Good vs. Bad ID

One thing I like about the Catholic Church is that it is not afraid of science. Both John Paul II and Pope Benedict (in his earlier job as Cardinal Ratzinger) have written on the relationship between faith and reason and both have affirmed that Darwinism is "more than merely a hypothesis." So I am generally appalled at the current trend of American Catholics to fight Darwinism, to side with the advocates of "Intelligent Design" in biology. Anti-Darwinian ID's are anti-scientific and just, well, blind. The evidence in favor of Darwinism is overwhelming and as we get further and further into unraveling DNA, more and more confirmation keeps coming in. My best guess is that they simply find it insulting that God would have the temerity to create them in such a way that they have a common ancestor with a monkey (and a slug, as well, just farther back). The obvious question is "who are you to tell God how to create you?"

On the other hand, I'm not sure all ID'ers are anti-science. I'm referring in particular to the kind that simply point out that a lot of physical givens seem to just happen to coincidentally be what they very nearly had to be in order for a complex universe and us to come to be. I'm arguing that these ID types aren't anti-science simply because there is no consensus science on these givens because science takes them as, well, given. I'm no expert, but I'm not sure that we can ever have a scientific theory of every ratio of this force to that force, or the mass of this particle relative to that particle. And I don't think these types of ID'ers are running around dumping water on consensus physics or chemistry. In fact, some of these types make it a point to dump water on the anti-Darwin types. Physicist Stephen Barr has a nice article in First Things doing this.

I also don't think this "good type" of ID'er is trying to get their stuff taught in science classes. (I hope not. This pointing out of coincidences is basically metaphysics, not physics.)

Now I have no idea how compelling this "good type" of ID'er actually is. I've just received Barr's book from Amazon. (And I ordered it using the ad on this blog, so a rebate goes to the JAS.) But they do seem to be in a separate class than the anti-Darwinians.

One writer I have been emailing on this suggests that "Intelligent Design" with capital initials, denote the very specific modern movement run by the Discovery Institute out of Seattle and "intelligent design" imply that there is some overall plan for the universe that most people, including most scientists, believe in.