Thanks for all the work you put in to synthesizing everything. However, after seeing how it's going, and having satisfied myself that there's nothing scientific about ID, I'm dropping back into lurking mode. But I owe an explanation to those whom I've been distracting with my failed commentaries.
As I understand the history of "modern" ID (the flavor currently being ballyhooed by the Discovery Institute), it began with the claim that some biological features are "irreducibly complex." The conjecture of an Intelligent Designer was devised (revived, actually) to be plugged into that alleged explanatory void. Were it not for such otherwise inexplicable features, there would have been -- it seems to me -- no reason to even venture into the un-evidenced, un-observed, un-supported, and un-testable (therefore un-scientific) "explanation" of ID.
I don't object the concept's being extended beyond biology, if the same alleged precondition applies: the presence of "irreducibly complex" features. However, the whole business of ID seems to have been formulated to account for biological features. I'd be open minded about this, if there were -- in my always humble opinion -- any scientific thinking that is worthy of being extended from biology to other fields. But I don't think there is (and I've got doubts that it applies in biology either, but that's not the point I'm making here).
Millennia in the past, our ancestors imagined that everything was the result of some kind of ID. You know ... a dryad in every tree, a nymph in every brook, etc. Scientific progress in those days was just about zero. Slowly, sometimes painfully, our current discipline of science was developed. It deals exclusively with the natural world, leaving the rest of creation to other disciplines. I can't go along with any effort that I see as a retrograde movement, one that contributes to the backsliding of the progress science has made -- indeed, one that, if the "Wedge Document" is examined, seems to be an un-scientific counter-revolution. Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project"
I'm dropping out of this discussion because it now seems agreed -- by all participants but me -- that ID doesn't need to wait for "features or processes that are otherwise inexplicable." I take that to mean that the ID hypothesis would accompany every scientific theory. ID then becomes a "respectable" alternative for the children to decide, as the increasingly-worthless schools "teach the controversy."
I see ID as a blatant effort to turn every scientific theory into a blend of science & mysticism. Tacked onto the end (or inserted at the start?) of every theory would be the expression: "or it may have been the result of ID." Sorry, that's not science. It's the death of science. So count me out. But don't expect me to be silent about this.
Nothing that I've posted thus far is meant to legitimize or validate ID hypotheses as a scientific mode of inquiry. Thus far, we have only classified ID as a mode of inquiry, period. By the time we get to our third question, the exact framing of which we've postponed (re: whether evidence exists of an "intelligent designer" - which I might add, is quite different than whether evidence exists of intelligent design), then all these objections you've raised will certainly become quite relevant.
Some of them will become relevant whenever we reach our first two questions (whether the as-yet-undefined "panspermia" or "collective consciousness" qualify as "intelligent design").
Patience is a virtue! =)
But I do agree with everything you've point out.
Now there's a man with a head on his shoulders.
QUOTE
But the modern intelligent design-theorists, the IDevotees, as I have called them, are not arguing to the existence of a designer, a point noted by that somewhat notorious philosopher Anthony Flew in his book Darwinism. Now they are arguing from a designer to an explanation of the properties of living things. Somehow, "design" is an explanation of why bacteria have flagella, why we have hemoglobin, and so on. So what is "design" that it explains anything?
http://evolvethought.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-actually-is-design.html