ID

it's been in the news recently, so i've brushed up on it a bit. ID is really the same as creationism if it rejects macroevolution, because then it can provide no explanation for the evidence of mass extinctions in the fossil record. if the species that don't perish in an extinction do not produce daughter species, then either all species were created at the beginning--which raises the question why are there no fossils of humans & dinosaurs & trilobites all found in the same geologic formations--or new species were created after each extinction--which raises the question, why weren't the original species simply recreated each time?

i also found a website that has a good overview of the concept of punctuated equilibria by none other than Stephen Gould himself, since punctuated equilibria is often cited as a critique of macroevolution. here's an attempt at a summary:

if evolutionary change occurs gradually, why are there no intermediate forms? Gould says, change mainly occurs when small populations become isolated, allowing favorable mutations to spread rapidly. then, when changing conditions favor some mutation, a small population can supplant a much larger main population, so that the new species appears to have arisen fully formed. so, species evolve by branching rather than gradual accumulation of mutations, but they evolve nonetheless.

finally, here's Gould's comment on the misuse of punctuated equilibria by creationists:

Second, the theory became an issue (quite coincidentally) just when creationism reached its acme of thankfully temporary influence. Creationists, with their usual skill in the art of phony rhetoric, cynically distorted punctuated equilibrium for their own ends, claiming that we had virtually thrown in the towel and admitted that the fossil record contains no intermediate forms. (Punctuated equilibrium, on the other hand, is a different theory of intermediacy for evolutionary trends—pushing a ball up an inclined plane for gradualism, climbing a staircase for punctuated equilibrium.) Some of our colleagues, in an all too common and literally perverse reaction, blamed us for this mayhem upon our theory. At least we were able to fight back effectively. Most of my testimony at the Arkansas creationism trial in 1980 centered upon the creationists' distortion of punctuated equilibrium.

source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_opus200.html
(i tried to put in a link, but that didn't work somehow :( )