I certainly haven’t read all of Coyoteman’s posts, but the many posts I *have* read all seem to boil down to the same few points:
1. The scientific consensus favors Darwinian evolution.
2. ID is creationism disguised as science.
3. Proponents of ID have no scientific evidence to back their position.
He repeatedly asserts these claims — as if the more he asserts them the truer they must be.
Assertion 1 is probably true, but it certainly does not prove that Darwinian evolution is absolute truth. Science is not “democratic.” I think Coyoteman knows that, but he seems to forget it quite often.
Assertion 2 is irrelevant. Coyoteman constantly brings up the so-called “wedge document,” written by a member of the Discovery Institute, as though this document has any scientific significance whatsoever. It does not, and Coyoteman displays his fundamental lack of understanding of the scientific method every time he brings it up.
What Coyoteman and other “evolutionists” fail to understand is the fundamental concept of burden of proof in science. As you suggest, the burden of proof is not on ID advocates to “prove” that ID is real. The burden of proof is on Darwinian evolutionists to “prove” or provide evidence that ID is not real. Until they do that, ID remains the only reasonable explanation for life.
They have done no such thing. To give but one simple example, honest scientists admit that we do not even understand how a person adds “3 + 4” in their head. So how far are we from understanding how Euler performed his mathematical magic — not to mention Shakespeare or any other genius you can think of.
But evolutionists ignore all that and delude themselves into thinking that we understand so much that only a few “gaps” remain in our knowledge. Hence, the concept of “God of the gaps.” What a delusional concept that is! It’s like calling all the open space on planet Earth the “gaps” between man-made buildings!
In any case, I applaud you for trying to nail Coyoteman down to actual logic, but I warn you that you are wasting your time. He will continue with his assertions, and your attempt to bring logic into the discussion will sail a mile over his head just as it does with so many other evolutionists.
The same argument can be made much more strongly against the ID camp.
Like another poster, I don't have a religious stake in this argument. As a result, I can see the failings of both sides.
As for the evolutionist camp, quit being so scornful of the religious. And realize that evolution has gone through many, many theoretical changes over the years - from gradualism to punctured equilibrium and other variants - and still has difficulty explaining just what is going on. Which means the arrogant treatment of critics is often not warranted - and that the evolutionary camp needs to do a better job of criticizing those in their midst who harbor a hatred for the religious.
As for the ID camp - as long as the Young Earth folks are part of your movement, you've got far more serious problems than any evolutionist in reconciling with reality. The ID camp needs to do a much better job in rejecting the Young Earth arguments to better frame their own. One can argue that it was the hand of God instead of survivial of the fittest that drives the change in form that we see in the fossil record - but to deny the fossil (and geological) record is very old is, quite frankly, absurd. There is a clear progression of species and development in the fossil record - I remember reading a creationist pamphlet that claimed all major forms of life were present after the Cambrian boundary. Which is true if you don't count amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, among other things. Drive through the road cuts in Pennsylvania and tell us again that all that deposition, deformation, uplift and erosion was done in 6,000 years.
So at the end of the day, the serious and sober in this debate need to do a better job framing it - namely, the evolutionary camp needs to sanction those who hate and twist religion, and the ID camp needs to do a better job of those who hate and twist science.
But I don't see that happening. So the evo/ID threads on FR, and the debate in general, will continue to be a lot of heat but little light.