Engineering demands a strict account of things that can possibly happen without design:
The most philosophically astute materialist scientists recognize the hazard of too closely comparing biology to engineering. Not only does engineering embody intelligent design, but engineers have developed a deep intuition of what incremental processes can and cannot achieve. And they recognize that the design patterns pervasive in life could not possibly have emerged through any gradual, undirected process.
Biologists wedded to scientific materialism have argued that life is so different from human artifacts that they can dismiss engineers’ conclusions about organisms’ limited evolvability. The central fallacy in this argument is that nearly every difference between human creations and life makes the latter ever more challenging to design. And the challenges translate into more daunting obstacles for any evolutionary scenario.
Design motifs such as four-bar linkages and control systems must meet exacting requirements whether implemented in a space shuttle or a fish (here, here). Many of these requirements operate largely independently of the constituent materials that compose them or the exact methods they employ in their operation. Moreover, the distinctive nature of living systems entails many additional requirements and even stricter constraints. Not only must a biological element function properly, but an organism must also manufacture, maintain, and operate it.
Brian Miller, “How Engineers Helped Save Biology from Evolutionary Theory” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 30, 2021)
In the real world, Darwinism is largely maintained by enforcement at all levels of education and the career ruin of those who doubt it. All that is quite unrelated to what’s happening — or could happen — in science.
See also: Researchers: Blind mouse pups prepared for sight. Researcher: “I love this paper. It blew my mind,” says David Berson, who studies the visual system at Brown University and was not involved in the research. “What it implies is that evolution has built a visual system that can simulate the patterns of activity that it will see later when it’s fully mature and the eyes are open, and that [the simulated pattern] in turn shapes the development of the nervous system in a way that makes it better adapted to seeing those patterns. . . . That’s staggering.”