But that's precisely my point. Such a thing doesn't really exist. It only exists in the political agendas of atheists and in the strawman versions of evolution that creationists are trying to knock down. The actual theory of evolution is perfectly consistent with the existence of God and with certain interventions by Him. Of course, being a science and dealing with the natural world, it makes no attempt to specifically deal with any form of divine intervention, since it would be completely incapable of determining when such had occurred. However it doesn't rule out divine intervention either. Those who state otherwise are pushing their own personal beliefs, not the implications of the theory of evolution.
Meyer performs as service and advances science and knowledge.
Meyer does no such thing because he has no positive test for design. He predicts nothing that isn't predicted by evolution and does not give a falsifiable hypothesis of design. His argument is entirely negative. His argument boils down to A,B,C and D could not have happened by evolution, therefore these features were designed, but everything else could have evolved. Even granting that the things his claims that certain features could not have evolved, there still is no positive evidence for design. IDers would need to give a positive test for design that would allow one to look at an item and determine without knowledge of the history of that item whether or not it was designed. Given such a test, then there would possibly be a scientific hypothesis of design. Without such a test, all ID has is negative arguments.
Exactly. And this agenda makes false claims to science and is in fact holding the field. ID challenges this quite successfully and it's important that something does.
Now, concerning whether this debate is science-based consider that if a paradigm is declared scientific and an argument is made that shows the paradigm impossible, then that endeavor provides a valuable service, regardless of whether it provides or makes a case for a new explanation
Since I was just reading it, let me suggest you check Novum Organum (1620) which is the foundational document of science and addresses the issues surrounding the crevo debate with remarkable prescience.
For instance in LXV of the first book Bacon says For nothing is so mischievous as the apotheosis of error; and it is a very plague of the understanding for vanity to become the object of veneration. Yet in this vanity some of the moderns have with extreme levity indulged so far as to attempt to found a system of natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis . . . Whoa.
Then, however, in the very next chapter he says
Again, when man contemplates nature working freely, he meets with different species of things, of animals, of plants, of minerals; whence he readily passes into the opinion that there are in nature certain primary forms which nature intends to educe, and that the remaining variety proceeds from hindrances and aberrations of nature in the fulfillment of her work, or from the collision of different species and the transplanting of one into another. (again whoa) To the first of these speculations we owe our primary qualities of the elements; to the other our occult properties and specific virtues; and both of them belong to those empty compendia of thought wherein the mind rests, and whereby it is diverted from more solid pursuits.
Basically he saying it's a stupid pointless debate i.e. But it is a far greater evil that they make the quiescent principles, wherefrom, and not the moving principles, whereby, things are produced, the object of their contemplation and inquiry. For the former tend to discourse, the latter to works.