"It should be noted that the anti-ID crowd has never themselves
come up with any criteria to distinguish between ID and
non-intelligent causes (the primary one being natural selection)."
That stimulates me to pose the following question:
Since natural selection could operate fruitfully only in the context of a
universe that is, (1) equipped with a remarkable set of resources (atoms,
with all of their diversity of properties, for instance), and (2) an
astoundingly robust set of formational capabilities (for self-organization,
transformation, and the like) and (3) a 'potentiality space' (or 'genomic
phase space,' if you prefer) for viable organisms rich beyond our
imagination, why would you want to characterize this state of affairs as
one dominated by "non-intelligent causes"? Would not the 'being' of this
whole integrated system be the clear manifestation of conceptualization by
an Intelligence?
Howard