Hi Jaywill!
Modulous can speak more than well enough for himself, but since he hasn't replied yet I'll take a swing at this.
jaywill writes:
Modulous writes:
The point is that no intelligent design has been scientifically detected in biological systems.
That sounds debatable. That sounds arguable. But let's say I take your statement at face value. So ID should give up because of this?
Modulous wasn't suggesting that if at first you don't succeed you should give up. As I think he pointed out in other parts of his message, the problem isn't that ID hasn't yet found scientific evidence of design in biological systems, it's that they aren't even trying to find evidence of design in biological systems. Their efforts don't go into research for submission for consideration to the scientific community. In fact, they largely ignore the scientific community, except for when they're castigating them.
Where ID is actually placing their efforts is in writing books, creating websites, making presentations and so forth to the lay public. Their efforts go into trying to convince school boards and legislatures that ID is science when if ID was really science they would instead be trying to convince scientists that ID is science.
Are you going to tell students of science who are interested in ID that they are wasting their time?
I would encourage students of science to study whatever areas attract their interest, but to definitely not study ID as an example of how to carry out a research program. ID as currently practiced is more an example of how to conduct a publicity campaign.
I'm not sure how "repeatable" the Big Bang event is. Yet it is agreed upon by many as a valid scientific theory.
This misunderstanding of scientific replicability is widely shared. Replicability doesn't refer to reenacting ancient events. That's patently silly. What replicability means is that anyone with the appropriate understanding, expertise and equipment can repeat the same experiments.
In other words, the Big Bang is not an experiment, and so it is not something that needs replication. What requires replication is the experiments by which the Big Bang was deduced and later detected. Anyone with the proper knowledge and equipment can look out into space and see that distant galaxies are all receding from our own at a velocity proportional to their distance, and from which we first came to realize that if the universe is expanding, then a long time ago it must have been much smaller than it is today, ultimately a mere point in space that "exploded" (extremely rapid expansion is more accurate) as the Big Bang. Anyone with the proper knowledge and equipment can measure the cosmic background radiation that is the remnants of the Big Bang, and from which we confirmed that this Big Bang event that we inferred from the recession of galaxies was something that actually took place.
Until they describe a natural process then what they do isn't science.
The natural process by which the Big Bang occured is described in detail?
Has the natural process which keeps a star burning been completely described in total? Does the shortage of a complete description of star formation make astro physics not a science?
...etc...
Complete detail isn't a requirement of science. It couldn't possibly be a requirement of science, because it simply isn't possible to know everything in complete detail. The goal of science is to know more than yesterday while realizing that it is less than it will be tomorrow, and to do this through the scientific method.
So it isn't that ID doesn't describe a natural process in detail, it's that it doesn't describe any natural process at all. In fact, IDists such as William Dembski argue strenuously that ID cannot know anything about the processes by which the designer accomplished his goals, or even anything at all about the nature of designer. Right there IDists define themselves as not doing science.
Notice that IDists are not saying that the processes of the designer and the nature of the designer are more properly the realm of some other field, which would be fine. Biology does the same when it places the origin of life (abiogenesis) in a separate field from evolution. What the IDists are doing that is so wrong scientifically is ruling
a priori what can be scientifically investigated and what cannot. Science rules out nothing that is observable and/or detectable in the real world, and so when ID starts doing this they reveal themselves to quite clearly not be doing science.
--Percy