That’s a good point. I should modify my bolded “does” above to “is claimed to have done by many ID proponents.”
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Revisit the moon analogy.
If the moon was deliberately placed in orbit around the Earth so we’d have eclipses to better see the sun and stars why did the Designer place the moon’s orbit at a tilt of 5 deg. from the plane of Earth’s orbit? Why not place the moon in the plane of the Earth’s orbit so we’d have a total solar eclipse once a month instead of only every few years?
Another example of incompetent Design?
(I wish there were more automatic editing. 
)
It seems to me that you are feigning omniscience.
Why did I know you would dodge the question? 
Do I pretend to know all the design parameters and rationales? Do you? It was the response the question deserved.
You’re right, Terrell. I don’t know why I imputed that concern to you. I must have been writing in a hurry and not thinking. My apologies for adding something to your argument that wasn’t there. (Just to be clear, what I meant was that you would object to the position I described, not that you would endorse it. But you didn’t discuss that position at all, so I shouldn’t have conjectured how you would react to it.)
Yes, I understood that this was your concern.
I had in mind the fact that T. aquaticus (to whom I was responding) and several other people here have said that various design arguments put forward by Behe, Dembski, Meyer, etc., don’t hold water for various technical reasons. For example, most of them would say that the argument that the flagellum must have been designed is not valid, because various structures less complex than the entire flagellum could have existed earlier and been “co-opted.” This, they would say, can be explained in Darwinian terms without reference to design. So the claim would be not that design inferences are not allowed in science, but that all the design inferences made by ID people fail. (Implied is the possibility that the ID people could come up with design inferences that might be valid.)
That’s the direct answer to your question, but here is a more general statement of the situation as I see it:
Over the past 12 years of debating with scores of atheists and TE/EC folks, I have found a mixture of views among anti-ID people on this point. Some argue that design inferences by their nature must be outside of science, because science by its nature cannot deal with “designers” (whether they are named as God or not); others, like T. aquaticus here, say that there is no rule of science (or of MN) that rules out design inferences, but that ID people haven’t provided any good ones.
My generalization based on my own experience, which does not pretend to precise accuracy from a statistician’s point of view, is that the atheists who enter these public debates lean on the whole (there are exceptions) to the position, “Sure, I’ll admit design inferences if they’re good ones, but ID provides only lousy ones” side, whereas TE/EC leaders, especially at BioLogos, lean on the whole (again there are exceptions) to the position, “Design inferences have no place in science because science deals with facts about how the universe is; it is religion, theology and faith that deal with questions of purpose, meaning, and values.” Put more crudely, TE/EC leaders tend to adopt something very much like Gould’s NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) compartmentalization of science and faith. (TE/EC leaders usually loudly protest that they don’t subscribe to NOMA, but when I read what they actually write about the separation of science and faith questions, I usually can’t see even a hairsbreadth of difference between their position and NOMA.)
Of the two groups I just described, my bigger beef is against those – whether atheist or TE/EC – who would say that design inferences can’t be part of science.
I just wanted to make clearer to you where my remark was coming from.
As for your stated concern, I think it is a good one, and I’m glad you’ve joined the discussions here.
Below, you and some others discuss the difference between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism. I have always been suspicious of the motivation of some for adopting that distinction, but in any case, I agree that something we might call methodological naturalism has its place in science. The problem is that methodological naturalism sometimes shows a tendency to slide over into philosophical naturalism, and sometimes unconsciously. And I think this does relate to the argument you were making. So I may jump in again below, where you discuss your claim with the others.
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You claim your omnipotent Designer placed the moon there so humans could have eclipses and learn about the universe but then the Designer made a blunder and made the orbit wrong. Kinda cuts the legs out from your “moon was deliberately placed for human discovery” argument.
Oh, and how long did humans use the moon for discovery? The telescope was invented around 1600, we had space flight and orbiting telescopes by the 1970’s. What great scientific discoveries did humans make in that 370 year window which were the direct result of the moon’s orbit?
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I was pushing back against the notion that the diameter and current distances in the Earth-Moon-Sun system had any particular function for which we could ascribe a particular, intentional purpose on the behalf of a celestial ‘designer’. It’s not unusual that statistics provide the illusion of causation in some cases.
Hence the reference to Professor Pangloss from Candide.
Argon:
You say ‘po-tay-to’, I say ‘po-tah-to’.
Are we in agreement, then, that individuals have freedom to choose the conclusions they draw?
Absolutely! [removed section that could be interpreted as insulting or dismissive]
People are free to believe anything, though in science we aim for objective criteria (a best as humans can manage) and the process involves convincing a number of people.
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Just because you have some imaginary criteria by which to judge does nothing to justify your intentionally inflammatory comments here on ‘Peaceful Science’. I will admit to being mistaken:
Your comments more often than not do not deserve a response (hence my futile wish above for more automatic editting, especially the deletion kind ).
Not-pology accepted. At least you didn’t claim the moon is actually a motor. 
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At least I recognize a motor when I see one, and a designed moon, as well, regardless of the ‘technology’ their Creator used to effect them.
Though in science those objective criteria can not address any teleological intent, only the empirically measurable result.
It’s also rather strange that 70 percent of the stars are red dwarf stars which we can’t even see with our naked eye. Interesting that. In fact, we can only really see our tiny little neighborhood of our galaxy with the naked eye.
Even with the moon, due to its elliptical orbit there are annular eclipses where the moon doesn’t completely cover the sun. Oops.
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I can’t tell if that is supposed to be in support of Horton’s claim or not. If it is, it suffers from the same fallacious presumption of knowing all design parameters and rationales, the totality of which we do not have access to.
Not being an astronomer or astrophysicist, it certainly seems within the realm of possibility that things are learned during annular eclipses as well, potentially things that could not be learned during total eclipses, or at least studied as much.
Why do you think that? That would suggest psychology and the study of animal behaviour aren’t scientific enterprises.
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I was speaking in terms of philosophical naturalism, and scientifically knowing design intent.
Archeologists deal with the same thing. For example, did the alignment of the stones in Stonehenge have an application?
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I’m sorry, I still have not been articulate enough. I mean theistic design vs. philosophical naturalism.
Thank you!! That was very helpful. No apology necessary on the misattribution. This thread has gotten pretty long.
I have sensed this as well. I’m glad you pointed it out.
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