This is quite an interesting charge, since I have very rarely, if ever, set forth any of ID’s scientific arguments here, or defended them. You have not seen me restate Behe’s argument about the blood clotting cascade, or Dembski’s arguments using the Explanatory Filter, or Meyer’s argument based on the chicken-and-egg problem of the protein-DNA system, or Sewell’s argument regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I have sometimes corrected people when they have misstated what ID is about, or what ID people have said, e.g., if they have said that ID requires supernatural interventions, or that Behe does not accept common descent, or that Discovery wanted the Dover Trial, or the like. But I can’t recall defending any of the scientific arguments put forward by ID folks for design in nature. There would be no point, since I know in advance that none of the professional biologists here will accept them, and the arguments have been rehearsed many times elsewhere.
Perhaps you are thinking more of my mentions of alternate evolutionary models, such as those of Shapiro and the Altenberg people. But those people are not ID supporters, though they are critics of some mainstream evolutionary theories, and sometimes along the same lines as ID people. I can’t help it if non-ID evolutionary theorists happen to share some criticism of conventional evolutionary theory with ID folks.
In any case, to please you, I will redouble my efforts to keep ID arguments for design out of sight.
I am left wondering, though, what the point of these discussions are, if every proposal for change in evolutionary thinking is rejected. ID, we are told, is bad science. Turner’s book, I am told by one person who has skimmed half of it and others who haven’t read it, is bad science. Shapiro’s book, I am told, is the work of a “nut” or at best overclaiming. The Third Way, I’m told, is an irrelevant movement. Wagner, one person has said, may be a mainstream evolutionary theorist, but I don’t think that person would say that if he thought Wagner was a structuralist. So basically, the only evolutionary mechanisms accepted here are – what? Variation, mutation, selection, drift, and occasional accidents such as horizontal gene transfer or endosymbiosis? Or more generally, all the non-teleological mechanisms are OK, but everything that might even hint of teleology is barred? So all attempts to relate evolution to religious faith must proceed from the assumption that evolution is non-teleological? That would rule out a good number of options for science-faith harmonization that many Christians might prefer. Or is Peaceful Science open to the possibility that evolution is teleological? And if so, what versions of teleological evolution might be allowed here, and not immediately rejected as bad science?
