Thoughts in a Haystack

William Dembski is in the Baptist Press signaling the faithful furiously as to the proper use of the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?" that constitutes the sole rational of Intelligent Design Creationism. He does almost nothing to deny that ID is religiously motivated or that the "Designer" under consideration is not only God, but the Christian God of fundamentalists' desires. He merely refuses to say it outright. Strangely enough, he also all but gives up his (bogus) claim that ID is similar to SETI in trying to find intelligence without reference to a known intelligent entity:

Many fields of study within modern science involve intelligent design, including archeology, forensics and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Dembski said. An archeologist, for example, examines the evidence -- such as a curiously shaped stone -- to determine whether it might be the product of a human intelligence.

"These sciences, however, are uncontroversial because any intelligence detected through them could be an 'evolved' intelligence," Dembski said. "Most of the action with ID, on the other hand, centers in biology, so that any intelligence involved with the emergence of living things is likely to be an 'unevolved' intelligence. ID therefore challenges materialistic theories of evolution, such as Darwinism."

Unlike biblical creationism, ID does not begin with the Genesis account of creation, nor do its proponents attempt to describe the nature of the intelligence that designed the universe. Despite this fact, Dembski noted, "ID is friendly to Christian theism in a way that materialistic forms of evolution never have been."

"One of the biggest obstacles to people coming to Christ in Western culture is the impression that science has disproved the Bible and Christianity," he said. "ID therefore helps to correct this false impression by showing that our best science supports belief in a higher intelligence responsible for life. ID does not give you the Christian God as such, but it puts you in the right ballpark."

And so, even if they won't say the Designer is God , it winds up that the Designer is in the same ballpark as God. So, the issue is now, just how do they plan to scientifically study this ballpark god?
.