Yeah, yeah, you go on telling yourself that. It's a very comfortable dodge, I'm sure. It has the unfortunate disadvantage of being demonstrably false, but I'm sure that's no bother to you.
Abiogenesis is a theory that deals with the origins of life. Right now it is at a very early stage.
Various theories of abiogenesis have been around as long as evolution. The fact that modern molecular biology has destroyed them all and left you with absolutely nothing to fall back on is well known (hence the distancing of evolution from abiogenesis), but is ignored in the popular media and biology textbooks.
And that's what ID seeks to deal with. The question on the table is: Could life as we know it have arisen by pure chance? If not, then there must be a Designer by default. ID does not at this time deal with the nature of the Designer--it could be God, or an alien intellegence, or something else entirely.
ID is a gutless claim for people who don't want to actually DO science.
Another demonstrably false statement, but hey, that's becoming your M.O.
It's an argument from ignorance that explains absolutely NOTHING.
Hmm . . . Say we found a slab on the moon with Egyptian-style hieroglyphics on it. Would the hypothesis that it was intentionally carved by an intellegence be a "gutless claim," an "argument from ignorance that explains absolutely NOTHING"? Or would it be the first necessary step to bothing to attempt to decipher the slab and understand what it means?
Ditto ID. If it were proven mathematically and beyond a reasonable doubt (and I think it already has been, but that's one man's opinion) that life as we know it could not have arisen by accident, but was designed intellegently, changing the paradigm that it is accidental would be the first necessary step to truly understanding it.
That there are unanswered questions in abiogenesis and evolutionary theory does not mean that *God did it* is a valid answer to those questions.
Why not? If God did in fact do it, it's an entirely valid answer. The question then becomes, "How did He do it?" If I'm learning about computers, the fact that my computer was intellegently designed does not end my inquiry--it merely lends direction to my study of how and why it works the way it does.
Isaac Newton was an ardent Christian, who wrote more commentary on the Bible than he did scientific papers. I've read some of them--he's quite good as a theologian. His belief in a God who made a logical universe drove his scientific inquiry rather than stifled it.
Of course, evolution is it's own "god of the gaps." Consider narby's post #266, in which he states, "Untold billions of particles, all acting according to a set of rules. . . When each atom in evolution's system acts according to it's rules, life evolves." It's a clear and unadulterated statement of religious faith, neither more nor less a block to scientific inquiry than "God did it."
Therefore, the argument that if we somehow admit to an Intellegent Designer all scientific progress will stop is a sheer appeal to consequences--one which by no means works if one thinks about it for more than five seconds.
IDers do have evidence. For example, the evidence that cells are far to complex to simply occur by accident, but that every part is necessary for the cell to continue to metabolize and reproduce. We have research backing this up.
Evolutionists are the ones on the ropes here, and that is why you're having to use political power to sue ID out of the arena of discussion and ruin the careers of those who allow it a voice. You'd like to pretend that you're offering a level playing field but that the IDers just can't compete, but come now, we both know that isn't true.
Which brings me back to my original question: What are evolutionists so afraid of that they have to stack the deck and openly commit fraud?