This WaPo column on ID is pure uninformed dreck throughout. It's rather tiresome how people are so quick to jump on the example of athletic performance as something magical, miraculous, and mystical, abetted by the beliefs of many athletes themselves. They are finely tuned meat machines, not angels (and that is not a diminution of their accomplishments; it's impressive work, and top athletes are rare). The author, Sally Jenkins, does nothing but toss out subjective impressions, leaning on the claims of Jeffery Schwartz. I've read Schwartz's work; it's old news. He's a DI hack who uses his legitimate scientific credentials to lend false authority to his religious beliefs about non-physical, supernatural elements of consciousness.

It's pointless to dismantle something this stupid, but heck, I'm just sitting in a bar with wireless access. Why not?

• "Athletes do things that seem transcendental". The operative word there is "seem". Athletes do not ever violate the laws of physics, chemistry, or biology.
• "But athletes also are explorers of the boundaries of physiology and neuroscience, and some intelligent design proponents therefore suggest they can be walking human laboratories for their theories.". Name one. There is nothing mystical or spiritual about athletic performance; be born with a fortunate genetic endowment, get brought up with proper health and nutrition, work hard, train, train, train.
• "First, let's get rid of the idea that ID (intelligent design) is a form of sly creationism. It isn't.". Yes, it is. Of Pandas and People, about the only ID textbook out there, is a rewritten creationist text that substituted "design" for "creation". There is no feature that distinguishes the ID hypothesis, poor as it is, from creationism.
• "But you don't have to be a creationist to think there might be something to it, or to agree with Johnson when he says, 'The human body is packed with marvels, eyes and lungs and cells, and evolutionary gradualism can't account for that.'". Johnson is a law professor who has no background in evolutionary biology—he is not a fit judge. Evolutionary biologists (you know, those people who understand the theory) say evolution does account for those 'marvels'.
• "Athletes often talk of feeling an absolute fulfillment of purpose, of something powerful moving through them or in them that is not just the result of training.". How would they know? Training actually involves the acquisition of capabilities well below the conscious level—a ballplayer does not have to consciously track the position and tension of every muscle in his body as he steps back to catch a fly ball.
• "Instead, Schwartz theorizes that when a great athlete focuses, he or she may be 'making a connection with something deep within nature itself, which lends itself to deepening our intelligence.'". That's gobbledygook. What is the "something"? What does it mean to 'deepen intelligence'?
• "We are flawed cardiovascularly. Horses carry much more oxygen in their blood, and have a storage system for red blood cells in their spleens, a natural system of blood doping. Humans don't.". We don't? That's a surprise to me. Humans have a perfectly good spleen that contains a reservoir of blood cells.
• "Also, while a lot of aerobics can make our hearts bigger, our lungs are unique. They don't adapt to training. They're fixed.". They are? That's news to me, too. Of course you can increase your aerobic capacity with training. Here are a couple of examples.
• "Schwarz finds little or nothing in natural selection to explain the ability of athletes to reinterpret physical events from moment to moment, the super-awareness that they seem to possess.". But we all have this ability. What the heck is he talking about?
• "'The capacity to stand outside yourself and be aware of where you are,' he said. 'Deep within the complexities of molecular organization lies an intrinsic intelligence that accounts for that deep organization, and is something that we can connect with through the willful focus of our minds,' he theorizes.". More drivel. Does this intrinsic intelligence waft in with that smart oxygen Chopra babbles about?
• "ID certainly lacks a body of scientific data, and opponents are right to argue that the idea isn't developed enough to be taught as equivalent to evolution.". The first sensible thing she has said in the whole piece.
• "But science class also teaches us how crucial it is to maintain adventurousness, and surely it's worthwhile to suggest that an athlete in motion conveys an inkling of something marvelous in nature that perhaps isn't explained by mere molecules.". What, pray tell? We are molecules and energy stitched together by history. If you want to propose something else, say what it is. Jebons, perhaps?