OK, I was most likely wrong to say that “the majority of ID advocates are philosophers.” But I think it’s still true that a disproportionately large number are philosophers, especially the most prominent ones. Meyer, Johnson, and Dembski, Berlinski are not scientists, but are some of the biggest voices in the movement. And very few (per your own admission, only 3) are scientists with active research programs outside of ID. Is there any other scientific theory with a similar status?
I’m not sure taking a few courses in science and reading scientific journals give you “familiarity with how science operates.” The test of being a true scientist is publishing papers in mainstream scientific peer-reviewed journals. I mean, if I took a few courses in philosophy and read some philosophy papers (and I did actually do that), I don’t think I could just claim that I’m now a philosopher. I would have to make an original contribution to philosophy to claim that.
What I’m saying is that most scientists who actually do science would find it hard to support ID-type explanations, because it’s very different from normal science as it is practiced today. If you are working in science, you are reminded of this everyday. That is different from if you just took some science courses in the past. And this is borne out by the fact that very few practicing scientists support ID. This is also how you should understand why scientists are skeptical of design-type arguments: it’s not just because of some restrictive Baconian notion of science they were indoctrinated in their graduate science courses. It’s because it’s not the normal way of doing things that actually gives results.
I agree. There can be boundary disputes. I just don’t think ID-type arguments is the right way of doing this, and you already agree with me that some ID arguments are not very good. I’ve already outlined in my other posts what could be better ways to look for design and/or Divine Providence informed by science, and I think @jongarvey agrees with me (and perhaps you as well).
(Emphasis mine)
The fine-tuning folks in physics are not, as far as I know, making a scientific argument that fine-tuning gives evidence for the existence of God. That is not a testable claim, so it is outside the realm of science. I think the defensiveness of people from even supplementing notions of science with notions of teleology is that often these introduced concepts are not clearly empirically testable, and thus violate a fundamental tenet of what counts as science. This is similar to how orthodox Christians are often suspicious of attempts to qualify definitions of biblical inerrancy, for example.
This is not a reaction limited to ID. For example, recently among some philosophers and a few string theorists the idea was floated about that perhaps it is OK for some theories to never be confirmed experimentally, yet regarded as verified - the idea of “non-empirical science.” (I think @Patrick brought this up in a different thread a few days ago also.) There has also been strong reaction against this in the rest of the community. Basically, scientists are wary of changing the fundamental criteria of how to do science, even if it’s only to “supplement” it. Once you start doing it, it’s possible that the statement “science shows X” is no longer as objective and certain as it used to be.