Sometimes the debater focuses on the political dimension to the question of ID and argues that it will hurt science education in the US if ID is taught. This argument is sound only if ID is faux-science. And I certainly would grant both that creationism is faux-science and that teaching it if it were better than that would be harmful to education. But ID, at least in its most evolution-friendly incarnation, may not deserve such a harsh judgment. And to argue against ID w/o having already offered a sound argument against ID's being a genuinely scientific proposal is an example of begging the question... kind of like a prosecutor arguing before the jury that they should convict the defendant of rape because murder is such an evil crime and murderers must not be allowed to go to kill new victims.... arguing in this manner without ever offering support of the claim that the person on the stand is in fact a murderer. To argue in such a way would both be a distraction and a circular argument.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
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