What is Darwinism? (or why Do ID proponents use this term)

Notes:

Rich - #17504
June 15th 2010
Larry (17500):   http://biologos.org/blog/evidences-for-evolution-part-2a-the-whales-tale/

I don’t think that 3.8 billion years of sandstorms, lightning blasts, weathering, earthquakes, chemical changes, etc., could turn the Black Hills into the faces of Mount Rushmore, and the level of integrated complexity in the simplest living creature is orders of magnitude greater than that of the sculptures on Mount Rushmore.

The problem with neo-Darwinian evolution (as opposed to other notions of evolution) is that it involves transformations on that order of improbability. The focus of ID criticism has always been on neo-Darwinian or Darwinian evolution; if you read the ID literature, almost always the word “evolution” is qualified by one or the other of those adjectives. Some ID proponents are open to non-Darwinian notions of evolution, such as those suggested by Sternberg and Denton. These can be entirely naturalistic in their mechanical unfolding. But they are teleological, and therefore neither atheists nor TEs will have anything to do with them. The worship of anti-teleology in evolution, necessary to Dawkins and Moran for obvious religious reasons, is of course puzzling in TEs who allegedly affirm the doctrine of Creation. But who can fathom the internal contradictions of TEs?