Re. Intelligent Design - it's noteworthy that the Big Bang theory was once derided by the scientific establishment as a non-scientific attempt to inject a Creator into science.
Thomas Kuhn pointed out that the practice of science is anything but objective and value-free. Scientists become deeply vested in the accepted paradigms of their discipline and fight tooth and nail to reject challenging new ideas, regardless of the evidence (just ask Galileo). Moreover, scientists are not above suppressing findings that conflict with what they believe to be desirable social agendas or goals, e.g., global warming, the theory of evolution, or the existence of a "homosexual gene."
When the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its "abnormal" category, it was certainly not an example of dispassionate scientific discovery and progress. To the contrary, that action was hopelessly mired in, and compromised by, political correctness and societal pressures. The APA may or may not have arrived at right conclusion, but it did not get there as the result of pure science at work.
Kuhn held that science historically has not progressed in a neat, orderly fashion of building one discovery atop another, but rather through periodic revolutions in thought that upset the whole applecart to the dismay the of the prevailing (and smug) scientific establishment which has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the new paradigm.
Generally speaking, we should not trust scientists any more than we trust politicians.
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