Creationism vs Evolution (Part 2)

There is as much evidence for evolution as there is for the theory of gravity. I don't mean to sound condescending, but you should read Essential Cell Biology or browse NCBI or Talk Origins before you claim that it's "more or less consistent with the evidence". The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. In fact, since evolution is now used as the basis of algorithms denying evolution is exactly analogous to using "F=mv". Want to find a protein similar to the one you've just purified and sequenced? Try doing it without resorting to the mathematics of molecular evolution. The difference between ID and evolution is the difference between gene splices that work and splices that don't.
Intelligent design, unlike evolution, is by definition not falsifiable. Therefore it is not "provable". It is only "consistent" with the evidence if one accepts the same explanation for every piece of evidence. Lest it be thought that biologists commit the same mistake with the theory of evolution, it should be pointed out that there are many biological phenomena that are explained by molecular biological mechanisms that are unrelated to the classical Darwinian model of selection via random walks on DNA sequences. Here are a few examples - I can come up with many more for those interested.

1. The jump from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. There is a lot of evidence (based on sequence identity between mitochondrial DNA and prokaryotic DNA) to indicate that prokaryotes were absorbed by primitive eukaryotes and formed a symbiotic relationship that's reflected in the mitochondria and chloroplasts of modern cells. This was not a sequence level perturbation, but it was a fitness perturbation that resulted in a selective advantage.
2. The SOS response. When certain bacteria are starved, the rate of mutation itself is altered by environmental factors. This produces variation when it's most needed, when the cell is desperate. Again, this is non-classical Darwinism.
3. Horizontal gene transfer in bacterial cells. Bacteria exchange genes back and forth by all kinds of methods, much more frequently than higher organisms. Again, this is non-classical Darwinian evolution because the fitness perturbation is from gene transfer rather than sequence perturbation.

The point is that biologists can and do accept explanations other than classical Darwinian evolution when such explanations are in accord with observations. It's not as if biologists are unable to look at alternate plausible theories that are compatible with our knowledge of molecular biology when they also fit the data. ID proponents do not, because ID is nothing more than the "God of the Gaps". Every time a biochemical scenario is validated for one pathway's origin (say, by tracing it through hundreds of species) then ID proponents fix attention on the holes in another pathway. It is impossible to satisfy them because every pathway that has not (yet) been exhaustively characterized becomes the work of a divine hand.

Is ID a cover for Christian creation theories? Absolutely, and while I'm no lawyer it seems the Establishment Clause forbids the teaching of ID on these grounds. Remember, ID presumes an intelligent being responsible for our creation. Usually the rationale afforded is that we are too complex to have arisen from abiogenesis. Of course, such an argument sets up an infinite recursion, which we can see as follows:

1. Let us call our "complexity" C1. By assumption, anything with complexity at least C1 cannot have arisen from abiogenesis.
   
2. Let us call the complexity of our putative creators C2. C2 must be greater than or equal to C1. Otherwise a less complex being could have created us.
   
3. By assumption 1, anything with complexity C1 (or greater) cannot have abiotically arisen. Thus there must be a creator for C2. This creator must have complexity C3 greater than or equal to C2.

It's clear that this recursion doesn't terminate. In other words, the creator, of the creator, of the creator. If it isn't logical, as ID assumes, to assume that abiogenesis (aka, that we emerged) doesn't explain our existence, then how could it be logical to explain Gods existence?

ID is not science. At best, ID is a theological position - and a shaky one at that.