I guess Louis Pasteur (father of bacteriology and specifically a believer in Divine creation) and Jerome Lejeune (discoverer of the genetic cause of Down's Syndrome and devout Catholic) didn't get the memo. Anything that helps a scientist frame a falsifiable hypothesis—which is then tested for all to see—offers benefits to research of every kind. As you apply the scientific method to testing the hypothesis, the truth will come out. It doesn't matter where you got the hypothesis.
From the text above, it looks as if Stein is saying that coming from an ID point of view predicts that certain kinds of mechanisms will exist within the cell. Now, if experiment shows them to be present, you've learned something that may help you cure cancer, or whatever. Nothing requires you to share the framer of the hypothesis's belief in God in order to pursue the science. It is their failure to acknowledge this fact that reveals the Global Warming-zealots and the anti-ID academic police as cowards and poor scientists.
Ironically, the ID argument is very close to the neo-Darwinian argument. Both are opposed to the Marxist-science view that men and other life forms have no real nature, and that all life is infinitely malleable—and can be made to love the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to come with the proper training. Long ago, as a reporter for a science magazine, I knew a famous neo-Darwinian thinker and psychologist, an atheist who was Public Enemy Number One to the Marxists and liberals in his field. I asked him this question:
"What do you see when you look over the scope of life forms on earth, including man?"
His answer: "Evidence of design."
He assumed the design was created through natural selection over the generations, whereas the ID people say selection has been speeded up somehow, presumably by God. Both points of view will generate many similar, testable hypotheses. I say, let the assumptions be what they are, and let the best ideas win.
I’m unaware of Pasteur crediting ID with his progress in science. Maybe you could show us “the memo”.
Like you say, science should be open to testing any testable hypothesis, irrespective of its source, but ID proponents offer none that support ID. They claim “irreducible complexity” in various places supports divine intervention, but that’s just another radical leap of faith. At best it only shows that we don’t know something yet. That’s not science; it’s just “blame divine intervention first”. That has its place, but not in science class.
People fighting the introduction of ID into science classes can’t legitimately be compared to those promoting Global Warming. It would be more accurate to compare proponents of ID in science class to man made GW evangelicals, both pushing the teaching of their beliefs beyond the evidence and into places where they don’t belong. Criticism of evolution does not require the promotion of divine intervention.
Resistance to scientific explanation’s not new. But it’s ironic that it’s now coming those who want to promote their purely faith based surrender of science as a science in science classes. That’s why it’s so fervently attacked, not because it threatens evolution as many of its supporters delude themselves into believing, but because it undermines scientific reasoning. Can’t find a scientific answer, just call it divine intervention, quit thinking about it and call it science … That’s so clearly and profoundly degenerative that it verges on evil.
I actually think it would help a lot. It would be darned convenient to have the Archangel Gabriel come and tell you which compound will knock out cancer.