REALLY? What do you think of this statement:
[The] hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty ... and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories."
The statement was uttered by Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago, regarding Alfred Wegener and his ridiculous theory of continental drift.
In fact, one of the proponents of this ridiculousness was so ostricized by his fellow scientists that he had to get a job teaching high school.
So let's forget the rewriting of history and get to what seem to be your points: ID has no phenomenon to explain nor an explanatory hypothesis. Both statements prove that you do not understand or are misrepresenting ID.
I have to go, but I'll post my response this evening. I'm sure there will be plenty more to discuss then.
A statement made in the 1920s, only a decade after Wegener proposed his hypotheisis.
ID is already twice as old a theory, with less explanatory influence.
Good theories survive sciebtific criticism, bad ones fail
Wegener was basically the first to notice evidence that the continents fit together, not only in the manner of jigsaw puzzle pieces but when other lines of geological evidence were considered. However, he didn't have a mechanism for it, only some evidence that it seemed to have happened. To most scientists, the idea that a whole continent could move seemed preposterous.
In the early 20th century when Wegener published, we knew that there was magma and lava deep in the Earth. We knew the Earth could move in small ways, locally (earthquakes).
We didn't know the cross-sectional picture of the Earth, a tiny lithospheric crust riding on a sea of magma like scum on cocoa. We didn't know much about the mid-ocean ridges. When you add ocean floor topography to the continental relief maps, the picture for continental drift snaps into place, but we didn't have that. We knew nothing of nuclear fission reactions, which would provide the energetic mechanism once we did know about that. Finally, we didn't have the tools for precise measurement of yearly micro-drift, the final piece of evidence for macro-drift.
All that changed and the pieces snapped together in the 60s. That's science, the real version, for you. It actually absorbs new data, identifies and rejects bad data and bad arguments, revises theories or accepts new ones as needed, and makes progress.
Now, you'd have to be some kind of crank to deny plate tectonics. We have the evidence it happened. We have the mechanism. We can measure it happening now.
Of course, that last part is just micro drift. If you ARE a crank and want to deny plate tectonics, you only need insist that evidence for micro drift is not evidence for macro drift, the mechanism of which is still unexplained. If you are a crank, you can proclaim that ID (Intelligent Drift) explains the features just as well and isn't as materialist and dogmatic.
It was a pretty rational statement at the time. You left out some rather important context.
Part of the problem was that Wegener had no convincing mechanism for how the continents might move. Wegener thought that the continents were moving through the earth's crust, like icebreakers plowing through ice sheets, and that centrifugal and tidal forces were responsible for moving the continents. Opponents of continental drift noted that plowing through oceanic crust would distort continents beyond recognition, and that centrifugal and tidal forces were far too weak to move continents -- one scientist calculated that a tidal force strong enough to move continents would cause the Earth to stop rotating in less than one year. Another problem was that flaws in Wegener's original data caused him to make some incorrect and outlandish predictions: he suggested that North America and Europe were moving apart at over 250 cm per year (about ten times the fastest rates seen today, and about a hundred times faster than the measured rate for North America and Europe). There were scientists who supported Wegener: the South African geologist Alexander Du Toit supported it as an explanation for the close similarity of strata and fossils between Africa and South America, and the Swiss geologist Émile Argand saw continental collisions as the best explanation for the folded and buckled strata that he observed in the Swiss Alps. Wegener's theory found more scattered support after his death, but the majority of geologists continued to believe in static continents and land bridges.
Continental drift failed because it lacked a mechanism. Plate tectonics succeeded because it provided a mechanism.
You might note that the Discovery Institute backed out of the Dover trial precisely because ID has no mechanism. Behe testified under oath that ID has no mechanism.
Continental drift and plate tectonics are similar in the sense that a time lapse movie of the earth would show the continents moving, consistent with either theory.
Darwinism and ID both agree on the fact of evolution and the time scale of evolution. They differ on the mechanism. Darwin provides a mechanism; Id provides no mechanism.