Intelligent Design (What should be taught in schools?)

by whitecraw, Friday, February 01, 2008, 09:57 (6139 days ago) @ a retired teacher

'Demiurge': an autonomous creative force or decisive power. Despite its associations, when capitalised, with the Platonic notion of a subordinate deity who fashions the sensible world in the light of eternal ideas and with the Gnostic subordinate deity who is the creator of the material world, uncapitalised it leaves open the question as to the nature of the decisive power which transformed inorganic into organic matter, whether an intelligent designer or a chemical accident. For those of us who don't know the answer to this question, 'demiurge' thus enables us to remain agnostic or noncommittal in our language.