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Thank you so much for your post!

Clearly all of these are attempts at explaining away the points being made by intelligent design but they are impossible to reconcile with evolutionary theory and change by mutation.

Indeed, the theory of evolution requires that the process never be directed and that it have no purpose. But the above article by Richard Dawkins has this to say:

The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes. This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth. On the other side, the fellows of the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture; define the intelligent design theory as follows:

"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It must be noted that the term intelligent cause does not imply a particular designer. Presumably, intelligent cause could be anything - including transcendent collective consciousness, extra dimensional beings, free will, etc. I of course believe God is the intelligent cause but to personify the phrase ”intelligent cause” would be beyond science. That is the domain of theology or metaphysics.

And that presents a problem to the theory of evolution - because the only substantive thing that separates them is the concept of randomness (no order or purpose). And the randomness pillar itself is under siege by the very disciplines lauded by Dawkins: mathematics, physics and information theory.

Marcel-Paul Schützenberger calls it a “fatal attraction:”

The participation of mathemeticians in the overall assessment of evolutionary thought has been encouraged by the biologists themselves, if only because they presented such an irresistible target. Richard Dawkins, for example, has been fatally attracted to arguments that would appear to hinge on concepts drawn from mathematics and from the computer sciences, the technical stuff imposed on innocent readers with all of his comic authority. Mathematicians are, in any case, epistemological zealots. It is normal for them to bring their critical scruples to the foundations of other disciplines.

And finally, it is worth observing that the great turbid wave of cybernetics has carried mathematicians from their normal mid-ocean haunts to the far shores of evolutionary biology. There up ahead, Rene Thom and Ilya Prigogine may be observed paddling sedately toward dry land, members of the Santa Fe Institute thrashing in their wake. Stuart Kauffman is among them. An interesting case, a physician half in love with mathematical logic, burdened now and forever by having received a Papal Kiss from Murray Gell-Mann. This ecumenical movement has endeavored to apply the concepts of mathematics to the fundamental problems of evolution -- the interpretation of functional complexity, for example.

Indeed, the achilles heel to randomness is the autonomy of self-organizing complexity and the very existence of algorithm in the genetic code: symbols, conditionals, recursives and process.

The irony is that non of the names raising these issues are from the intelligent design (much less young earth creationist) camps: von Neumann, Yockey, Schützenberger, Patten, Chaitin, Rocha, t'Hooft, Penrose, Wolfram.

The only counter to randomness that evolutionists can offer is determinism ( Science at the crossroad) but that presents this dilemma:

The universe and/or life is either guided or not.

If guided, it may be by deterministic laws or by intelligence.

If it is guided by deterministic laws, then the goalpost has moved (e.g. from biogenesis to big bang to multiverse) - the question will come up again.

Ultimately, one can either choose intelligent designer or anthropic principle or the plenitude argument (everything that can exist, does exist) to resolve the issue to one’s own, personal ideology.

What all of this means is that the randomness pillar of the theory of evolution is about to implode. I predict the next pillar which might implode is common descent. The math, physics and information theory may not support a single, common ancestor after all.

Just my two cents…