"What Are Evolutionists So Afraid Of?"

[Esquilax]

Equilax. I wonder if we're talking across each other. What I am advocating is the engagement between different people. I'm not saying that ID doesn't have weaknesses, far from it. But I don't see that as a barrier to science and scientists engaging in a common market place of public discourse. Part of that can be, and should be, highlighting weaknesses in ID. It's the refusal to enter into the discourse that I was, and am, objecting to.

I agree with you right up until you assert that intelligent design has anything to add to the marketplace of public discourse. Frankly, some ideas just are not worthy of consideration, and the scientific community has better things to do than addressing every random idea that any given group of nutjobs decides to believe, no matter the veneer of scientific respectability they happen to adopt.

For the scientific community to be able to address an idea within the framework of actual science- which is their forte, really- then that idea needs to conform to certain minimum standards; demonstrability, falsifiability, predictive capability, and so on. Intelligent design is an unassailable position on all of those fronts, because it does not provide anything to discuss. Giving it any form of attention, in the state it's in right now, would roughly be akin to addressing a group of people who believe, for no reason at all, that air is actually jello. What conversation do you expect to take place?

By and large, if you want answers to the questions ID poses, then they're probably out there, being investigated and rigorously tested by the members of the actual scientific community. And when those answers are found, we all get to watch the ID guys move the goalposts to keep the answers out of reach; just look at how Michael Behe responded to counters to his claim that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex.

I guess that's the point I'm making, is that if you think the ID side has any interest in an honest conversation about science, if you think for even a minute that they'll come to the table of scientific discourse in the spirit of open and investigative study that you're advocating, then you are sorely mistaken. They have a track record of doing exactly the opposite, and that is why scientists refuse to engage with them. Their ideas are almost devoid of content to begin with, and the debate would involve one side being honest while the other wages an aggressive campaign of misinformation.

What you're suggesting, as intellectually sound as it is, would actually be incredibly damaging to scientific discourse.