Over on Panda’s Thumb Arthur Hunt protests Phil Skell’s essay in Forbes where Skell describes the theory of evolution as not being useful to modern experimental biology.
Hunt goes on to give an example in how it is useful. But Hunt plays the old bait and switch game. Every honest person with some knowledge of ID knows that ID doesn’t dispute common descent as the reason why all living things are deeply related. ID disputes the notion that chance and necessity alone produced all the living things and the differences between them.
I don’t think anyone (including Phil Skell) will argue that knowing all living things are deeply related is not a sometimes valuable guiding heuristic to experimental biology. So Hunt plays the old switcheroo by giving an example where common descent provided some insight and pretending that chance & necessity is part and parcel of common descent.
This is par for the course for evolutionists. They describe common descent and call it “evolution” instead of common descent. Then they describe special creation and call it “intelligent design” instead of special creation. This is dishonest and downright pathetic. ID doesn’t dispute evolution defined as descent with modfication from one or more common ancestors over billions of years. It disputes the mechanism (chance & necessity or random mutation & natural selection) commonly ascribed as sole motive force behind the creation and diversification of life.
The need to play switcheroo with the definitions of ID and evolution in order to make their arguments is prima facie evidence that they have no compelling argument.