"At the ASA meeting at Bethel in 1996, Mike Behe told some of us
at lunch that he was pushing ID for apologetic reasons. He may have
changed his mind by now. When I told Phil Johnson this in Minneapolis
in October, he couldn't believe me."
A fair comment, Jim. But it still is not to the point!
Assume ALL of the ID folks are "pushing ID" for the wrong reasons.
Suppose they are all pushing it "with malice in mind." To this, I would
simply observe "so what?" I am interested in where the ID hypothesis
leads, and what we can find out because of it. The motivations of the
people involved are of trivial interest.
If you, as a scientist, pursue your science because you think it would
further the cause of (name your favorite "bad thing" here), that fact
gives me no reason to toss your science overboard.
A Gedanken. Herr Mengele used prisoners in 1943 as experimental subjects,
and did very bad things to them. Years later we find some of his notes
and thereby develop a novel way of curing some people. Should we simply
have destroyed his notes?
Another Gedanken. An ID researcher is "in the game" because he thinks it
has great apologetic value. As a result of his work, science is enriched
by certain of his findings. Should we simply destroy his publications and
ignore the new findings?
The ID hypothesis may, or may not, have value in a scientific sense. That
seems to be a point worth discussing.
Burgy