Since when has science ever claimed it had the answers to all questions?
You are an engineer, you say; don't you agree that I would sound foolish if I begun critiquing your most recent engineering project? With all due respect, what makes you think you can do any better with the field of evolutionary biology? Did it occur to you that perhaps evolution through natural selection actually is supported by overwhelming evidence, enough to effectively rule out any known competing hypotheses?
They fault the proponents of ID for exploiting gaps in current knowledge—as if every other scientific model was not established the same way.
You're completely off on this one - every other scientific model is established in exactly the opposite manner as ID - by exploiting and interpolating evidence, not the gaps therein. ID simply does not explain any physical phenomena with a consistent and predictive model, the way evolutionary science does. The Royal Society is dead on the money with this one.
Science, of course, claims nothing of the sort; it is a method (or collection of methods). Scientists, on the other hand, sometimes say and do things they ought not.
You are an engineer, you say; don't you agree that I would sound foolish if I begun critiquing your most recent engineering project?
Not at all. If I produce a product or invention that does not work as promised, you would be foolish not to criticize my work. That is one difference between science and engineering: engineers' failures are often painfully and immediately apparent.
With all due respect, what makes you think you can do any better with the field of evolutionary biology? Did it occur to you that perhaps evolution through natural selection actually is supported by overwhelming evidence, enough to effectively rule out rule out any known competing hypotheses?
With all due respect, you have missed the point of my argument. I am not trying to do better than evolutionary biologists—evolutionary biology is not my field. What I am suggesting is that both sides of the evolution-creation debate are talking past each other.
Has it occurred to me that evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence? Of course it has. I do not oppose evolution; I accept it.
But your comment about ruling out "any known competing hypotheses" needs to be modified by inserting the adjective scientific before hypotheses. After all, the young-earth creationists could be right. (I do not think they are—but mine is a religious opinion, not a scientific one.)
You're completely off on this one - every other scientific model is established in exactly the opposite manner as ID - by exploiting and interpolating evidence, not the gaps therein. ID simply does not explain any physical phenomena with a consistent and predictive model, the way evolutionary science does. The Royal Society is dead on the money with this one.
I think perhaps you have misunderstood my point yet again. From my (albeit limited) reading of the proponents of ID, I believe that they acknowledge the same evidence as evolutionary biologists. That is, neither group denies that life exists in great diversity and complexity. Where they differ is on how to explain the evidence—what model to use.
The ID people believe that the natural selection model is inadequate to explain the available evidence. I do not know whether they are right; however, I think it would be unwise to dismiss them out of hand. If nothing else, the challenge from ID might spur evolutionary biologists to refine and extend their models.