I think I can sum this up in three points:

1. I will certainly agree that if intelligent design implies the supernatural, and if intelligent design is true, we'll have to suck it up and accept the supernatural (assuming the supernatural world requires modus ponens). The problem is that supernatural processes are outside the domain of scientific study. You can't falsify a supernatural hypothesis, because any test you'd use exists within the natural realm.

2. Now, there are lots of things worth talking about that can't be discussed scientifically. But the intelligent design proponents are interested specifically in introducing the thesis in science classrooms. That is, they are trying to introduce a thesis for which no evidence can be counted as sufficient to contradict it.

3. They are trying to disguise this by framing the thesis (God did it) as a negative thesis (natural selection is insufficient to produce us), and using a little hand-waving to imply that the truth of the negative thesis leaves only the positive one. This might work if instead of natural selection, they were to argue that any natural process is insufficient, but they are waging too narrow a battle on that front.

I'm sure that if Keith Lockitch is with the Ayn Rand Institute, he's no friend to religion. But I think that the issue isn't so much an attack by religious people on a particular piece of science, but rather an attempt to replace the scientific process with a piece of theology.

-- Xn
 

The mere attempt to falsify the evolution thesis seems to me to be a sufficient reason to consider the arguments being made.

I'm not particularly familiar with the particulars of the current ID incarnation, because it doesn't interest me. (Regardless of whether ID is a scientific theory or not, it seems to be a scientifically useless one, so I'm not going to bother learning about it) So I can't comment on the hand-waving aspect of it.

Fundamentally, though, I find the unscientific dismissal of a challenge to a scientific conclusion to be the disgrace here. I'm not hugely interested in what happened a few billion years ago.
 

There are lots of attempts to falsify the evolution thesis made every day, much as there are attempts to falsify the round-Earth theory and various other well established notions. I'm not sure that the ID folks' attempts are particularly worth our attention. The principals are not particularly credible on the subjects they're addressing; the most distinguished, Behe, has had his work dealt with seriously in the technical literature.

I can't speak for Dr. Lockitch, and I have very little sympathy for the Ayn Rand Institute, but I don't think he's making an unscientific dismissal of a challenge to a scientific conclusion. I think he's making a scientific dismissal of a challenge to science. And I would expect few scientists to do otherwise.

-- Xn
 

To me, his thesis seems to be "OMG religious folk are behind this, and it leads to religious beliefs, therefore we must dismiss it." That is not scientific.