But the political debate is cast against the backdrop of technology that is capable of meeting a certain absolute level of performance, and a rather high one at that. When SDI supporters make this concession, the perfect defense issue will become a dead horse politically as well as technically, and we can all go on to talk about more interesting things. Without addressing the specific merits of doing SDI work at this time, I think this statement needs qualification. There is a role for people outside the system. There is also one for people inside the system.
Activists are necessary to bring political pressure.
But they have to have some technical credibility. The reason is that there is NO serious scientific opinion that creationism has any literal validity at all. I can assure you that if there were, the battle to keep creationism out of the textbooks would be a lot more difficult to fight. While being technically right doesn't necessarily mean that your position will win, being technically wrong is often the kiss of death. I'd like to add a small comment to Richard Cowan's remarks.