Even 'intelligent design' proponents need evolution for their ideas to work, Gerhard Adam writes in Science 2.0.
The common critique that advocates of 'intelligent design' level against evolutionary biology is that there are instances of complexity in the natural world that cannot have evolved, and must have had a designer.
But Adam says that even the examples and analogies they provide for evidence of a designer have required evolution to become what they are.
Take a look at the example of the 747 jumbo jet, which has been used as an analogy to biological phenomena that intelligent design advocates see as being far too complex to have arisen through randomness, Adam says.
Leaving aside the "complete misunderstanding about randomness," Adam notes: where did the design for the 747 come from?
"We can immediately see that it didn't occur directly, but rather was the result of an evolutionary process beginning with the Wright Brothers [and even previous unsuccessful attempts at flight]," he says.
The same holds for finely crafted and complex watches, or any other complex objects that are proposed as too complex.
"Rather the object in question is invariably the result of design, evolution, and selection. At each design step, the characteristics that work best get selected for incorporation in future versions of the object. There are simply no exceptions," Adam adds.
Any such object that exhibits design also "exhibits evolution and selection," he says, pointing out that it is "what we call progress."