Quote:
ID's basic premise is "(science) + (???) = (an explanation of Life, The Universe, and Everything)" and the (???), no matter how they try to dance around it, is always "God."
Well, the ??? is actually the point of ID. It is the part of the equation that ID claims to solve. ID’s basic claim is that the world around us makes sense because of an Intelligent Designer, not an unguided sequences of events.

Quote:
Instead of starting out with a hypothesis and conducting experiments to test it, ID started out with a desired conclusion, and fills in whatever "evidence" people will believe to reach that desired conclusion.
I’ll agree that ID proponents start with the existence of God as a basic premise. I think then they follow the evidence where they believe it leads. To someone without the existence of God as a premise, however, the evidence doesn’t always lead the same place. The question is why it doesn’t. ID proponents will say it’s because non-ID start with a premise that precludes the existence of God. Non-ID will assert (like you did) that IDers only reach their conclusions because of their premise that God does exist. I think the assumptions on both sides are probably inaccurate, though there are hints of truth to both allegations.

I don’t think ID proponents are being disingenuous by assuming the existence of God. We all make assumptions born out of our experiences in order to determine truth. If we didn’t, we’d look like the guy in the Hitchhiker trilogy who takes so little on faith that he won’t trust is own recollection of how a pen works. Unfortunately, problems occur when we can’t all agree on the same assumptions.
_________________________
-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.