First:

It’s undeniable; any physical designer which could make life starts infinite regress, and one which could tune the physics of the universe is supernatural by definition.

Hey, wait a second: a “physical” designer couldn’t possibly be supernatural…by definition!

One of the ideas discussed in the John Smart piece that I won’t bother linking to again was this:

In the simplest and most biological of these cosmological models, our universe’s genes self-organized, through many successive cycles in the multiverse, to produce the life-friendly and intelligence-friendly universe we live in today.

One might well argue that little can currently be done in the way of naturalistic investigation into this idea, but it is not crypto-creationism. And it is not in any sense religious.

…but when it goes into things like the enumeration of angels dancing on pinheads its connection to reality (and anything else I care about) has disappeared.

Evo-devo is not angels dancing on the head of a pin. It’s a tremendously important concept–one that may have a thing or two to tell us about reality. Don’t worry, though. No one is asking you to spend any time on it. You can always catch up later.

Speculation is all well and good, but when it goes into things like the enumeration of angels dancing on pinheads its connection to reality (and anything else I care about) has disappeared.

Well, there’s no question that you and Baliunas are reading from the same songbook.

But, please:

“By invoking a supernatural process…”

I don’t.

When you start getting into cosmological “fine tuning” you’re flirting with theology.

Well thanks very much for your concern, but this blog is pretty much dedicated to free speculation. I’ll “flirt with” whatever I damn well please. If that bothers you, and you feel you must report me to the Naturalistic Thought Police, go for it.

People cannot simultaneously call for religion in biology classes and American greatness; they are inexorably opposed.

Who here is “calling for religion in biology classes?” No one. You seem to be arguing over my shoulder with some creationist you imagine standing behind me. He ain’t there.

ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.

Yep, it’s that same thing again – if you can make ID neatly retrofit anything new you discover rather than using it to make testable predictions, what’s the point? From a purely science perspective, what do you do with it? Where’s the content?

And from Adam Ierymenko:

I always wonder if Dembski is the reincarnation of Lysenko.

While Lysenko’s “theories” led in part to the utter failure of Soviet agriculture, I can see how Dembski’s “theories” might lead to America missing out on one of the next major revolutions in science and technology: complexity, synthetic biology, and evolving technology. His bogus ideas seem almost deliberately crafted to blind us to any real understanding of, for example, how information theory really does intersect with biology.

The problem with Intelligent Design Creationism “theory” is that it says that it’s right to wave your hand at some point and say “God did it, it’s pointless to ask further” and just stop.  A nation of people who wave their hands in the air and go on without trying to understand things is going to go the way of the Middle East under the stultifying grip of Islamic orthodoxy.  People cannot simultaneously call for religion in biology classes and American greatness; they are inexorably opposed.

But everything that is truly known is known by virtue of naturalistic inquiry.  When you start getting into cosmological “fine tuning” you’re flirting with theology.  Unless and until we’ve got evidence regarding the mechanisms which determine the physical constants and conditions which brought forth the universe we see (and cosmological inflation appears to have made a universe which is vastly larger than what we can see, or will ever be able to see) all arguments regarding design are the argument from ignorance.

I’m forced to agree with Baliunas:  “By invoking a supernatural process, intelligent design foregoes and all but forbids scientific questioning, and is thus antithetical to science.”

Intelligent Design Creationism may get shoved into school biology texts by people who demand that their religion get equal billing…All ID “science” consists of negative (and often falsified) arguments against evolution.

I respectfully disagree. I don’t doubt that many if not most of those pushing ID into biology classrooms have a religious and anti-evolution agenda, but that isn’t the whole story. To quote from the John Smart piece I linked above:

…Darwinism is an incomplete model of biological change. The new theory of evo-devo, or evolutionary developmental biology, as explained by such scientists as Simon Conway Morris, Rudolf Raff, F. John Odling-Smee and Brian K. Hall, helps us understand that long-range processes of both evolution and development are always at work in living systems. Darwinists understand long-range evolutionary processes, but too many still assume that evolution is the only long-range process of change working in any complex system. Curiously, it is developmental cosmologists such as Lee Smolin, Max Tegmark, and Martin Rees, who are making the most progress in this area, at present. They note that the “genes” of our universe (its special constants, laws, and initial conditions) appear finely tuned for the production of life, and perhaps even for accelerating intelligence (Carl Sagan’s “Cosmic Calendar”).

One may very well disagree with any of these ideas, but they are not offered up as a refutation of evolution and they are most certainly not religiously motivated.

The Panda’s Thumb is a blog devoted to dissection of creationism and the tactics of its proponents.  If you want to understand what’s really at stake here (and just how often and unapologetically the IDC proponents lie to promote their agenda – very un-Christian of them) you really need to be reading that site.