There has never been a lock and there never will be that would keep a determined intruder out of your house or even a safe. Likewise, there will never be a totally secure computer network or any other form of communication. Besides, how many/.ers have information the NSA would spend a lot of money to get? If someone desperately wants to have your personal information, such as your Social Security number and bank data, there are probably many easier ways to get that, than to break into your wireless network and after that into your computer.
Except that crawling underneath the house with all the black widow spiders and other biting and stinging critters under there, is something that many people love very much to avoid. If I have to transfer a few gigabytes between computers, and I am in no hurry for that transfer to take place, our use a simple USB drive.
...With WiFi, either users have zero security, or they have to enter a username and password...
As they say, locks are only good for honest people. The crooks will always be able to break in. I have set my AP up to only allow a short list of MAC addresses to connect to my network. I understand that this is not much security to seasoned hacker, but prevents casual war drivers from connecting to my network. When a friend comes over and wish us to connect to a network, I just and his or hers MAC address to the permitted list. It also means that I now have one less password to deal with.
...Thus EVERYbody gets reamed when they transport their electronics across a border...
It has always been true, that everybody suffers from a few evildoers. It is just the nature of any law, that it applies to everybody. However anybody who is law-abiding has nothing to fear if they search your luggage or your computer within that luggage for things that the government has decided are not to be in people's possession or brought into the country.
...the government has singificant leeway (but not a carte blanche) to conduct searches at the border without running afoul of 4th Amendment...
A fundamental right of this government or any government is to control its borders. This has been the case since the founding of the Republic, indeed before the founding. Every country has always had this power. I don't see any difference between them searching your suitcase for contraband material goods or searching of your computer in that suitcase for contraband information. I have had the government confiscate some German smoked meats I have tried to bring into the USA.
Apparently the Supreme Court has decided that the Constitution applies only in a limited way at border crossings and that the government does have a legitimate right to search goods and persons. The best way to avoid trouble from the government in this department, is to simply have no banned material for them to find. If you have nothing illegal on your computer or in your suitcase you will not be molested by the border patrol or customs. Is that so hard to grasp?
...on the other hand only a very limited relevance to the lawful purposes...
Do you really think there ought to be a difference if you have some illegal kiddie pron in printed form or stored electronically? Long before 911 came along, customs had the authority to search for any contraband physically in your luggage. Why should there be an exception suddenly, because such contraband may be carried electronically? I think this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.
Honestly, if they are allowed to search all your luggage, why should they not be allowed to search through your laptop as well? Where does anybody here on/. get the idea that digital information is somehow privileged above real-world goods? If you have such super-secret information, why carry it on your laptop? Put it safely encrypted on a server either in the USA or elsewhere and then access it over a secure Internet connection. For crying out loud, is it really necessary to carry your entire pron collection across borders?
... it's up to the officers who wish to exercise that power to prove their legitimacy....
BS. It is up to the courts, the Supreme Court specifically, to decide what power the officers are allowed to exercise under the Constitution. Apparently they have decided not to significantly limit the searching authority of customs and immigration officials that country's borders. Apparently, the usual protections against searches do not apply at border entry points.
....If you sell a phone, you don't give a damn what software somebody runs on it.....
I think that any company that wishes to protect its brand should care very much. If that software screws up the device or makes it run in an unreliable way, it reflects upon the brand-name and future sales to other customers.
One of the things that Apple pointed out was that the refused Google app load the phones entire contacts user base onto one of Google's servers. It did this without asking the user for permission. I am surprised that none of the more paranoid/.ers have not picked up on this potential privacy violation. Remember, once your data is in the cloud, you cannot get it back and have no control over it any longer. It means that anybody who wants to look at it and use it for whatever purpose can do so without your knowledge or permission.
they can buy some other brand of phone, computer, music player or whatever gadget that happen to want. There's an old saying about pleasing everybody all the time and that it cannot be done. Apparently though, the iPhone is pleasing a lot of people who open their wallet and go and buy one. The same is true of the iPod. Even with a Mac, Apple is making a better profit on each one sold, than any other computer manufacturer.
If someone wants to play in my garden, they have to play according to my rules or play in some other garden. If Google wants to have a certain user experience, they can design their own platform or cooperate with others who already make phones. This has nothing to do with competition, but Brand protection. Apple has every right and obligation to protect their own brand from whatever competition may be brought to it by third parties. It seems that most/.ers forget that Apple is a for-profit company and is entitled to make any and all moves that protect its profitability. They are not a monopoly like Microsoft and that there are plenty of competitive phones, music players, computers and other devices that Apple sells.
Apple's main business has never been hardware or software, but integrated working devices that fulfill their function remarkably well, better than cobbled together hardware from one company and software from another. They have also allowed numerous third parties to make numerous accessories that interoperate with their products, as long as these accessories don't change the basic functionality of an Apple product. They want the basic functionality of the Macs, iPods, iPhones and other devices to remain distinctly Apple.
They will allow third parties to add functionality to their products, but when third-party applications or add-ons affect the basic functionality reflecting Apple's design, they squelch that and have every right to do so. They objected to Google software, because rather than adding functionality, they claim the application takes over the basic function of their product in ways that they will not allow.
Anybody who does not like the iPhone, has the option of buying numerous other devices that perform similar functions. Anybody who desperately wants the Google application can buy another phone and then be happy.
...We could test this theory if we could remove the sun....
We already test this theory every time we put a satellite into orbit. Nothing coalesces out of a cloud of gas and Newton's mechanics of gravity do not concern themselves with the speed of light at all. In practical terms, gravity calculations are quite straightforward, but we still have not the foggiest notion what gravity is or what gives rise to it. Gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable. If I put you into a closed cabin in space that accelerates at exactly 32 f/s per second, there is no experiment you can do, that you are not on the surface of the earth inside that cabin.
Even in matter there is design. Take for example water being very unique molecule even though it is composed only of oxygen and hydrogen. If the design of the water molecule were not as it is, life could not exist. Besides, I was thinking more in terms of the incredible complexity of life compared to non-living things.
(...we have the same problem with an intelligent designer...) Human intellect is insufficient to grasp the idea of a self existent eternal all-powerful God. That is why we are told in the holy Scriptures, that it is impossible to please God without faith. Intellect cannot grasp the idea of God, only faith can. Evolution is the faith that there is no God and intelligent design is the faith that there is, indeed there must be. Science and measurements come to us through our senses, which are limited to this universe, but Jesus Christ told us that reality is far more than what can be seen or perceived by us. The human creature is the only one in all of creation that is incurably religious. Religion thrives even today in the age of the Internet, cell phones and all the modern accoutrements of our civilization.
..... And saying it was always there seems like quite a cop out....
Admittedly, the concept of an eternal, self existent, all powerful God cannot be grasped by the human intellect. That is why God tells us in Scripture that it is impossible to please him without faith. For me, it takes more faith to believe that all the complexity of life could have come about by some impersonal statistical processes. A single cell is far more complex than a jet airliner, yet nobody in their right mind would suggest that an airliner came into being by any other process than intelligent design by human engineers.
....Can you say for certain whether or not THAT will be a caterpillar?...
Scientists have tried to make evolution happen with faster multiplying life forms such as bacteria and fruit flies. Even after millions of generations, there have only been adaptive changes. Fruit flies have been bred to have many grotesque mutations, but they were always recognizable as fruit flies and nothing else. Scientists have read millions of generations of E. coli, but none of them have ever become a Streptococcus, spirochete or other form of bacteria. They have always remained E. coli. Evolutionists get around this problem by stating that evolution takes lots of time. However the scientists have artificially bred many generations over short periods of time, that would normally take much longer to happen in nature. The bottom line, shown by experiments, not by conjecture or guesswork, says that Darwinian evolution cannot take place. So yes, I can say for certain THAT will also be nothing else than a caterpillar.
..... you're completely negating information theory....
I do not know exactly what you mean here, but information has to have a source. What is the source of the information that might guide the process of simple to complex? All information ultimately comes from a mind; the mind of a person in the case of man-made objects and technology and the mind of God in the case of natural objects. It is precisely the point of intelligent design scientists, that an object like the human brain, or any living thing for that matter, contains a huge amount of information. We speak of the DNA code, for example, but then we have to ask the question: Who wrote the code? All code, whether in a computer or living organism, comes from a mind. We know of no other ULTIMATE source of complex code or information, other than a mind. A computer program may be written by a human programmer, that in turn writes another program, but even so, the original information or a program source came from the human mind and no place else. We even have a whole body of law devoted to "intellectual" property.
...That is covered under the theory of fossilization....
And that no one has ever made a fossil according to this theory. At some point science has to experiment and try to figure out how a fossil might be made in the laboratory. That, as far as I know, has never been done. Maybe you can point me somewhere that explains how a fossil has been made today by any conceivable process that could be duplicated in nature.
....Now, the room for miracles to take place has gotten smaller and smaller....
Actually, for every answer that scientists find out about nature and the universe, there are a dozen questions or more. Many of our technological devices and gadgets would be classified as miracles by our ancestors. They would not know the scientific underpinnings behind these technologies and so would term them supernatural. When we read about events in the Bible, such as Jesus turning water into wine are multiplying bread and fish, we too call them miracles, even still today, because we do not know the underlying technology. Jesus claimed to be God come to earth and as such should have perfect insight into all molecular structures and how to take any collection of random atoms and arrange them in any conceivable pattern. Since the Bible says that he made the whole universe from nothing, he could have done the same with the bread and fish. We do not know the technology of how to make something from nothing, but that is our problem is it not?
It is claimed for Jesus, that he rose from the dead and showed himself to the people of that time. Jesus clearly told us and proved it, that there is a world beyond the grave. It is a realm that science cannot explore, because it is limited to this world only. The question is then: is only that which science can explore real? Could it be that there are other realities and powers that will forever be beyond the reach of science?
Einstein may have not been completely right either. Neither Einstein nor today's scientists still have the foggiest idea of what gravity really is. It is an extremely weak force, 36 orders of magnitude smaller than the electric force. Devising an experiment to detect such a weak force may be impractical at least with today's technology. Therefore, whether scientists at LIGO or anyplace else found something or nothing is irrelevant. The fact is, we just don't know, and might as well admit it.
We know that matter somehow generates gravity, but exactly how that happens is unknown. Gravity has to be instantaneous, otherwise the Earth would have left its orbit long ago, because if gravity traveled only at the speed of light, the Earth and the sun would not "feel" each others gravity until eight minutes later.
....Essentially, in the absence of direct evidence for an intelligent designer, evolution is always the better theory because it's SIMPLER....
Actually, evolution is more complex, because it tries to explain how simple organisms evolve to become complex organisms. It flies in the face of everything we observe, namely that complex things tend to break down into simpler components. Evolution also splits logic. Everybody knows that the airplane did not evolve from an automobile, but they both were designed by human intelligence. Yet the evolution expects belief as if it were fact, that something as complex as the human brain, which is capable of designing both cars and airplanes, came from a non-intelligence source. That takes a lot of faith, much more faith than to believe that the human brain and other complex structures in nature, came from a superb intelligent mind, namely the mind of God. Just because the designer is not immediately apparent, does not necessarily mean there is no designer.
Whoever claims that intelligent design is a field of the study is clearly wrong. Intelligent design, as well as Darwinian evolution are only two ways to interpret the evidence we see in nature. One says that intelligence is behind the complexity we see, and the other interpretation says that it all just sort of happened somehow but is not fully understood either. In order to make evolution work at all, it must be done over long periods of time.
The study of origins is the study of interpretation of historical evidence from the past, whether it is natural history or human history. All interpretation is subject to the worldview of the interpreter and as such must be biased in some way; it can never be impartial.
That is not evolution, but adaptation. Whether it is a black or green or red or pink caterpillar is irrelevant, because it still is and always will be a caterpillar had nothing but a caterpillar.
Baloney! The theory of evolution does not even explain how fossils are made. To make a fossil, you basically have to sterilize the organism you wish to fossilize, otherwise it will simply decay and never make a fossil. Time, essential to evolution, is the enemy of fossil making. All the studies of origins are historical studies with historical evidence. The same is true for archaeology and anthropology. Nobody was around when the fossils were made to watch it happen. So we have to guess how it might have happened. There is a much more plausible explanation of how fossils were made. It is revealed by careful study of the biblical account of the flood of Noah.
Scientists have tried desperately to make evolution happen in the laboratory, but so far at least have failed. Millions of generations of fruit flies (Drosophila) have ever and always produce nothing but fruit flies. Some of them were rather grotesque with extra wings, missing legs and other deformities, but they were always nothing but fruit flies. If you read the biblical record you will never read the word species, because the Bible is not a science textbook. It uses the word "kind" which is not strictly defined by science. It is also perfectly scientific to postulate that the entire human race COULD have come from a single pair of humans who were originally created by God.
In the study of origins, both intelligent design and evolution have to take certain things by faith because there are historical and cannot be proven in the laboratory.
...The simple answer is because evolutionism is actually based on scientific evidence....
Evolution and religion are both based on historical evidence and its interpretation. Anytime you have interpretation, it occurs through somebody's worldview or belief system. Someone who does not believe that there is a God will of necessity have to believe that something as complex as the human brain was not designed by a superb designer, but just sort of happened by a nebulous process evolutionists call survival of the fittest or selection of endless trials and errors. If you can convince me that a 737 airliner came about by these processes rather than designed by a human brain or a whole bunch of human brains, then you will have succeeded in convincing me that the human brain itself came about by these selection processes. Addling in the magic ingredient of time, even millions or billions of years does not change the qualitative picture of simplicity getting ever more complex. In all of nature it always goes the other way, in that complex things break down into their simpler components.
Slashdot Mirror
...doesn't mean you're completely protected....
There has never been a lock and there never will be that would keep a determined intruder out of your house or even a safe. Likewise, there will never be a totally secure computer network or any other form of communication. Besides, how many /.ers have information the NSA would spend a lot of money to get? If someone desperately wants to have your personal information, such as your Social Security number and bank data, there are probably many easier ways to get that, than to break into your wireless network and after that into your computer.
...Wired ethernet...
Except that crawling underneath the house with all the black widow spiders and other biting and stinging critters under there, is something that many people love very much to avoid. If I have to transfer a few gigabytes between computers, and I am in no hurry for that transfer to take place, our use a simple USB drive.
...With WiFi, either users have zero security, or they have to enter a username and password...
As they say, locks are only good for honest people. The crooks will always be able to break in. I have set my AP up to only allow a short list of MAC addresses to connect to my network. I understand that this is not much security to seasoned hacker, but prevents casual war drivers from connecting to my network. When a friend comes over and wish us to connect to a network, I just and his or hers MAC address to the permitted list. It also means that I now have one less password to deal with.
...Thus EVERYbody gets reamed when they transport their electronics across a border...
It has always been true, that everybody suffers from a few evildoers. It is just the nature of any law, that it applies to everybody. However anybody who is law-abiding has nothing to fear if they search your luggage or your computer within that luggage for things that the government has decided are not to be in people's possession or brought into the country.
...the government has singificant leeway (but not a carte blanche) to conduct searches at the border without running afoul of 4th Amendment...
A fundamental right of this government or any government is to control its borders. This has been the case since the founding of the Republic, indeed before the founding. Every country has always had this power. I don't see any difference between them searching your suitcase for contraband material goods or searching of your computer in that suitcase for contraband information. I have had the government confiscate some German smoked meats I have tried to bring into the USA.
Apparently the Supreme Court has decided that the Constitution applies only in a limited way at border crossings and that the government does have a legitimate right to search goods and persons. The best way to avoid trouble from the government in this department, is to simply have no banned material for them to find. If you have nothing illegal on your computer or in your suitcase you will not be molested by the border patrol or customs. Is that so hard to grasp?
...on the other hand only a very limited relevance to the lawful purposes...
Do you really think there ought to be a difference if you have some illegal kiddie pron in printed form or stored electronically? Long before 911 came along, customs had the authority to search for any contraband physically in your luggage. Why should there be an exception suddenly, because such contraband may be carried electronically? I think this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.
...that it's an unreasonable search...
Honestly, if they are allowed to search all your luggage, why should they not be allowed to search through your laptop as well? Where does anybody here on /. get the idea that digital information is somehow privileged above real-world goods? If you have such super-secret information, why carry it on your laptop? Put it safely encrypted on a server either in the USA or elsewhere and then access it over a secure Internet connection. For crying out loud, is it really necessary to carry your entire pron collection across borders?
... it's up to the officers who wish to exercise that power to prove their legitimacy....
BS. It is up to the courts, the Supreme Court specifically, to decide what power the officers are allowed to exercise under the Constitution. Apparently they have decided not to significantly limit the searching authority of customs and immigration officials that country's borders. Apparently, the usual protections against searches do not apply at border entry points.
....If you sell a phone, you don't give a damn what software somebody runs on it.....
I think that any company that wishes to protect its brand should care very much. If that software screws up the device or makes it run in an unreliable way, it reflects upon the brand-name and future sales to other customers.
One of the things that Apple pointed out was that the refused Google app load the phones entire contacts user base onto one of Google's servers. It did this without asking the user for permission. I am surprised that none of the more paranoid /.ers have not picked up on this potential privacy violation. Remember, once your data is in the cloud, you cannot get it back and have no control over it any longer. It means that anybody who wants to look at it and use it for whatever purpose can do so without your knowledge or permission.
....If the customer wants such and such...
they can buy some other brand of phone, computer, music player or whatever gadget that happen to want. There's an old saying about pleasing everybody all the time and that it cannot be done. Apparently though, the iPhone is pleasing a lot of people who open their wallet and go and buy one. The same is true of the iPod. Even with a Mac, Apple is making a better profit on each one sold, than any other computer manufacturer.
....instead of trying to block everyone ...
If someone wants to play in my garden, they have to play according to my rules or play in some other garden. If Google wants to have a certain user experience, they can design their own platform or cooperate with others who already make phones. This has nothing to do with competition, but Brand protection. Apple has every right and obligation to protect their own brand from whatever competition may be brought to it by third parties. It seems that most /.ers forget that Apple is a for-profit company and is entitled to make any and all moves that protect its profitability. They are not a monopoly like Microsoft and that there are plenty of competitive phones, music players, computers and other devices that Apple sells.
....If Apple's software were so much better ....
Apple's main business has never been hardware or software, but integrated working devices that fulfill their function remarkably well, better than cobbled together hardware from one company and software from another. They have also allowed numerous third parties to make numerous accessories that interoperate with their products, as long as these accessories don't change the basic functionality of an Apple product. They want the basic functionality of the Macs, iPods, iPhones and other devices to remain distinctly Apple.
They will allow third parties to add functionality to their products, but when third-party applications or add-ons affect the basic functionality reflecting Apple's design, they squelch that and have every right to do so. They objected to Google software, because rather than adding functionality, they claim the application takes over the basic function of their product in ways that they will not allow.
Anybody who does not like the iPhone, has the option of buying numerous other devices that perform similar functions. Anybody who desperately wants the Google application can buy another phone and then be happy.
...We could test this theory if we could remove the sun....
We already test this theory every time we put a satellite into orbit. Nothing coalesces out of a cloud of gas and Newton's mechanics of gravity do not concern themselves with the speed of light at all. In practical terms, gravity calculations are quite straightforward, but we still have not the foggiest notion what gravity is or what gives rise to it. Gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable. If I put you into a closed cabin in space that accelerates at exactly 32 f/s per second, there is no experiment you can do, that you are not on the surface of the earth inside that cabin.
...Look at matter...
Even in matter there is design. Take for example water being very unique molecule even though it is composed only of oxygen and hydrogen. If the design of the water molecule were not as it is, life could not exist. Besides, I was thinking more in terms of the incredible complexity of life compared to non-living things.
(...we have the same problem with an intelligent designer...)
Human intellect is insufficient to grasp the idea of a self existent eternal all-powerful God. That is why we are told in the holy Scriptures, that it is impossible to please God without faith. Intellect cannot grasp the idea of God, only faith can. Evolution is the faith that there is no God and intelligent design is the faith that there is, indeed there must be. Science and measurements come to us through our senses, which are limited to this universe, but Jesus Christ told us that reality is far more than what can be seen or perceived by us. The human creature is the only one in all of creation that is incurably religious. Religion thrives even today in the age of the Internet, cell phones and all the modern accoutrements of our civilization.
..... And saying it was always there seems like quite a cop out....
Admittedly, the concept of an eternal, self existent, all powerful God cannot be grasped by the human intellect. That is why God tells us in Scripture that it is impossible to please him without faith. For me, it takes more faith to believe that all the complexity of life could have come about by some impersonal statistical processes. A single cell is far more complex than a jet airliner, yet nobody in their right mind would suggest that an airliner came into being by any other process than intelligent design by human engineers.
....Can you say for certain whether or not THAT will be a caterpillar?...
Scientists have tried to make evolution happen with faster multiplying life forms such as bacteria and fruit flies. Even after millions of generations, there have only been adaptive changes. Fruit flies have been bred to have many grotesque mutations, but they were always recognizable as fruit flies and nothing else. Scientists have read millions of generations of E. coli, but none of them have ever become a Streptococcus, spirochete or other form of bacteria. They have always remained E. coli. Evolutionists get around this problem by stating that evolution takes lots of time. However the scientists have artificially bred many generations over short periods of time, that would normally take much longer to happen in nature. The bottom line, shown by experiments, not by conjecture or guesswork, says that Darwinian evolution cannot take place. So yes, I can say for certain THAT will also be nothing else than a caterpillar.
..... you're completely negating information theory....
I do not know exactly what you mean here, but information has to have a source. What is the source of the information that might guide the process of simple to complex? All information ultimately comes from a mind; the mind of a person in the case of man-made objects and technology and the mind of God in the case of natural objects. It is precisely the point of intelligent design scientists, that an object like the human brain, or any living thing for that matter, contains a huge amount of information. We speak of the DNA code, for example, but then we have to ask the question: Who wrote the code? All code, whether in a computer or living organism, comes from a mind. We know of no other ULTIMATE source of complex code or information, other than a mind. A computer program may be written by a human programmer, that in turn writes another program, but even so, the original information or a program source came from the human mind and no place else. We even have a whole body of law devoted to "intellectual" property.
...That is covered under the theory of fossilization....
And that no one has ever made a fossil according to this theory. At some point science has to experiment and try to figure out how a fossil might be made in the laboratory. That, as far as I know, has never been done. Maybe you can point me somewhere that explains how a fossil has been made today by any conceivable process that could be duplicated in nature.
....Now, the room for miracles to take place has gotten smaller and smaller....
Actually, for every answer that scientists find out about nature and the universe, there are a dozen questions or more. Many of our technological devices and gadgets would be classified as miracles by our ancestors. They would not know the scientific underpinnings behind these technologies and so would term them supernatural. When we read about events in the Bible, such as Jesus turning water into wine are multiplying bread and fish, we too call them miracles, even still today, because we do not know the underlying technology. Jesus claimed to be God come to earth and as such should have perfect insight into all molecular structures and how to take any collection of random atoms and arrange them in any conceivable pattern. Since the Bible says that he made the whole universe from nothing, he could have done the same with the bread and fish. We do not know the technology of how to make something from nothing, but that is our problem is it not?
It is claimed for Jesus, that he rose from the dead and showed himself to the people of that time. Jesus clearly told us and proved it, that there is a world beyond the grave. It is a realm that science cannot explore, because it is limited to this world only. The question is then: is only that which science can explore real? Could it be that there are other realities and powers that will forever be beyond the reach of science?
...that Einstein is completely wrong...
Einstein may have not been completely right either. Neither Einstein nor today's scientists still have the foggiest idea of what gravity really is. It is an extremely weak force, 36 orders of magnitude smaller than the electric force. Devising an experiment to detect such a weak force may be impractical at least with today's technology. Therefore, whether scientists at LIGO or anyplace else found something or nothing is irrelevant. The fact is, we just don't know, and might as well admit it.
We know that matter somehow generates gravity, but exactly how that happens is unknown. Gravity has to be instantaneous, otherwise the Earth would have left its orbit long ago, because if gravity traveled only at the speed of light, the Earth and the sun would not "feel" each others gravity until eight minutes later.
....Essentially, in the absence of direct evidence for an intelligent designer, evolution is always the better theory because it's SIMPLER....
Actually, evolution is more complex, because it tries to explain how simple organisms evolve to become complex organisms. It flies in the face of everything we observe, namely that complex things tend to break down into simpler components. Evolution also splits logic. Everybody knows that the airplane did not evolve from an automobile, but they both were designed by human intelligence. Yet the evolution expects belief as if it were fact, that something as complex as the human brain, which is capable of designing both cars and airplanes, came from a non-intelligence source. That takes a lot of faith, much more faith than to believe that the human brain and other complex structures in nature, came from a superb intelligent mind, namely the mind of God. Just because the designer is not immediately apparent, does not necessarily mean there is no designer.
...If you want claim ID as a field of study...
Whoever claims that intelligent design is a field of the study is clearly wrong. Intelligent design, as well as Darwinian evolution are only two ways to interpret the evidence we see in nature. One says that intelligence is behind the complexity we see, and the other interpretation says that it all just sort of happened somehow but is not fully understood either. In order to make evolution work at all, it must be done over long periods of time.
The study of origins is the study of interpretation of historical evidence from the past, whether it is natural history or human history. All interpretation is subject to the worldview of the interpreter and as such must be biased in some way; it can never be impartial.
That is not evolution, but adaptation. Whether it is a black or green or red or pink caterpillar is irrelevant, because it still is and always will be a caterpillar had nothing but a caterpillar.
....The theory also explains fossil records....
Baloney! The theory of evolution does not even explain how fossils are made. To make a fossil, you basically have to sterilize the organism you wish to fossilize, otherwise it will simply decay and never make a fossil. Time, essential to evolution, is the enemy of fossil making. All the studies of origins are historical studies with historical evidence. The same is true for archaeology and anthropology. Nobody was around when the fossils were made to watch it happen. So we have to guess how it might have happened. There is a much more plausible explanation of how fossils were made. It is revealed by careful study of the biblical account of the flood of Noah.
Scientists have tried desperately to make evolution happen in the laboratory, but so far at least have failed. Millions of generations of fruit flies (Drosophila) have ever and always produce nothing but fruit flies. Some of them were rather grotesque with extra wings, missing legs and other deformities, but they were always nothing but fruit flies. If you read the biblical record you will never read the word species, because the Bible is not a science textbook. It uses the word "kind" which is not strictly defined by science. It is also perfectly scientific to postulate that the entire human race COULD have come from a single pair of humans who were originally created by God.
In the study of origins, both intelligent design and evolution have to take certain things by faith because there are historical and cannot be proven in the laboratory.
...The simple answer is because evolutionism is actually based on scientific evidence....
Evolution and religion are both based on historical evidence and its interpretation. Anytime you have interpretation, it occurs through somebody's worldview or belief system. Someone who does not believe that there is a God will of necessity have to believe that something as complex as the human brain was not designed by a superb designer, but just sort of happened by a nebulous process evolutionists call survival of the fittest or selection of endless trials and errors. If you can convince me that a 737 airliner came about by these processes rather than designed by a human brain or a whole bunch of human brains, then you will have succeeded in convincing me that the human brain itself came about by these selection processes. Addling in the magic ingredient of time, even millions or billions of years does not change the qualitative picture of simplicity getting ever more complex. In all of nature it always goes the other way, in that complex things break down into their simpler components.