Lothar: I appreciate the sincerity of your post. Again, I can only stress that belief in any particular religion is not a prerequisite for either questioning Darwinistic Evolution or looking for evidence of design in nature. ID does not require you believe in a supernatural “god” (although as I have already pointed out, Creationism requires belief in a “designer”) or in the literal interpretation of ancient scriptures. Plenty of ID proponents do not subscribe to creationism (either young-earth or old-earth varieties). The simple premise is that (A) undirected (i.e. no guiding intelligence) forces are either inadequate or completely fail to explain certain aspects of the origins or complexity of life, (B) that an intelligent agent’s involvement would better explain that complexity (at the cellular level and, possibly, at the level of origins of higher life forms), and (C) that it should therefore be possible to detect that design influence. The tools to detect that design are the same used by archeology, cryptology, and forensic sciences.
Regarding the “how” question as you put it, I think you have it wrong there. ID does not start from a premise of “how”, but of “who/what”, i.e. an intelligent designer. The search for “how” would continue, much as it does today. Should ID someday become widely accepted as a competing theory for Darwinism, it would not put an end to that search for “how.” Why you believe it would is not clear to me. Even if design influence is conclusively proven, why would that end study into the many aspects of evolution that are not in conflict with ID? Indeed, as competing theories, I expect both lines of study would continue in parallel, since some will always remain unconvinced. Once we understand that “something/someone” designed aspects of our planetary biology, we would still have to pursue the “how” and even the “why”. Indeed, simply knowing a thing can be done often spurs us on to learn how it was done. This is often what happens in reverse engineering. Looked at another way, Darwinistic evolutionists assume no designer, thus they spend tremendous energy and resources trying to explain how everything happened by accident. However, if it is learned conclusively that a designer was involved in the origins of life or the species, should they ignore that fact, and continue to stubbornly ignore it? A big “if”, I know, but does that mean we shouldn’t try to find out?
Many things not considered “true science” (though who decides what that means is unclear) are nonetheless considered serious and worthwhile pursuits. Whether one considers ID to fall under this dubious moniker or not, it is still worth questioning. If sufficient evidence supports it, that evidence should be taught in schools. It does not at this time, but we know not what the future holds.
Put aside your understandable concern regarding religion, and tell me: If SETI suddenly announced it had received radio signals that were so complex and so specific (i.e. repeating, non-random signals that contained decipherable information of some sort), such they could not with any reasonable probability have been generated randomly, should the scientific community ignore it? Would you? Certainly some might (religious fundamentalists might very well do so, if they felt it would cause the collapse of their particular brand-X of religion). Other, more reasonable people would have to adapt their world view and conclude that “we are not alone in the universe.” They might even adapt their beliefs to accept it without dropping most of the basic tenants of those beliefs (faith is like that). Indeed, every time some aspect of Darwinism has been proven inadequate, its practitioners and high priests have shown a remarkable ability to instantly generate new hypotheses about how evolution allows this. Rarely is this new hypothesis amenable to either testing or falsifiability, the twin icons of “scientific-ness.”
