Charles Darwin's Big Idea: Design without a Designer

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The more I think about that Peaceful Science article "Design without a Designer?" the more I am amazed at their ignorance. Charles Darwin's big idea (dangerous idea according to Dan Dennett) was that of design without (the need of) a designer. Meaning an intelligent designer, like God, was NOT required to produce the diversity of life. Darwin proposed natural selection as his designer mimic. The variation was attributed to chance events. What evolutionary biologists now call genetic accidents, errors and mistakes. Those accidents, errors and mistakes that are not fatal may get a chance to be passed on. Those accidents, errors and mistakes that prove to be beneficial, will become more prominent in a population. But it all depends. It is all contingent serendipity.

The first step in selection, the production of genetic variation, is almost exclusively a chance phenomenon except that the nature of the changes at a given locus is strongly constrained. Chance plays an important role even at the second step, the process of elimination of the less fit individuals. Chance may be particularly important in the haphazard survival during periods of mass extinction.- Ernst Mayr "What Evolution Is"

So that is what they have as their alleged designer mimic. Shit happens, some sticks and piles up. Very creative, that.

On the other hand, Intelligent Design is so called so that it is distinct from apparent design on one side (Darwin's designer mimic) and optimal design on the other.

The Peaceful Science minions don't seem to be aware of any of that.

The problem still remains, though. Darwin didn't have any evidence that natural selection was a designer mimic. We still do not have that evidence. There still isn't any evidence for design without a designer.