It seems to me, "intelligent design" has become more of a mortar for filling in the gaps of misunderstanding or personal ignorance, misrepresentations of evidence, or lack of defenitive scientific discovery to some questions a faith based believer may have... whatever those questions may be.
They seem to accept and even understand many scientific principals and will even go so far as to describe the keystone to their faith as "an allegory." However, they are not satisfied with some of the answers given and place their own beliefs in the holes.
Perhaps the reason that there are no real mechanics to the theory of ID may lie in the very nature of the word "mechanics." For an ID believer, the Big Bang, the formation of our solar system and the Earth, and the Theory of Evolution by scientific explanation seems to be so "mechanical." There is no magic or, forgive me, poetry to the creation of all things. Not to a faith based person anyway. Therefore anything easily explained away by scientific discovery removes just a little more of the magic they so depserately cling to. This is why any scientific discovery that threatens their faith in anyway is scrutinized, criticized, and challenged to the point of absurdity. So long as things remain unexplained, they exist in the realms of God's devine plan, and ID folks are perfectly satisfied with that answer.
There are those who want to finish a puzzle to the final piece and there are those who think they have figured out the puzzle half way through and chose not to finish it, satisfied with the notion that they have pretty much figured it out already. The latter folks would be your ID crowd.
They want to truly believe that there are things we can't possibly understand in this Universe and insert "intelligent design" as their answer, which can in no way be proven or disproven. It just has to be accepted as a matter of faith.
- Babelfish
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babelfish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
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