[crail]

I wouldn't say that about them, but I would say it with gusto with respect to most of their followers. I think the problems of Behe and Dembski is they jump to conclusions. They find a couple areas in evolution that are less well understood, and they, based not upon knowlege, but on their discovered on lack of knowledge, jump to the conclusion that god did it. A jump that big would require extrodinary evidence, not a few dusty areas in evolution.

Defenders of Darwinism rarely admit that what they are ultimately defending is a philosophical point of view - naturalism

I find they do admit it. Not resorting to supernatural causes is a mark of real science. If we have to resort to the supernatural, then science has failed. Might as well just print up a bunch of "God did it" stickers and use them to seal every book in the library. If miracles can be invoked as explinations at will, and miracles can't by their nature be understood or reproduced, we might as well call it quits on that grand experiment with curiosity and understanding that man has!

[Steve_Seattle]

I don't think Behe and Dembski are jumping on a few gaps in evolution or the fossil record or anything of that nature. If I recall, they are saying that the generally accepted principles of microbiology provide no explanatory tools for what evolutionists claim to have happened. That is why I cited Rupert Sheldrake in an earlier post; he has tried to take ideas similar to creationism and put them more in the context of a working scientific hypothesis. As for creationism being a black-eye on conservatism, people should keep in mind that many recent books citing analogies between modern physics and Eastern mysticism have come from the LIBERAL side of the political sprectrum. Challenges to naturalism/materialism are thus not confined to conservatives by any stretch of the imagination.