Is Intelligent Design Science?

On my upcoming radio show, Conversations Beyond Science and Religion, webtalkradio.net, scheduled for posting on July 29, 2013, I interview Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University and author of the controversial book, Darwin’s Black Box.  This book, which the back cover says helped launch the intelligent design movement, contains a devastating attack on Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  We are conditioned to reject the intelligent design movement as unscientific (if not unAmerican) and to believe that the Darwinian camp, led by Richard Dawkins (of Blind Watchmaker fame), must be right.  While taking this stance, I would guess many people have not really  examined for themselves natural selection or Behe’s version of intelligent design.  And this may be the biggest problem facing opponents of Darwin: it doesn’t matter what the facts show, to be a true scientist one must be a materialist (matter, not mind, is fundamental) and reject any role of intelligence in the make-up of the physical world and of life.  But advocates of this position have never explained why science and mind are mutually exclusive.  Further, the universe seems to be telling us we have no choice: from the mathematical laws of nature, to the fine-tuning of the universe, to the irreducible complexity of living things, mind seems integral to the world.  Perhaps the world is waiting for science to evolve and  finally embrace , rather than ignore, the facts of our most unusual existence.  Is intelligent design science?   It looks it will have to be in one form or another.