I too find your words insulting to my intelligence and person, but, hey, I've never let that stop me before, so why start now? ;-)
ARFAR: "My dear colleague, a default answer IS a piece of dogma."
You are (no doubt deliberately) ignoring my point: whether "default" or "dogma" the words you next claimed were mine were not.
So, in assigning those particular words to me you told, let's not just beat around the bush, you told a lie.
And, my point is: if that's what they taught you to do in your philosophy classes, then you need to demand a refund, for mis-education, FRiend.
ARFAR: "Darwin asserted the basics of evolution -- adaption to a changing environment through incremental mutations, with 'survival of the fittest' being the result. This has become dogma for most biologists..."
That's not "dogma", it's a confirmed theory, confirmed in many ways, including fossil records and DNA analyses.
Somewhere, you should have learned the difference between religious "dogma" (=doctrine) and a scientific hypothesis-cum-theory.
They are in no way related.
ARFAR: "...there is overall evidence that all of Nature and each creature within it is far too complex to be the result of meadnering molecules (if you will excuse the phrase).
Saying that all living things are as they are because of natural selection without reference to a guiding intelligence is just as dogmatic as saying life is as it is because 'God created it, just like the Bible states in Genesis'. "
Now you've said a real mouthful, and I'm not certain where to begin unpacking it all...
The facts (=confirmed observations) show modifications in every generation.
The facts also show that nature only selects non-harmful modifications for survival.
Evolution theory says that helpful modifications can be naturally selected and accumulate over time until one sub-species population can no longer interbreed with another.
At some point in the process (i.e., zebras, donkeys & horses), scientists will stop calling them "sub-species" and begin calling them separate "species."
Projected backwards over millions and billions of years, this process can be shown through DNA to account for virtually all life on earth.
As for God's undoubted role in evolution, this has nothing to do with science, and cannot even be addressed by science as such.
That's because, by definition the word "science" deals only with natural causes of natural phenomena.
So, what you and I might see as the obvious "hand of God" at work, science as such can only describe as "random mutations."
Of course, you should have learned all this in class -- it goes by the name of "theistic evolutionism."
It's what most Christian denominations teach, and also what I believe.
"Theistic evolutionism" in no way challenges the science of evolution, it merely says that God obviously designed, created and manages the process from the beginning, for the purpose of producing just what we see today, especially mankind.
ARFAR: "What makes it dogma is nothing inherent in the theory, but rather in the way it is used over and over to reject any alternate hypothesis.
IOW, it's only dogma when it cannot be questioned without suffering unending derision by other scientists, which is the case right now in the field of evolution. "
In science, anyone can question anything.
But if you question, for example, whether two plus two must equal four, then no one will take you very seriously.
Of course, if you were some kind of Einstein Jr., and could demonstrate through Relativity, Uncertainty and Chaos Theory that two plus two might equal something else, then serious scientists might pay you some heed.
But you would certainly have to be as good as Einstein was to make such a proposal.
And, my point is: in the case of evolution theory, nothing remotely resembling Einstein's relativity has been proposed to contradict the old "Newtonian" / Darwinian explanations.
ARFAR: "Granted there are some theories that are risible, but merely to attempt to weave God, or any higher intelligence into the process meets with categorical, and erroneous, name-calling, ie. 'fundamentalist', 'religionist', 'ID believer'."
You were supposed to learn in science class the definition of the word "science."
Science is "methodological naturalism", meaning it consists only of natural explanations for natural phenomena.
The moment you introduce some super-natural concept like "God", then it is no longer "science", and science can't deal with it.
And why would you want to?
Let science be science.
Most Christians and other believers simply understand that what science calls "random" was in fact the Hand of God at work in the World.
It's no more complicated than that.
So why beat yourself up over it?
ARFAR: "What I actually believe, to make it clear to you, is more in line with what you define as Theistic Evolutionism..."
"Yet I am unfamiliar with the term Theistic Evolutionism. "
It's a good term, nothing wrong with it, and you should have learned it in school. ;-)
It is apparent that it's you who can't deal with it.
As long as God is defined as a guiding intelligence, sciencists can look for evidence of intentional vs unintentional design in evolution. Things that are difficult to explain by mechanistic process leave room for believing in an intelligent designer. Things that are proven impossible to occur, (or at least unlikely to the point of astronomically high odds against it) actually do prove, statistically, a hidden, intelligent designer. Most people think of an intelligent designer as God, but God, per se, is not the issue.
I am not sure that irreducible complexity has been proven, or will be. As to the statistical likelihood of mutations producing healthy, viable new species, I am in serious doubt. However, that's a question, precisely the central question now at issue. It is ongoing as we speak. What ticks me off is how most defenders of the traditional neo-Darwinian explanations cannot, and will not, even entertain the notion of ID. As if it were inherently irrational from a scientific perspective ('that does not compute'). I say it is NOT irrational, since science is very good at distinguishing chance coindicence from intentional results. Ask any forensic scientist.
Note that I am not questioning 99% of evolution that you find in textbooks. Nor am I demanding recognition of ID or any other new theory as equal to the current theory. In fact, I would reject out-of-hand most of what it touted as Creation Science because it does contradict established facts.
If one were to visit a planet in a distant solar system, and if one found the unmistakeable ruins of a building, one would reasonably conclude that intelligent beings designed it. Now the DNA that builds and runs our bodies is on the order of millions of times more complex that a mere building. In the absence of a scientific demonstration of just how that DNA molecule arose, or could have been created solely by natural forces, I say the hypothesis of an intelligent creator is the most rational explanation. The same applies to the formation of new species, although the case for an intelligent designer is much weaker, since mutations are known to occur, and thus the possibility (but not the likelihood) of natural selection may account for all the billions of species that exist and have existed on Earth.
Well, that's it and have a good day, BroJoeK.
-- ARFAR