In any debate, it is always good strategy to acknowledge your opponent’s strongest points up front, effectively taking those points off the table. The evolutionist’s strongest points are the fact that science has been so successful to date in finding “natural” (unintelligent) causes in other areas of science, and the fact that the development of life, in many ways, simply “looks like” it was due to natural causes. On the other hand, there is virtually no evidence that natural selection can explain anything more than trivial changes, and the idea that it can account for the complexity of life is patently absurd. In all debates over evolution, our opponents emphasize the features of evolution which, admittedly, suggest natural causes (“a designer wouldn’t have done things this way”, as Darwin himself often wrote), and can usually count on this as being mistaken as evidence for the default natural cause (Darwinism), without the need to even discuss natural selection’s role.
My essay “How Evolution will be Taught Someday” approaches the debate by saying, ok, maybe evolution does give the appearance of natural causes, and we’ll even let you call it a “natural” process, as long as you don’t claim you know what those natural causes are. Then what?