Comment on progress in knowledge/science

You’re invoking a false mythology of progress. They did not consider intelligent design and then reject it in modern times. Instead they rejected ID a century ago, about the same time that the professionalization of science took place. So no matter what new evidence modern science uncovers many will support evolutionary creation myths that have been fused to their professional identity. Ever since the professionalization of science many0 have even openly admitted that scientific consensus and their professional identity come first and the actual empirical evidence second.* Only the ignorant and naive believe that scientists are always interested in empirical evidence per se.

*E.g.

Mainstream science reacted predictably to any suggestion that the prints were made by humans. Geologist Albert G. Ingalls, writing in 1940 in Scientific American, said: “If man, or even his ape ancestor, or even that ape ancestor’s early mammalian ancestor, existed as far back as in the Carboniferous Period in any shape, then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, for the present at least, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these mysterious prints in the mud of the Carboniferous with his feet.”
(The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson :151)