Intelligent Design ain't dead yet (though it should be)

I believe there is something to Intelligent Design (ID) as an apologetic. I think most believing scientists and science admirers do. We do look at science and see (more like "feel") design, even in evolution. The more we learn about science, the more we see (feel) God's hand, not less. Where we part ways is when ID is said to have a scientific foundation--that it somehow is science. (It's not.) That is the benign parting of ways. The malignant parting of ways, speaking just for myself, was what I viewed as the dishonesty, machinations and even tribalism of the early 2000's ID leaders--who really poisoned everything about ID with their misbegotten, hugely counterproductive, epic-failing, culture-war attempts to "wedge" it into the science curriculum.

For a brief history of their epic-fails (and they are epic) see the Wedge Document (where their cabal created a five-year super-secret plan to change the world) and the Keystone Cops  cdesign-proponentsists fiasco where they were caught with their fly open and had their dishonesty made manifest.

I have to give them credit, they are resilient in bad-penny sort of way. They have a new strategy to win the war they started with science, and it appears to be an argument from boredom. They are trumpeting  a 1000+ page tome that ID philosopher David Klinghoffer brags:

The quality of Christian literature is getting better and better when it comes to showing that the Bible gets it right. Both theistic and naturalistic evolution are rationally inferior to Intelligent Design theory theologically, philosophically and scientifically. But people don’t know this, so a group of us decided to do the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique. (Emphasis added.)

ID proponents have been telling us for years that ID is about science. They were being dishonest of course—ID was nothing more than creationism in a new tuxedo.  But they tried to maintain the fiction.  

If ID is science, as they claim, then I am confused as to how it could be, as Klinghoffer asserts, theologically and philosophically superior to anything. That is like claiming that NASCAR is a better laundry detergent than Formula One racing. ID, they say, it is all about scientific, quantifiable, testable evidence for a design with no (wink, nod) stand taken as to the designer is. ¹   On the other hand, judged on the basis of science (their third claim of superiority) they are not even in the same league as evolution, be it naturalistic or theistic, which are the same scientifically. Evolution makes predictions and then does scientific experiments to confirm the predictions. ID does not.

ID really is philosophical/theological, and would have some value if they admitted as much. But they don’t. And yet they are somehow superior in these realms. 

But don’t worry about anything! The last sentence assures us that a group of really smart enlightened people (including Wayne Grudem! What could go wrong?) will correct this massive onslaught of biblical ignorance. Our salvation is at hand.

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¹Just to be sure I believe there is a designer and the designer is God. What I think is utterly dishonest is to claim that you can scientifically demonstrate design and take no stand as to who the designer is (because you want the "science" to be taken seriously) when everybody and their mother knows you think the designer is God. You just do not find it politically expedient to say so. Dishonesty abounds (apparently still) with the IDers.