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Let me see if I get your drift. You admit that selection is a powerful shaping tool, but in its unattended mode it looks icky.

Well take a look around. Look, for example, at the bacterial flagellum, the poster child of design. It's main "purpose" seems to be killing infants and children.

What immortal hand or eye
Framed its fearful symmetry?

ID really frames the question like this: The shape of living things is the result of the observed processes, unguided, or of observed processes, guided. There is no footprint of the guiding hand; it is invisible, like Adam Smith's. But you can choose to believe that a designer lavished loving attention on the bacterial flagellum if you really need to believe in that kind of thing. No one can prove you wrong.

ID really frames the question like this . . .

You didn't even posit a question. The questions ID frames are: "How did God (or nature) do it?" "How does God (or nature) do it?" One may also come at the presence of organized matter performing specific functions from a totally different perspective, namely, "What, or who, is responsible for this?" Or one may simply observe, measure, and categorize the physical world without regard to any of those questions. It is the nature of man in his present state, however, to put the details into a bigger picture, and thus subscribe to one faith or another.

Let me see if I get your drift. You admit that selection is a powerful shaping tool, but in its unattended mode it looks icky.

Let me apologize. I think I failed to make myself clear. I have never postulated that selection as a part of evolution had to be “attended.” What I have done is pointed out that evolution’s basic postulate of mutation and “natural selection” based upon “survival of the fittest” does not support the concept of “random selection.” If this fits the definition of icky, perhaps it is. Nonetheless, that work is not mine.

Well take a look around. Look, for example, at the bacterial flagellum, the poster child of design. It's main "purpose" seems to be killing infants and children.

No argument from me.

ID really frames the question like this… No one can prove you wrong.

I think if you will review my posts, you will find that I mentioned intelligent design in relation to humans “selecting” breeding stock to modify naturally occurring organisms into something that would not otherwise have come to exist through “natural selection.” I have not advocated intelligent design otherwise in our discussions at all.

What I have done is pose questions concerning evolution originally attempting to determine if a statistical correlation exists relating mutation rate, natural selection pressures and the emergence of new species. Outside of one poster referring me to some mathematical work by R. A. Fischer, I have no luck in even getting a firm definition of terms, let alone, unambiguous, measurable quantities.