Many of your comments suggest that there are plenty of credible scientists on the topic of Intelligent Design and evolution. Some people asked who I would consider credible.
Let me point out, by way of background, that all of the intelligence agencies of every major country believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That was based on lots of data that all pointed in the same direction. It’s probably safe to say that those agencies had a preconcieved notion that Saddam had WMD, and so they saw all of the data as consistent with that view.
Further, let me point out that there are 17,000 mutual funds being managed by highly qualified financial experts. They’ll tell you that investing in a managed mutual fund is a better idea than buying an index fund. But on average, managed funds underperform the indexes, and you would have no way of knowing which ones won’t. Each of those financial experts has a financial incentive to mislead you about the odds.
I would consider credible anyone who didn’t have a preconcieved notion or a financial/career incentive. When you’re talking about the cause of life itself, I submit that no one can pass that test (especially people who write books on the topic). That has been my point all along.
It’s not enough to understand what the experts tell you. You also need to understand cognitive dissonance to understand how the experts and even you could be completely wrong about something that seems so completely true.
Now how many of you read what I just wrote and interpreted it as a defense of Intelligent Design or an attack on Darwinian evolution? If you experienced either of those feelings, you had a little taste of cognitive dissonance.