I understand that religious creation-type people use ID as a shield from which to launch their anti-science attacks. I got that. What I'm trying to explain to you is that ID, as a way of knowing something, is a separate thing. In my opinion, people who mix up ID and creationism, from either side, look like morons. They're two different things.
It's like attacking people from the American South as being KKK rednecks. Yes, there is that part. But to mix it all up is to display a lack of understanding and a willingness not to think. Not thinking is bad. Better to understand ID and then attack creationists than just lump it all together. Ignorance is one thing, but stupidity -- the willful continuation of not learning -- is another. That's bad on any side of a discussion. When the science guys start acting stupid, you know the discussion is in trouble.
And you're still pretending they're different things. You might like to think that ID is just a thought process, separate from religion that one can use to assess anything but that ignores the reality that ID isn't used in that way by the vast majority of its believers.
It's used as a shield for creationism for those attempting to corrupt our legal processes. ID is a word, and it means what most people use it for, not what you want it to technically mean or what you thought it originally meant.
The purpose of words is to communicate, those words are owned by creationists, so if you're really attempting to just communicate and get others to think then it's up to you to choose a better word that doesn't already have massively negative connotations.
Trying to talk about ID in absence of religion is like trying to talk about hacking to grandma while ignoring the fact that to the larger majority of people hacking means committing a crime.
Okay. We've passed the point of reason now. I concede.
<sarcasm>Yes. There are special words that are owned by special people. If you use their words, you must like them/take their side/want to be one. That's a much more reasoned argument than I was trying to make.</sarcasm>
I stand corrected.
Hardly, rather, it is common ignorance. ID is creationism, plain and simple. Its primary premise that the universe is too complex to have been an accident and thus must have been created absurdly ignores that its chief objection must also be applied to this supposed creator.
If the creator doesn't require a creator, then neither does the universe, making the whole hypothesis absurd. And it is just a hypothesis, not a theory, and cannot be in any way held up as an alternative to evolution by anyone with half a brain.