I have to wonder if, “fair enough” is Rennie’s version of a dismissive response to something clear to him but not believeable.

Although I have no media experience, I have been told one should simply give the information one chooses to give regardless of how well that fits with the question asked. Many times, the interviewee spoke at length but did not really answer the question.

Mr Rennie, you either stated or strongly implied your feeling that ID is not a religious distortion of science. I agree that ID doesn’t have to be about religion but in the American arena it is. In the Dover case, ID was brought to the school by evangelicals, they used a book that had clear Creationist links, and, when asked by Judge Jones, Behe admitted that a scientist’s acceptance of ID was related to his/her Christian beliefs. In his summary, Jones stated something like, “I don’t know of any other theory whose acceptance is connected to religion.”

At the trial, Behe also admitted that he had done no Pro-ID experimentation -and on your podcast, he called evolutionary scientists lazy -wow!

Rennie’s question to Shermer of, “what sort of a skeptic are you?”, followed by “Are you skeptical to all claims to knowledge? revealed Rennie’s unfamiliarity of the term with regard to it being a label for atheists, and it left Shermer speechless for a moment, as he splurted out, ” … no, of course not, heh heh.” They went on to have a interesting dialogue.

Salvador Cordova’s points were well made, and his knowledge historical narrative well presented, as was his take on the difficult religious issues that permeate the controversy. He well knows this from person experience, according to some of his writings on the subject. He talked about his ‘IDEA’ campus involvement. He answered well questions regarding the basic precepts of design, and why it qualifies as science.

Michael Behe’s defenses of ID, and specifically IC were well presented, and granted, he’s had a lot of practice with those issues. Darwin’s Black Box was discussed, and the weighty questions of the reasons why ID is valid science. I especially liked the challenge to scientific relevance, where scientists “use their own intelligence to push things along a pathway that they think might be beneficial.” He cited examples of this throughout science. I might add, that kind of subjectivism is common in all realms of human endeavors, everything from selling you some product, to making the case for war. Behe’s arguments for evidence of design, and the defense of complexity arguments were persuasive and well proffered.

Finally, Nick Matzke’s discourse on ID and evolution was interesting, as well as a brief chronicle of his Dover involvement. I detected in Nick an openness to the question of ID if ‘only’ there could be a valid means of testing for it. He implied more than once that he did not disavow the existence of a creator, just that it had no place in science. They even got into a discourse over a Star Trek episode.

So there you have it. It’s well worth taking the time to play these clips.