The realm of Science

Bush's endorsement of explaining the debate over intelligent design to students has the Wall of Separation folks pretty unhappy. Some of them are angry and dismissive, insisting that science classes should only teach "science" and intelligent design is NOT science. I guess what bothers me about this is the assumption that they have been authorized to determine what is science and what is not.

That argument reminds me of the assertion that the fact that rocks are found which have had one edge chipped into a sharp edge proves that they were made by humans or human ancestors. Scientists accept the basic principle of intelligent design, that we can deduce the existence of a creator from his creations, but only of the creator is the missing link or some more primitive intelligence than our own. The appeal of natural selection for many scientists is that it allows them to eliminate a creator from nature, which seems to have become a rigid law for science.

Fine. I just don't think that it has to be a settled issue. There are reasonable arguments on both sides, and there are still open questions in science, as there should be. One good one would be why we have been able to observe adaption, as with Darwin's finches, but not the complete change to a new species, no longer able to breed with the first group. There are lots of questions about the rate of evolution and what makes life fill certain ecological niches. Why are some scientists suggesting that life could have come to earth from Mars before it became so cold? How do scientists determine the pace of change and creation of new species?

In fact, I'd like to see some scientists explain a number of things:

Why don't scientists use the language of evolution as they discuss it? Over and over, I hear them speak as if evolution or nature were intelligent beings, with purposes and strategies.

Why do they talk like they know all about the lives of ancient animals what happened when they only have the fragmentary evidence of fossils. They continually talk about extinct species as if they know more about them that is possible to know.

Why, when they talk so much about being openminded, are so many of them so contemptuous of belief in a creator? Why are they so adamant about the points raised by intelligent design theorists not being science? Why do they insist that science cannot admit that there is an intelligence at work in the universe other than themselves?