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Essentially, you are making an appeal to ignorance here ... -- we can't ever know if ID is true, thus we must assume it is false."
I wasn't talking about ID. I was talking about IC and the impossibility of IC to show a designed process. So IC is no evidence for something like ID.
We can't ever know if anything is "true" but we can work with well supported theories. I don't assume ID as false but as a worthless explanation to research problems.
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I again reference science fiction author Larry Niven's Kdatlyno, a race that uses sonar and touch but has no sight. They look up at their night sky to see only the end of their world because no stars or moons shine down on their eyes. Imagine doing electro-magnetic physics while totally blind."
Well, this is a nice idea but magnetism oder static electricity is a force you can fell with your fingers that the magnets are attract or repel each other. This may be the first step to em physics. You can transform em-waves very well to sound. I estimate the problem with zealots as bigger.
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The possibility of God is not zero, either."
We have one civilization in space using em-waves for communication - our. We have no scientific evidence for god. So it is still possible that there is no god.
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The possibility that we are all brains in a vat, living life Matrix-style, is not zero."
Yes, but then there will still be something "real" outside the matrix.
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Against your single example, ..., including the Fermi Paradox and the large number of factors that could make a planet unsuitable for the development of life (...-- the environment needed for life to first form could be so specialized that Earth is unique)."
One example is enough if you can prove something as false like there is no civilization using em-waves for communication. Fermi, Drake and others just made guesses other the unknown. Be careful with your claim the Earth is unique. The source for methane on Mars is still undiscovered.
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You believe that the odds were good that life evolved naturally on Earth and, thus, could have done so on other planets, even if you can't prove it beyond any doubt."
You and I will never be able to prove anything beyond any doubt. So if we can detect life on Mars what can we conclude? A second deity promoted life on our neighbor planet?
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What ID is looking for is observable evidence of God via IC."
Once again, your definition of IC is not capable of detecting design. - Sorry for your faith if you need such an evidence.
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And as I've told you, finding an EM signal with no known purpose or meaning only proves that you've found an EM signal that may not be natural. ... Thus, it would prove nothing. ... Prove it? No."
Scientists and engineers know how to create narrow band em-waves. We know how to create a watch. We don't know until now how to create life. Until now we never detected any narrow band em signal from a natural source. The researchers at SETI know what they are looking for. IDers don't even know that. They are looking for something with IC but they can't prove properly that something is IC or even that IC implies ID.
Until now we can say you need something with physical knowledge to create a narrow band em signal. That is the hypothesis the boys at SETI are working with. If they find some signal they'll try to make a call back.
Would an answer from ET to us be prove for you or not?
ID and IC are Trademarks of the Discovery Institute (DI).
I think we've hit the point where we are going around in circles. For the record, I think that the search for God in biology may very well be a fools errand. The value I see in ID and IC has less to do with religious faith than in an interest in ending the battle between science and religion. It makes it an all or nothing battle between Fundamentalist Creationism and anti-God Evolutionism in which all of the moderate positions in between are trampled. It forces people to the extremes by demanding that they make a choice between God and Science.
ID and IC may never prove anything, as you claim, but they are at least asking scientifically legitimate questions. And I think it's useful to tell kids that science doesn't have all the answers yet, to encourage them to take an interest in it. I suspect that you see ID as a slippery slope to full-blown 6,000 year-old Earth, Noah's Flood Fundamentalist Creationism in schools. Maybe that's exactly what the Discovery Institute wants, too. But I think that slide is far more likely to gain traction if scientists insist on alienating deeply religious Christians by telling them that science has no place for God. ID is a compromise and I think it's a good one because it still encourages a deeper understanding of how biology works and encourages people not to treat science as unquestionable dogma. People should be asking how certain biological systems evolved, regardless of their motivation for doing so.