This comment touches on the core problem legally and politically:

Many in the judiciary and the media think atheism occupies a special category which is (and properly should be) exempt from the normal workings of the “establishment” clause of the U.S. Constitution.

As a result, they think it’s perfectly fine for the government to support scientific theories that are consistent with a non-theistic worldview. But, any theory that happens to be consistent with a theistic worldview should be strictly off limits for discussion, investigation, research, etc.

Under this way of thinking, atheistic and anti-religious theories enjoy special protections; any theory, teaching, or research program that has even a faint whiff of theism is placed in an entirely different category, where it is subject to strict prohibitions against government funding, advocacy, etc.

Then end result is that a constitutional provision that was intended to keep the government from taking sides in debates between different denominations (religions) has become an important factor favoring one side of any debate involving religious versus anti-religious views. This is affecting the ID vs. Darwinism debate, and it is also influencing many other legal issues. Consider, for example, differences in the legalities of government mention of “Christmas” versus “halloween.”

“Nature is “selecting” those that are the best able to survive.”

I’m just not sure of that. Used to be. Only agents make choices and “select.” Here nature eliminates those that are unfit rather than “choosing” in a pro-active way. Obviously it some kind of feedback mechanism that’s involved, but there’s lots of feedback mechanisms in nature and in man-made contraptions: but we don’t use the language of “selecting” do we?

Nature is “selecting” those that are the best able to survive.

I guess where I’m at now, is more or less what you’re describing. But I’m ready to go another step and to say that what you describe as NS, i.e., a mechanism which kills unwanted mutants (thus stabilizing the genome), is not NS. Basically what I’m saying is that it’s time to call it something else since it’s not really “selecting,” it’s eliminating something. Why don’t we call it “genome stabilization via elimination of defects through natural means”? I’m almost being silly here; but, seriously, let’s admit it, this is not what Darwin had in mind when he talked about NS: he saw NS acting to promote variations, not eliminate them. I know: let’s call it “NS”–Natural Stabilization.

In a minor role it influences the frequency of preexisting alleles within the same species in effect “tweaking” the species to better fit the immediate environment.

What it doesn’t do is act to collect and save small but favorable random mutations until the cumulative effect is to create a novel cell type, tissue type, organ, or body plan. It is the creation of true novelty on the order of cells, tissues, organs, and body plans that defies explanation by non-directed means.

your wrote that even NS is being called into question now. I know that whereas before I would have granted NS its status in microevolution, from what I’ve been readig lately, I’m not sure that even that is an effective mechanism at work in nature.

Do you have citations, or web locations I can go to?

And you’re right: Darwin was wrong about everything.

Charlie

well i dont know about a simple catchy phrase that could catch ID in a nut shell cus that simple phrase would have to be irreducible complex none the less , lol

Charlie