Did I signal that I'm on the wrong "team" there?

No, you said something I thought was obviously unreasonable. There's a difference.

critics of ID consistently, incessantly argue that ID and related concepts are not just wrong, but incoherent and totally outside the realm of science.

Sorry, but if "related concepts" includes the possibility that life on earth might have been designed (really truly without any implication that the designer need be supernatural) then I don't believe you.

(Two examples of such "related concepts": In The God Delusion -- notable among Dawkins's works, of course, for its consistent open-mindedness towards religious ideas[1] -- Dawkins says, in so many words, (a) that it's very likely that there are intelligent aliens whose powers we would readily classify as godlike, and (b) that if a genuine instance of "irreducible complexity" could be found, then indeed Darwinian evolution would be dead.)

Nope, not a good enough reason for refusing to address the case as presented without reference to the persons presenting it.

OK, so you don't consider it a good enough reason. However, if Dawkins does -- and it's not hard to see why he might -- it seems to me that your sneering at his "epistemologicical status" is un-called-for.

he changes his claims to "..." when talking to creationists by virtue of not debating them.

Excuse me, but are you even slightly serious? (Perhaps I've made the mistake of responding seriously to what's just 100% trolling, in which case I hereby apologize to anyone whose time I've wasted.) In what possible world is there any equivalence, as far as "epistemological status" goes, between (1) "Dawkins says one thing to one set of people and another incompatible thing to another set of people" -- your earlier assertion -- and (2) "Dawkins says one thing to one set of people and doesn't talk to another set of people"?

all across YouTube [...] anti-creationists [...] were absolutely livid

What, please, does that have to do with Dawkins's opinions, or practices, or attitudes, or honesty, or intellectual integrity?

for purposes of ascertaining what Dawkins believes, why does it matter whether he made a statement in an interview with a creationist vs. in an interview "about" religion?

I'm not aware that anyone has said it does. Would you care to make your argument a bit more explicit at this point?

when people like Dawkins so horribly fail at the use of probabilities

Er, is it just me or is this a complete change of subject?

it makes it easier for people like me to be a devil's advocate for creationists.

Why should Dawkins, or anyone else, care how easy it is for someone to be a devil's advocate for creationists? If what you actually mean is that it makes it easier for creationists to be advocates for creationists, then that would be more to the point, but it's not quite clear to me what you're now arguing. Earlier on, it looked like you were casting aspersions on Dawkins's honesty or integrity or something; now it seems you've switched to commenting on his tactics.

[1] Why yes, that was a joke.

RAOW! Did I signal that I'm on the wrong "team" there? FWIW, Robin Hanson brought up the same thing here.

Yes, you've definitely been saying things that could be twisted for the purpose of gaining status at your expense.

You've now completely lost the point of the initial discussion. Eliezer proposed having creationists debate students rather than credentialed scientists so as to maintain the institutions that sustain the marketplace of ideas while simultaneously making it clear that one should not consider creationists and scientists equally credible. Your initial comment was that creationists don't need to debate students since they can debate all these famous atheist science writers. You haven't been able to provide any recent (read: in the last two decades) examples of any of the people you named debating evolution with creationists in a formal setting. You seem bothered by the fact that the people you listed spend so much time dealing with creationism. But even if they were engaged in work on creationism for significant periods of time that doesn't change the fact that they aren't willing to engage creationists on an equal footing. Thus, the rationale for Eliezer's proposal remains.

It strikes me that you may have just wished to complain about public intellectuals spending time on creationism and that you comment as such on this post because it was related. But if thats the case you really need to clarify that because as it stands you comments make very little sense in the context of Eliezer's initial post. Look at the karma, its time to update.

Of course if this was you intent it still doesn't change the fact that your list of public intellectuals at fault is really strange. Most of them aren't biologists. Most of them work on issues unrelated to creationism. A few do more work on interpretations of evolution, but in that case the work is related to important questions in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology. The only person you named that seems to spend a preponderance of his time explaining basic science is Dawkins. And I don't really see any reason to think Dawkins would be doing better than average work in research biology.

My point is that science writers are spending their time on a point of no scientific interest.

Science writers aren't scientists. They aren't looking for scientific interest. They're trying to educate the broad public about science. The most important subjects, to them, are the "most wrong" beliefs contradicting science that are common in the audience. They correctly try to fix those, even though the beliefs' alleged theories ("a GOD created the universe in 7 days 6000 years ago!") aren't of any scientific interest.

Your point is perhaps that scientists shouldn't become science writers because it's lower-status or less beneficial work. But people very rarely choose work according to what is objectively most beneficial to humanity...