My response would be "doesn't exist". If I may offer an analogy of sorts as explanation:
The anti-evolution movement of the 1920's was very successful. Through the enactment of "monkey laws" and pressure on school boards and textbook publishers they were successful in having the teaching of evolution in the public schools barred for over 40 years -- what was taught in the universities and what scientists practiced was another matter altogether that they didn't concern themselves with. But then all their work was undone in 1968 with Epperson vs Arkansas that struck down the "monkey laws" as unconstitutional (because they had a solely religious purpose). In response, the anti-evolution movement created a deception called "creation science" which gathered together several claims which it superficially scrubbed of overt religious references and then made the fraudulant claim to both the public and the courts that this consituted "scientific evidence" against evolution and should therefore be included in the schools "solely on scientific grounds". Even though it was no such thing.
Now, a few things to note there:
1. The sole function of these claims was to oppose evolution or to cast doubt on science. There was no real counter-claim being made and, if one examines a set of claims being made by any one creationist source one would find a lot of those claims directly contradicting each other -- that doesn't matter, just so long as they all oppose what science says.
2. They'll take a series of steps, usually starting with "equal time" and "balanced treatment" and leading to "well, you should at least include the negative evidence against evolution". The "balanced treatement" approach, as documented in the "balanced treatment" laws of the 1980's, was that schools could either teach evolution in which case "creation science" would be given equal time, or else they could not teach evolution in which case "creation science" would also not be taught. Remember that the goal was to eliminate evolution, so the latter choice was what they really wanted. And since "creation science" is nothing but "negative evidence against evolution", the "scaled-down" second choice to "balanced treatment" is really exactly the same thing.
3. (
and more along the lines of what you're looking for)Creationist claims have a longer history than "creation science" itself. Every since the rise of science, there's been a creationist (in the general sense) tradition of trying to find scientific evidence supporting Christian beliefs. And even though a lot of it had been shoddy work done by amateurs, some of it was also done by real scientists -- in some cases, as with early geologists, this work led to them concluding that the evidence doesn't support their beliefs. Most that was published was published in their Christian community and included overt religious references and the jumping to conclusions that supported their religious presuppositions.
It was the works of #3 that "creation science" made use of. In that process, they chose the most sensational and "convincing-sounding" claims, because their purpose was to convince the public to support their political agenda of affecting public school curricula. There has been some serious and well-done creationist research performed, but that research is never used by the creationists because it's not sensational enough -- those creationist researchers are properly tentative about their findings, most of which are either inconclusive or else offer no support for creation or actually contradict their beliefs about creation.
Now, in many people's minds ID is just "creation science" using a different masquerade -- "creation science" played the game of "Hide the Bible" and now ID is playing the game of "Hide the Creationism". While it is true that creationists are indeed using ID in that fashion, ID itself predates that usage and actually has a history somewhat separate from "creation science".
Anyone more versed in the history of ID than I, feel free to correct me.
I view ID as having been created mainly by a lawyer, Phillip Johnson. I first encountered him in a 1981 episode of
Nova in which he presented his views from his book,
Darwin on Trial, that evolution fails because it does not follow courtroom rules of evidence. At the time, I thought "What a fool! Science isn't analogous to a courtroom trial, but rather to a police investigation." Much later, I found an essay by Johnson in which he presented his reason for opposing evolution: because it doesn't leave anything for God to do. That is a form of "God of the Gaps" reasoning, in which a scientific explanation is viewed as meaning that God had nothing to do with it -- you'll also see that a lot in "creation science" and it's recently cropped up again in a recent thread here. Add to that the typical ID approach of "gee, that's so complex that we can't explain it, so therefore goddidit", which is pure "God of the Gaps".
The main ID "theory" is that science practices
philosophical materialism and that this must be corrected by making supernaturalistic explanations that include God a part of science -- they want to get God out of the unemployment line (not realizing that He's still pulling in royalty payments from everything He had done to create the universe and start it running). And their main goals, as described in the
Wedge Document is to bring this about by through political, educational, and public relations means.
Their goal is not create an actual unified ID theory, but rather to change science and society (by changing the effects that materialism have on society and its morals).
The problem with their "theory" is that it's flat-out wrong. Science does not employ philosophical materialism (the supernatural does not exist, God does not exist, matter and energy are all that there is), but rather
methological materialism, which does not state that the supernatural does not exist, but rather that science cannot work with it nor deal with it so science can't and won't use supernaturalistic explanations.
Now, history-wise, ID had been developing somewhat independently of "creation science" for several years. But then in the mid-1980's when the defeat of the Arkansas and Louisiana "creation science" "balanced treatement" laws created the court precedence of recognizing "creation science" as the religious fraud that it had always been, that put such laws on a par with the 1920's "monkey laws": totally unusable by the anti-evolution movement. It was at that time that the anti-evolution movement switched to using ID as pin-for-pin plug-in replacement for "creation science". This formed the smoking-gun evidence in the Polk trial wherein the transformation of a "creation science" book,
Of Pandas and People, into an ID book literally by substituting "intelligent design" for "creation science" (OK, I forget exactly what the original term was). It wasn't because ID was indeed "creation science" resurrected, but rather ID was being assimilated into "creation science". And while IDists are not necessarily young-earth creationists, they are politically savvy enough to be using those YECists to further the political goals of ID.
So, there is no real theory of ID nor any possible curriculum, because that is not what ID is about. The basis of ID is not science, but rather misunderstood philosophy and political activism to promote that misunderstanding.
As alluded to above (ie, regarding the existence of creationists attempting to perform actual honest research), there may well be scientists attempting to work on actual ID theory in the various sciences. And while I would think that ID would be more likely to publish such research than "creation science" would be, at the same time I wouldn't think it that likely, since honest ID research most likely would not help enough to advance their political agenda.
Edited by dwise1, : expanded ending slightly
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added a few more blank lines in the numbered sections after the "Now, a few things to note there:".
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