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Because, in the scientific community, ID is not a hot-button issue. No true scientist believes that Intelligent Design is compatible with the scientific method.

Do some more reading before making blanket statements like that. It's patently false.

Just to be absolutely clear - I'm not asking for examples of scientists who believe ID may potentially be correct. I'm certainly not asking for examples of scientists who believe in God - a belief in God is (as far as I can see) totally compatible with a belief in science. I'm just asking for a generally accepted scientist who believes that ID is a valid scientific theory and is therefore compatible with the scientific method. I've honestly never heard of one.

By the way, please address the main point I raised in the parent post - that ID makes no falsifiable predictions and is therefore not a scientific theory.

First off, Behe is a Christian:

"Scott refers to me as an intelligent design "creationist," even though I clearly write in my book Darwin's Black Box (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think "evolution occurred, but was guided by God." Where I and others run afoul of Scott and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is simply in arguing that intelligent design in biology is not invisible, it is empirically detectable."

Secondly, if you apply Behe's arguments to Rainbow Bridge, it'd declare that it never could have formed naturally. It did. It also would declare that bubbles are impossible in nature (remove any part of the bubble, it pops), fire can't be started naturally (remove any of the ingredients, and it goes out), ice dams can't form (remove any part of the ice dam, and the water rushes out behind it destroying the dam), and geysers aren't natural (alter any part of the geyser's path, and it stops erupting).

"Irreducible complexity" is a one-way process. Structures come into being for reasons other than their initial functionality (and for the above cases that I mentioned, for no reason at all related to the end aesthetics or functionality).

For example, a commonly cited case is the bombardier beetle. They produce hydroquinones and H2O2 which collect in a resevoir. The resevoir opens into a tough, thick-walled reaction chamber that produces catalyases and peroxidases; this breaks down the H2O2 and produces heat and helps break down the hydroquinone to p-quinones. A fifth of the mixture is vaporized, and propels the burning mixture through a series of valves and nozzles that spray it onto the target.

Irreducibly complex to say the least, right? Gish sure thought so. Yet, the intermediary stages already exist for most stages, and the others are obvious progressions. From here:

1. Quinones are produced by epidermal cells for tanning the cuticle. This exists commonly in arthropods. [Dettner, 1987]

2. Some of the quinones don't get used up, but sit on the epidermis, making the arthropod distasteful. (Quinones are used as defensive secretions in a variety of modern arthropods, from beetles to millipedes. [Eisner, 1970])

3. Small invaginations develop in the epidermis between sclerites (plates of cuticle). By wiggling, the insect can squeeze more quinones onto its surface when they're needed.

4. The invaginations deepen. Muscles are moved around slightly, allowing them to help expel the quinones from some of them. (Many ants have glands similar to this near the end of their abdomen. [Holldobler & Wilson, 1990, pp. 233-237])

5. A couple invaginations (now reservoirs) become so deep that the others are inconsequential by comparison. Those gradually revert to the original epidermis.

6. In various insects, different defensive chemicals besides quinones appear. (See Eisner, 1970, for a review.) This helps those insects defend against predators which have evolved resistance to quinones. One of the new defensive chemicals is hydroquinone.

7. Cells that secrete the hydroquinones develop in multiple layers over part of the reservoir, allowing more hydroquinones to be produced. Channels between cells allow hydroquinones from all layers to reach the reservior.

8. The channels become a duct, specialized for transporting the chemicals. The secretory cells withdraw from the reservoir surface, ultimately becoming a separate organ.

This stage -- secretory glands connected by ducts to reservoirs -- exists in many beetles. The particular configuration of glands and reservoirs that bombardier beetles have is common to the other beetles in t

I'd mod the AC up, but can't:

"Here is the first Google hit. This is just one grant for one particular project, they've gotten several more."

Here is the first Google hit. This is just one grant for one particular project, they've gotten several more.

"ID is only a set of apologies for why you can not interpret genesis literally. It's a "made up" idea that came forward when the scientific amount of evidence for evolution became so overwhelmingly huge that certain proponents of creationism understood that the old 6-day, 6000 year old created Earth did not fly."

Actually, it's been around since Cicero.

"I'd be willing to pay $1,000,000 to anyone who can come up with scientific evidence for ID that will stand scientific peer-review. Any takers?"

This article stood up to peer review, but was withdrawn because of political pressure. This article stood up to peer review and was published. Dembski's The Design Inference was peer-reviewed. This article was done by a young-earth creationist, with creationist results, but it was allowed to be published because he only left it as "an unsolved problem in theoretical biology.". And of course the whole basis of modern biology -- genetics -- was found by a creationist showing why continual evolution was not likely.

Do I get a million dollars!?

I think he's talking about the types of intelligent-design folks that were commenting over the butterfly evolution article, and the fact that they (or others like them) want it taught in science classes.

eh, lucky??? try adding some zeros there...how about something like 1 in 10(add sixty zeros) to come up with just one 'working' protein...and are you suggesting that all planets can sustain life??? give this a read if you really want to get an idea of what you're suggesting: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php? command=view&id=2177

The Bill & Melinda gates has given over $10 million to the Discovery Institutes, one of the major thinktanks behind "Intelligent Design". While the money was not targeted for Intelligent Design studies this is major support for a nut job organization. How much of the $10M is siphoned off (via overhead charges)for general operating expenses?

Maybe telling more people that "ID" is just a (bad) publicity gag by a republican founded think tank, trying to make the complete mess that "creationism" is sound somehow scientific for the public, would help.

Try to read some of the crap articles they produce (all on their page). Some of it really hurts. IMHO with the publicity it gets, ID is more dangerous than it seems at the first glance. (i hope that teaching stuff like this in science classes stays unthinkable in europe for some time. Philosophy is another story.)

Let me help. The Bible clearly states that the world was created is 6 days and it was good. It was not until man sinned that death entered the world. For evolution to work, death must have been at work before man's sin. Clearly a contradiction. If you are a Christian, then you must reject evolution. If you want more information, I would refer you to Institute for Creation Research (http://www.icr.org/), Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (http://www.discovery.org/csc), and Answers in Genesis' Creation Questions and Answers (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/qa.asp) . David

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him

your statement itself contains a hidden discouragement: against atheism, which is not a religion

A lot of important science raises serious questions that make people of many religions uncomfortable.

What always perturbs me about these articles that compare technology changes to evolution is the idea that there is anything Darwinian about them. Darwinian evolution, as my gradeschool textbooks informed me, involves random, unguided change.

The evolution that is described in this article is anything but unguided. Researchers took existing carefully developed code. They selectively combined parts of this code. They studied the resulting effects to produce better code. This looks much more like Intelligent Design than anything Chuck Darwin ever dreamed up.

On the other hand, the development of the universe was probably a bit more complicated than tuning some routing algos, and we believe that it all arrived by chance... Hmm, maybe those pesky Creationists have a reasonable idea after all.

Summary: Evolutionary, yes. Darwinian, no.

This Discovery Institute is something else. According to their article, the Ohio Board saw through the thin arguments of pro-Darwinist fanatics and mandated teaching the criticisms of evolutionary theory.

Of course, what this means is anybody's guess. They cite all these experts and the "rising tide of criticism" as evidence that they're on the right side. Of course their citations are thin and often unspecified.

This Discovery Institute is something else. According to their article, the Ohio Board saw through the thin arguments of pro-Darwinist fanatics and mandated teaching the criticisms of evolutionary theory.

Of course, what this means is anybody's guess. They cite all these experts and the "rising tide of criticism" as evidence that they're on the right side. Of course their citations are thin and often unspecified.

A local hero of mine, Dr. Lawrence Krauss Chair of the Physics Department of Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, has taken up the call-to-arms to protect Ohioans and the rest of the world against crackpots. In our recent "Intelligent design" debacle, creationists attempted to hijack the science education curriculum, and, thanks in no small part to his efforts, were stopped. He has also made a bigger name for himself analyzing science fiction, and is best known for his book "The Physics of Star Trek." If you find a scientific cause that needs a real scientist to refute morons, he is your man.

This theory of habitable galactic zones is much like the concept of habitable zones in a solar system. Just as the Earth happens to be within the proper zonal distance from the Sun, not too hot and not too cold, which allows for liquid water and also many important chemical reactions, being just the right distance from a galactic core also allows the right environmental conditions to develop life (at least in the form as we know it). For example, being too close to a galactic core would increase the amount of energetic X-ray, gamma ray, and cosmic ray flux on any nearby solar system, thus irradiating any possible life forms. Also, living in a region of space with the stellar densities that exist near a galactic core would increase your chances of being within the blast radius of a nearby stellar neighbor who happens to go supernova. Also, the closer a solar system is to another solar system, the greater the gravitational interactions between them, thus causing random orbital disturbances that can cause asteroid/comet belts to migrate around their star and maybe run you over in the process. For more information you can try this interesting arcticle.