The ID-friendly version of Natural Selection was pioneered by the creationist Blyth. I have also argued that there is credible evidence that Darwin plagiarized and distorted Blyth’s work.
I view Natural Selection as itself a design feature of optimization and search. Whereas Darwinist view natural selection as a mechanism of design, I view natural selection as feature of design. This essay was also partly written to correct and clarify some of my earlier choice of words in Same pattern, different implementations.
When we find designs that cannot be implemented via selection, I consider that strong evidence of design. However, finding possible evidence that selection is a feature of a biological system doesn’t automatically imply there is no Designer. In fact, NS might actually be a design feature. The best example I can think of is in Royal Truman’s essay B Cell Maturation. But here is the gist of his arugment:
Proposed evolutionary processes which supposedly produced first bacteria and eventually humans are assumed to not have been driven by intelligent guidance. We must clearly distinguish between true randomness and a purposeful algorithm to cover a search space to converge on an intended goal.
(A) Where fired shotgun pellets actually impact is only in an incomplete sense “random”. The gun barrel, triggering mechanism, explosive mixture, size and number of pellets, etc. are organized to solve a class of problem. Although the specific target need not be known in advance, the topology of desired outcome (in time and space) is part of the shotgun design. The design covers a constrained range of possibilities: it cannot kill bacteria nor whales (area), nor destroy satellites (distance) and needs a triggering mechanism (time). This permits a non-random outcome, such as killing a bird at a specific time and place with a high probability, with little risk of collateral damage.
The designer of the apparatus need not specify the exact picometer each pellet will end up at. It suffices to ensure within a high probability that when used in the correct context and manner, the “random” behavior of the ensemble of pellets is within the intended tolerance.
(B) Construction workers sometimes throw debris down a chute when repairing a building. One cannot predict the precise trajectories nor final location of every object thrown down. Nevertheless, the range of outcomes is constrained by the design which ensures bystanders aren’t killed.