Hi Bertvan,
Thanks for the nice comments. The problem with Dawkins and his ilk is that
they are professional evolutionists. It is their field of study and quite
naturally, they are reluctant to find it lacking. On the other hand, most
biologists, including myself, don't really care very much about evolution.
It has nothing to do with what we do professionally. In fact, the only
reason I have any interest in it is because of creationist claims that
evolution is not science. I first became aware of this in grad school and
it led me to ask, what exactly is science--hence my current interest in
philosophy of science.
Dawkins et al., are simply doing what science requires. While "minor"
theories (e.g., the every-day theories we make when doing routine
experiments) can be easily overthrown by contrary data. In contrast,
major, or central hypotheses (or paradigms) stubbornly persist even in the
face of significant skepticism. It takes a great deal of evidence to
dethrone a major paradigm. This also requires the existence of a new
paradigm that better explains known phenomena before a current paradigm is
overthrown. This, I believe, is an appropriate way for science to
function. We do run the risk of holding on to paradigms a bit too long,
but it ensures that we do not, willy nilly, replace major theories
everytime someone objects to them.
This is why evolutionist hold so dogmatically to the paradigm, even if all
the evidence does not fully warrant their loyality. I believe that the
major reason that the evolution paradigm stubbornly persists is that there
is no good new paradigm that better explains the data. ID does not come
close since it only addresses metaphysical issues like purpose, etc. ID
does a poor job in mechanistic explanations for how diverse life forms
arose. Likewise, I believe that creationism mostly tells us who did it and
not how it was done. Evolution only focuses on the "how" issue. So I
believe that ID and creationism both address different questions than
evolution.
Steve