Intelligent Design - the Creationists' Latest Wheeze

[Malignd]

<<There are aspects of the theory which are quite
persuasive and plausible, but not the ones put forth
by Darwin, which have been largely discredited, or at
least, modified and extended well beyond Darwin's
initial thesis.>>

This is utter nonsense.  Darwin's ideas not plausible?
 Darwin outlined selection, adaptation, modification,
and selection as the bases of evolution.  They remain
so today.  

And Darwin's thought has not been discredited.  His
ideas are settled science.  Modified certainly:  the
theory's one hundred and fifty years old.  But Richard
Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, among
others, all -- despite disagreements among and between
them and among and between other evolutionary
biologists, think or thought of themselves as
Darwinists and readily call or called themselves such.
 

There are differing points of view around the relative
importance of selection vs. mutation, something around
which Dawkins and Gould, among others, disagreed; the
discovery of trigger genes that can alter the behavior
of other genes would allow, perhaps, more rapid
modification than Darwin could have anticipated;
Gould's idea of punctuated equilibrium is contrary to
the steady, gradual modification of which Darwin
wrote, but Darwin was very forthcoming about the
paucity of the fossil record and that much could only
be inferred.  The fossil record is much more filled in
now (and is supportive of Darwin's ideas) but, in any
case, the idea of punctuated equilibria or trigger
genes or evolution at the genetic level as well as at
the species level -- none of these discredits Darwin's
ideas.  

Further, the mapping of the genome has proved to be
supportive of Darwin's ideas -- the great similarity
in the genomes of widely varying species in keeping
with the idea of common ancestry, and the many strands
of junk DNA supporting the idea of modification.

There's a wealth of literature on this and none of it
that's regarded seriously is supportive of your
claims.  In short, you might read and learn, rather
than accuse other posters of not having done so.



	
		
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