Worth repeating.
pseudoscientific extrapolation
I will psuedoscientifically extrapolate if I feel like it!
Not really. Leibniz made exactly this criticsim of Newton's theory of gravitation, calling it a mystic form of "action at a distance". Leibniz had a point, --- Newton could only offer laws that described how it worked; what Newton could not do was offer a mechanism by which it worked.
Today, we know that Leibniz was wrong and Newton correct,even though what gravity is, is still fairly mysterious.
Similarly with intelligent design. I see nothing unscientific in searching empirical evidence that purpose in nature is not always merely apparent, whether done at the level of cosmology, biology or cognitive science.
Now, Newton would have been "unscientific" had he stated that his inference that gravity was caused by God was a scientific inference, but he did not do that even though he he believed in some sense, on some level, it was true. Similarly, it is laudable and not hypocrtical for IDers to say that they can't identify the designer.
Remember, in the days before the RNA world scenarios,Francis Crick bought into ID at the level of prebiotic evolution while remaining a devout atheist. Was he during that time a superstitious nut or a huckster? Certainly, he had no evidence of aliens seeding worlds-- all he had was an inference based on the evidence at the time that DNA had likely been designed.
I would label his aliens theory as speculation that went beyond science but his inference that DNA had been designed every bit as "scientific" an inference as his later rejection of panspermia.
In any event, the idea that because a medical doctor or patient or life-scientist thinks there is something to ID or some other competitor to Darwinian natural selection such as the various theories of co-evolution or self-organization does not mean they must therefore think there is nothing to Darwinism at all. Even the most rigid ID supporter accepts "micro-evolution" which what is being atalked about re: "finding cures for resistant infections."
The use of evolutionary algorithms, et al to show the efficacy of natural selection because it is built on a similar paradigm are a similar red herring. Reverse engineering follows the same sort of paradigm as ID, and reverse engineering has proven efficacious as well. But so what?
The mechanical model of Descartes has proven to have a great deal of application, but with regard to gravity, it was a bust.
The idea that thinking of Darwinian natural selection as a theory in some particular rather than a fact will make anyone an scientific ignoramus or hurt science eduction is just silly.
What's hurting science education is the lack of mathematical grounding kids have, as Darwin, who who envied the mathematical aptitude of his cousin, Francis Galton, would be the first to agree.
The last thing that will hurt science education is too many kids growing up to be complete science dorks like Charles Townes, the Nobel Prize winner in physics who rejects ID at the biological lvel but who holds that it is more persuasive than any of the alternatives at the level within which cosmology operates.