Afraid of ID? Hardly.
ID might possibly deserve serious consideration by scientists, who are qualified to fight out the battle over whether ID has any merit. This scientific contest would happen in the universities, at scientific conferences, and in referreed scientific journals. The public schools is not the right venue for this kind of battle. Were ID to survive serious scientific scrutiny, then it would deserve inclusion in high school curricula.
But the truth is that ID is speculative and poorly-supported. Mainstream scientists have dealt with ID in detail, and have pretty much torn it apart already.
The only thing I am afraid of is political manipulation of the science curriculum in the public schools. The fact that the ID people have resorted to this gives away their game: ID is much more a political movement than a genuine scientific movement.
You posted an excellent description of the current scientific status of I.D. A lot of very compassionate, faithful creationist/IRer's who post here with their scientific wisdom think science is like a football game where anyone can come in a arm-chair quarter-back. Sadly, most of these people simply do no have the knowledge or experience to discuss science in general or evolution in specifics. Hence, they try to do an end run around basic scientific principles and philosophy and get their stuff in public schools by pressuring boards of education who typically aren't much more scientifically lierate than the ID proponents.
Something like SETI?
Nooooo kidding??? LOL
" ...In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.
The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?
When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.
Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.
Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.
Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science." ~
Michael Crichton ( Excerpted from his lecture at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA - January 17, 2003 )