Just some points on Intelligent Design:

Lots of scientists believe in God. Einstein seems to have, for instance.

So do I; and so do a great menay other people who think that ID theory is

pure flapdoodle. It is possible to believe in God and not believe in ID; it

is possible (as I pointed out in a previous post) to believe in ID but not

God.

ID theory posits that certain features of the natural world CAN ONLY be

explained by the active intervention of a designing intelligence. Since the

entire history of science displays innumerable instances of hitherto

inexplicable phenomena yielding to natural explanations (and, in fact,

innumerable instances of “intelligent design” notions to explain natural

phenomena being scrapped when more obvious natural explanations were worked

out), the whole ID outlook has very little appeal to well-informed

scientists. A scientist who knows his history sees the region of

understanfing as a gradually enlarging circle of light in a general

darkness. If someone comes along and tells him: “This particular region of

darkness HERE will never be illuminated by methods like yours,” then he is

naturally skeptical. “How can you possibly know that?” he will say, very

reasonably.

Examples readers have been sending me — the origin of the universe, nature

of consciousness, the convenient “scaling” of physical constants, and so on,

in which big-name scientists occasionally sound off in an ID-ish sort of

way — are neither here nor there. They are not the main point of ID as

promoted by folk like Behe. They are just coffee-break opinionating on

large topics about which we know nothing. When the scientist comes off

break and goes back to his lab, telescope, or (usually nowadays) computer,

he never gives them a moment’s thought. He is too busy working — trying to

find natural explanations for natural phenomena.

By contrast with these meta-topics about which we know nothing — the

questions about which may not even have meaning — we know a great deal

about the actual mechanisms of natural selection, gene function,

inheritance, matter-energy systems, and the early history of the universe;

but there are many things we do not fully understand, and the ID-ers wish to

plug those gaps by invoking the intervention of a higher intelligence.

Working scientists in these fields are much, much more likely to say: “Well,

let’s wait and see what a couple more generations of scientific inquiry turn

up before we leap to conclusions like that.”