rocketman
Out there...
My own experiences must have coloured my opinion.
(If anyone tells me that ID shouldn't be in schools, or quotes the wedge document, or rants that ID is a front for religion for some poeple, not only am I going to scream at the top of my lungs at their having missed the woods for the trees regarding this post, I am genuinely going to throw up, violently. So please don't tell me what I know, folks).
The design inference can be discussed without invoking religion. Dawkins gave a good example free of religion, as refered to in the OP:
" .....by probably by some kind of Darwinian means to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto... perhaps this... this planet. Um, now that is a possibility. And uh, an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the um, at the detail... details of our chemistry molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer."
Dawkins said we would need to find a signature, but as yet we don't know what that is, or if there even is one. If we look at the search for extra-terrestrial life (SETI), there was a time when people weren't sure what would constitute a signature (which is where ID is at now), but then someone figured out that a radio wave at a certain wavelength would have a high probabilty of being unnatural, and that might constitute evidence of ET. There was never an apparent ET, but people have settled on a certain kind of radio blip as a signature, even though we can't rule out that there may be natural sources of such a frequency - yet when people want to investigate the apparent design inference, (which so far is truly more real than ET), the legitimate questions raised are quite innacurately and almost universally brushed off as 'a religious belief', to quote you.
There was a reason to think there may be aliens, because we figured out we lived on a planet, other stars had planets, and so there may be more lifeforms out there: it was all based on something that existed. Similarly with the design inference, we design and build things, we see things that appear to be designed, so we ask if they were. In actual fact, the search for a signature is not unscientific at all. The problem is knowing what to look for, and THAT is where ID is at in terms of research: just looking. They don't have a falsifiable hypothesis yet, so it's not testable by any measure (and I've always said that here on RF), but the current work to determine if irreducible complexity, (and specified complexity) can even really have a mechanism, and the work on mathematically evaluating extra-natural assemblies and so on will keep going until they develop a truly testable hypothesis. It's the attempt to define a hypothesis (largely a mathematical job btw) which occupies the minds of many who work on ID now.
For now the levels explored are shallow indeed. My own feeling is that the total levels of complexity that are required to be weighed up all at once are a bit beyond our capacity at this point, and so we will probably not see a testable hypothesis in this lifetime. But if I were running an academic institution and a scholar believed the search for a signature was a good thing, I would support them. On the other hand, if they deliberately worked to erode the cirriculum and/or claimed evidence of deity where there was none, we would have some unhappy words together, even though I am a theist. My challenge to the scientific community (of which I am a part) is to publish one of the many religion-free essays out there on infered design in one of it's major journals, in order to show once and for all that they are not biased. Certainly a massive array of evidence-free and claim-untestable essays have graced the pages of the major journals over the years, so in a way it would be nothing new.
I have always maintained that ID is not science in that it has no testable hypothesis, but there is a design inference, and there is nothing unscientific about attempting to form a hypothesis that might test for signatures. This is no different to the early days of any attempt to explain any observed phenomena, it can take a long time to define a hypothesis, and while there is no guarantee there ever will be one, there can likewise be no denial that there are scientific methods open to the attempt to form such a thing, which is what is going on now, just not in many halls of academia, sadly. If the search for a hypothesis for string theory and multiverses (even if it is just math) is allowed, then so should the search for a hypothesis regarding the signature test for the design inference.
I maintain without reserve that there is a degree of McCarthyism at work in the world on this topic, and while in some ways I can understand the dread fear some have of a return to the 'dark ages', nevertheless I think it's largely unfounded and it's high time we excercised our proclaimed universal values and allowed everyone with something legitmate to say to be able to do so, with some respect and manners, including around here. It seems to me that a root cause of this groupthink is more a result of a hopelessly low understanding of ID than anything else: the repsonses so instinctive and learned that even when someone like Pete raises a legitimate issue the reflexes kick in anyway. When a decent guy like Pete gets testy, you can bet it's because he feels he is is right about something, or at least right to ask questions, and not because he is trying to pull a swifty. I know ScubaPete has always defended evolution around here, and has been short with those who fight over ID on this site, and I hope people will just take a breath and get their head around that fact.
