[Stultis]

Intelligent design as both an inductive and deductive principle works, and has worked, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. "Natural selection?" That's about as arbitrary as a label can be.

Ooops! Sorry, but you can no longer appeal to ID as an alternative, since you've already eliminated it, if your argument against natural selection is valid.

You said...

"natural selection" is but a post facto, ad hoc label of non-empirical significance

And yet ID relies -- exclusively -- on the purported insufficiency of natural selection (and/or other step-wise evolutionary mechanisms) in order to "infer" ID. If, as you suggest, natural selection has no empirical consequences and makes no empirical demands, then it is impossible to infer ID.

[Fester Chugabrew]

And yet ID relies -- exclusively -- on the purported insufficiency of natural selection . . .

I understand intelligent design to govern a wider spectrum of existence than natural selection. What we label as "natural selection" is just one of many processes that brings about the status quo. The label may suit this or that person's intellectual fancy, but it does not carry empirical weight. The same holds true, perhaps even moreso for intelligent design, because it can be applied arbitrarily to nearly any set of circumstances. Neither intelligent design nor natural selection need be mutually exclusive. Neither of them are well-suited to the details of empirical science.