Hi, Jordan. I think we are talking at cross-purposes here.
I don’t disagree with your point that scientists generally are not aggressively anti-religious. Indeed, I have long suspected that the aggressive, atheistic sort of scientist often found blogging or debating on websites is more ideological and biased than the rank and file scientist doing research. I think that the culture-warring scientists, who to internet readers may seem legion, may represent only a small fraction of actual scientists.
The point I’m addressing is not about what scientists generally are like. The point is about the public perception of scientists. And on science/religion questions, the public often tends to perceive scientists monolithically, and in the image of the most aggressive types of secular scientist known to them. This is a function of publicity, I think. How many American readers and TV watchers have heard of the religiously moderate T. aquaticus? And how many have heard of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, etc.? The public perception of what “science” thinks and what scientists think is often shaped by the loudest scientific voices, not the majority of scientific voices which remain silent behind the university walls.
When I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, although there was not as often the overt aggression of the New Atheists, and though some of the prominent scientists back then were much more likable people (e.g., Carl Sagan), there was still a strong perception that science taught that there was no design in nature, that life arose by accidental molecular collisions in a chemical soup, and that live evolved not in accord with any plan or design, but through unpredictable genetic accidents (mutations). This was the vision promoted by the secular literati, including the people who wrote the allegedly sophisticated opinion columns in magazines, and who wrote many of the adult and children’s books on popular science. It was also the vision assumed in almost all science fiction, and SF had a massive influence on popular perceptions. The general perception was that the non-teleological view of the universe sketched out by Bertrand Russell was the scientific view of the universe, and that anyone who resisted it was either deficient in the intelligence needing to draw scientific conclusions, or was willfully resisting what they knew to be true because of backwards religious beliefs from medieval times. This view was often stated fairly gently, in order to avoid direct assaults on moderate religious people, but it was there, and New Atheism is merely a more militant and uncompromising version of that message.
What I’m saying is that there has long been a public perception that scientists think they have disproved the idea of design once and for all, and that this public perception has a dampening effect on many who are considering the option of religious faith.
If people don’t understand this, then they cannot possibly understand the motivations of the Christian leaders of the ID movement. The perception that “science” has shown that only morons or science dropouts can still believe there is any design in the world has been disastrous for religious faith. ID is in large measure an attempt to change this perception.
Unfortunately, one part of the ID movement has been caught up in a reflexive opposition to “evolution” as such. This is counterproductive, because it not the naked idea of evolution, i.e., of descent with modification, that stands in the way of religious faith; it is the idea that this whole universe and all the life in it, including our own, is the result of a set of cosmic accidents which might just as well not have happened. ID is at its best when it opposes, not “evolution,” but the belief that chance and natural laws alone can explain everything that has happened in the universe from the Big Bang to man.