<< Again, I agree, buy only as long as you are not expecting
the silver bullet test. Instead, one can adopt criteria
in a provisional sense to see if a theory emerges that
begins to pull things together. What you then would
have are two competing, yet mostly parallel, explanations.
This is why I think it is in the vested interest of many
anti-ID people to demand the silver bullet test that
unequivocally makes the distinction. As long as they
keep the debate in this realm, they don't have to worry
about the emergence of a competing theory.>>
I can't resist drawing from my relativistic perspective again.
It should be noted that the anti-ID crowd has never themselves
come up with any criteria to distinguish between ID and
non-intelligent causes (the primary one being natural selection).
Most simply dismiss/ignore ID for philosophical reasons and
proceed from there. Thus, since they have failed to truly rule
out design with a posteriori reasons, it seems to me an option remains
open, namely, instead of finding a silver bullet to distinguish between
ID and natural selection, see what the world looks like when you
employ, rather than ignore, ID.
Mike