Intelligent Design - What are scientists afraid of?

Many will read this title as rhetorical. For creationists, the answer is already known. Scientists are afraid that their theories will be shown to be shallow and unconvincing.

For me, this is a serious, literal question. I count myself in the community of lay scientists, people with enough scientific training to be able to follow discussions at Scientific American levels and an inclination to favor the scientific method. If I were a biology teacher, I don't think I'd feel threatened by a comparison between evolution and Intelligent Design, which I capitalize because He is clearly the author, whether mentioned or not.

It's a "hearts and minds" issue. Evolution is a theory that is consistent with the methods of modern science, due to which we have put a man on the moon, created cell phones with pictures, and cracked the genetic code of the 1918 influenza virus. Intelligent Design is the product of the sort of minds that have successfully bent spoons if you don't look too closely and can find images of the Virgin Mary in cumulus clouds.

Bring them on, I say. You aren't going to persuade everyone. Objective evidence doesn't always work, or there wouldn't be millions of people who believe that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. Hardly anyone who deeply believes in biblical creation is going to change his mind even when shown the achievements of science and the ineffectualness of religion.

But a few might, and on the other side of the coin, I can't imagine anyone who has not been previously been inculcated with Christianity finding religion as the result of a classroom discussion. There is a perpetual battle for the intellects of young people and it may as well be joined in the biology classroom as anywhere else. Science is more likely to get a fair hearing then than at any later time. Let's make the case when the playing field is as level as it's ever going to get.