philosophy/etc are there to answer WHY the universe is the way it is or indeed why it and us are at all. Problems start when people start basing scientific views on religious documents (creationists etc) and also the oposite, religious views based on science.

Simply put the two should not be inter-mixed and then there'd be no bloody problem!