"Entrenched evolutionary thinking???" More like hidebound ideological commitments!
ID isn't averse to evolution. ID scientists just suspect there's more to it than "matter in motion" and blind, random chance. Which seems eminently sensible to me, FWIW.
Thanks for this (aggravating!!!) post, M-M!
To me ID still doesn't seem like any more than the old appeal to incredulity - "I can't understand how this could arise through natural processes, so therefore it must be the product of an intelligent designer". Of course, before Newtonian physics arrived, the orbits of the planets couldn't be understood either. I'm not saying ID is wrong - I'm not that close-minded - but it seems like they have a lot of work to do yet to be a serious competitor for evolutionary theory (which of course still doesn't address the ultimate origins of life).
Indeed, the Darwinists will be drawn kicking and screaming to re-evaluating their presumptions.
As an example, the original theory is formulated as "random mutation + natural selection" but as a result of the unrelenting pressure and evidence, the concept of randomness has fallen away in many articles.
IMHO, the new pressures - such as the geometry issue raised by Dr. Meyers and information theory raised by many others - will cause the "mutation" pillar to be restated as well. This is science as it should be, "what are they afraid of?" indeed...
As you know I have never had a problem accepting evolution as a possible explanation for what we see around us, to me its just another tool in the tool bag. In fact, to me, it fits the design of the world as I understand it.
What evolutionary theory would tell us is that intelligence has not been retained at the center, but delegated and distributed out to the tip ends. Evolution is the means by which life adapts to local circumstance. That to me is not evidence of blind mindlessness but of a very well designed system.
Still, in the question of whether or not this is science, I'm not sure it matters. Philosophy is the means by which we look out beyond the edges of science. When scientists are out at the edge, staring out beyond the lights, are they engaged in science, or philosophy? If you understand the relationship between the two, its not an either-or.
We have a tendency to see philosophy as that debased creature taught in colleges, when in reality it is something else entirely, and the Intelligent Design research, and Evolutionary Theory too, for that matter, falls into that category. When you attempt to make sense out of data that you gather, when you make predictions about what future data will look like, you are in an area where science and philosophy meet.
Its not surprising that one philosophical school of thought might think competing schools of thought are illegitimate, but I wouldn't worry about it. A school of thought is legitimized by how well it predicts future data, or future events. ID researchers should just do what they do, their work isn't any more or any less true based on whether their friends agree with them or not, if you are out at the edge, at the beginning no one is going to believe you. If all scientists agree with you, and you are safely within the pack, you may be a good student but you aren't doing science.
At some point, if you're right, your predictions are more accurate than those based on competing models, and your critics will find ways to incorporate your model into their own. People never admit they were wrong, you've won the argument when your rival's model starts to look a lot like yours. And as you find data that isn't successfully explained by your model, you adjust it and keep moving.