Intelligent design forces scientists to confront weaknesses of Darwinism

One of the classic arguments against intelligent design is that it is a "science stopper" -- that pro-ID scientists, when confronted with something that they cannot readily explain, just throw up their hands in despair and say "goddidit." However, far from being a "science stopper," intelligent design (as well as other criticisms of Darwinism) advances science by forcing scientists to confront weaknesses of evolution theory. While the two-faced Darwinists scoff at ID as pseudoscience, they make long, highly technical arguments against it, as in this Panda's Thumb post about a research paper by Douglas Axe. If it were not for ID, this research paper and the accompanying debate might not even exist. In the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, 85 scientists filed an amicus brief urging Judge Jones to not rule on the scientific merits of ID. As we know, Jones ignored them and went on to make a complete fool of himself by giving an ID-as-science ruling that he virtually copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs (Jones has been criticized just for his extensive copying, but IMO the one-sidedness of his ID-as-science ruling is much worse than his extensive copying, which I can excuse because of the great volume of material in the case).

Also, it is not clear how Dr. Axe himself views the question of whether or not his paper supports ID. The author of the Panda's Thumb post, Arthur Hunt, says near the bottom,

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to the efforts of the PT crew, and particularly Ian Musgrave, who helped me keep this on topic. Also, many thanks are due to Douglas Axe, who graciously helped me with early drafts of this essay. Please note that all of these ideas are mine, and I make no claim that any of these thoughts represent Axe’s views. (emphasis added)

Though Hunt makes no claim that his post represents Axe's views, the fact that Axe helped him write the post suggests that Axe at least partially agrees with Hunt's view that Axe's paper does not support ID. However, according to a post by Casey Luskin in Evolution News & Views, Axe gave the following unpublished response to a reporter from New Scientist magazine:

I have in fact confirmed that these papers add to the evidence for ID. I concluded in the 2000 JMB paper that enzymatic catalysis entails "severe sequence constraints". The more severe these constraints are, the less likely it is that they can be met by chance. So, yes, that finding is very relevant to the question of the adequacy of chance, which is very relevant to the case for design. In the 2004 paper I reported experimental data used to put a number on the rarity of sequences expected to form working enzymes. The reported figure is less than one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. Again, yes, this finding does seem to call into question the adequacy of chance, and that certainly adds to the case for intelligent design.

Also, I am wondering how Luskin found out about the above response if it was not published.

Also, Luskin's article claims that the pro-ID Discovery Institute funded Axe's research, raising a question as to the impartiality of Axe's research paper. The Discovery Institute has been criticized for funding PR and not research, but this question of impartiality is a good reason why DI should not fund research.

Anyway, I don't think that Hunt's post is going to affect most people's views about ID. The post is too esoteric for most people -- even including many biologists -- to thoroughly understand, and even if one understands it, the author's word would have to be taken for a good part of it.