Comments like this demonstrate why our young people should at least be exposed to the basics of this theory in school, so that they could discern truth from fiction in this debate. First, intelligent design cannot be lumped together with creationism. Whereas creationism is religious, intelligent design does not at all “postulate that a God set everything in motion.” It does not even postulate a God. Several intelligent design theorists do not believe in God at all. Likewise, one does not need to belong to any certain religion to refute evolution using current scientific and archaeological evidence.
Much has been learned since 1859.
What is useful here is that the scientists post references, links and data (like the Wedge document which counter your argument quite nicely).
The cr/id folk post only apologetics and propagandistic statements.
Looking at your "about" Free Republic page, it appears you are firmly planted in the God camp. You just may have a bias.
The threads I usually see from the Intelligent Design proponents nearly always knock Darwin. The little I know about Darwin is he advanced the idea of natural selection. As part of his evidence, he made many references to changes brought about by animals through breeding by man. He also presented evidence from his experiments and field observations and those of his contemporaries. I would accept his work as science. For some reason Darwin sends the ID people into a tizzy. The ID people should really be directing their ire at Marx who insisted upon a material cause for life. He invoked Darwin, true, but for his own purposes.
Back to ID. Einstein was able to pare his Theory of Special Relativity down to two a priories, that the speed of light is constant and that relative motion is true. Darwin was able to sum up his Theory of natural selection in one sentence. Can you sum up intelligent design in no more than several sentences? I just don't have the time to wade through all the complaints about Darwin to understand what the ID people would like us to believe.
It has not been demonstrated that the Universe runs on a precise, mechanical, set of tools and devices. On the other hand, there's a tremendous amount of evidence that it has randomness, free-will, forces we don't know about, and so forth ~ maybe even three different types of "time" dimensions.