Keith,
Not being a "life scientist" (PhD, Analytical Chemistry, though I haven't had much chance to do more than follow trends & developments in chem), I enjoy reading your inputs.
I, too, have problems with ID-- not that there is evident design and thus evidence for a designer. As you and so many others have pointed out any times on this list, the methodology of ID is flawed. Seeing numerous examples of extremely complex evident design may ("beyond a reasonable doubt") substantiate legal evidence sufficient to render a legal judgment, but the rules of legal evidence are insufficient to establish scientific fact.
In science, there are tentative formulations (hypotheses) and frameworks developed as a result of concerted examination and testing of tentative formulations (theories). There are also laws -- those evidences so thoroughly and repetitively (EVERY time) observed that they are justly regarded as fact. In law, there can only be hypotheses (conjecture on what may have occurred) and fact (direct irrefutable substantiation of past occurrences. Theory, in law, is impossible because theory requires testing and or repetitive observation.
In science there is evident bias toward naturalism. This does not, however, negate the enterprise of scientific investigation nor the findings of science (theories and laws). I am not a philosopher of science nor a student of law. Understanding the frameworks and operation of both does permit me to make observations, however. Thus it seems evident that, since the scientific evidence for God's working inside a particular theological framework (or set of frameworks) is lacking, ID has resorted to the pursuit of "legal substantiation".
What ID proponents forget is that the box one puts one's God into should be no smaller than the box He Himself steps into. For a Christian, this requires one to thoroughly examine the box his God has willingly confined Himself to. The only limits I have found are those obviated by His divine nature; love and righteousness. From these flow all His other attributes, including holiness, truthfulness, justice, faithfulness, understanding, compassion, mercy and jealousy (for our hearts, lives, and righteousness-- as a positive virtue). None of these are in any way limited by His omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence. These latter three only magnify the power and completeness of the former.
The evidentiary basis for the foundational truth of the Holy Scriptures is solid without legal or scientific extrapolation. Just as scientific extrapolation, when contrary to rational examination of the TOTAL testimony of science, is misguided, so theological extrapolation that runs contrary to the TOTAL testimony of the Holy Scriptures is also misguided. It seems that, in a zeal to establish the scientifically unestablishable, the proponents of ID have neglected this line of reasoning.
Howard Meyer
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