Since you haven't been able to come up with a test for design, or achieve certainty with what you do apply as tests, you obviously can't rule it out, so assumption of chance is illogical...
No evidence of design has been observed. Until someone proves design is a possible factor impacting evolution, there is no reason to set up a test to rule it out. Testing to rule out nothing is not just illogical -- it's silly. Which is what I've been saying since the beginning of the thread.
Actually, I would disagree with the statement "No evidence of design has been observed." That is not a known, but a guess, a belief. It is logically possible you are viewing evidence of design constantly, but you just don't know it, as you have not put forth any criteria that would satisfy you as "evidence of design." When you are asked for what evidence of design would be, we hear the crickets chirping.... If and when you can prove chance as necessarily causal, then you have ruled out design. Since you can't prove chance with certainty as to it being the causal factor in biological changes, we are back to square one. The correct approach is neutrality toward design/chance, and just stick with facts when teaching kids in public school systems. Now, in college classes, where children have matured sufficiently to think critically and question authority properly, let the theories fly like pigs in mud. Let the research departments and think tanks postulate whatever they like. However, to indoctrinate children into chance theory as some "evidence" of evolution that allows them to fills the holes in evolutionary faith...nope. Not sound at all if the goal is to produce children who are educated, not indoctrinated...
As previously stated, I have no concern for your public policy desires. The issue is whether or not ID is scientific. In order for something to be scientific, it must be confirmed by experiment. This means (1) a hypothesis, and (2) a repeatable test that will produce substantially similar results. Nothing more is required to satisfy the scientific method. If you wish to remain slavishly dependent on Falsification as the only real scientific method, then that's your personal problem. But, no modern scientist shares your unreasonable restriction on how science must be accomplished. Your statement that "If and when you can prove chnces as necessarily causal, then you have ruled out design," may be logically sufficient, but it is not scientifically necessary. Uncertainty does not depend on an absence of design, therefore evolutionary hypotheses may be confirmed without resort to ruling out design. Design does not depend on an absence of uncertainty, therefore design hypotheses may be confirmed without resort to ruling out evolution. The inconsistency is that ID advocates do not experiment. They just complain about the experiments conducted by evolutionary scientists, and demand that they rule out ID as a means of proving evolution, when in fact, this is not required. What is required, is for ID advocates to conduct scientific experiments to confirm their hypotheses. But, none choose this path. Until ID advocates stop complaining and start experimenting they will rightly be regarded is unscientific in their methodology.
THANK YOU. Everything Z says here is simply a statement of his opinions. There is nothing factual about any of it. Most of what Z claims as fact in other threads is also simply his opinion. That is why there is a category 4 assertion warning wherever he goes. John and 2c, you have demolished Z in this thread. He has changed his argument completely and seems now to be trying to back out with some weak form of his original assertion still on the table. I will be happy if you smash whatever is left to pieces as well. Z.... how were you to know that you would run into two people willing to go toe to toe with you until you're lies and assertions started to crumble? Bad luck, mate. If you own Z enough, he will simply stop responding to your posts, as he has done with me. ID is a faith-based belief system, conceived as a rebranding of Creationism and as a wedge designed to provide leverage in the effort to remake society in a manner 'consonant with a theistic world view'.
Evolution, i.e. the observable mechanical processes of biological change are not in question in this thread. The causation of evolution assumed to be from chance, with no way to verify chance is at work, along with design which is equally footed to be unable to verify it is at work....is the issue. A neutral position of stating neither chance nor design (as we don't know) will not change the observations we make, nor the mechanics of biological evolution. Throw out dogmatic theistic thinking, throw out dogmatic atheistic thinking, allow a neutral agnostic scientific observation to regain its rightful place in science...and in the science classrooms in public schools.
Scientifically speaking, we do know, despite your insistence to the contrary, that uncertainty of quantum events causes point mutations, and point mutation is the engine which generates new information required for evolutionary change. There is no "assumption" that uncertainly is "designed." Furthermore, uncertainty is not the absence of certainty. It is a proven and measurable behavior of the universe. The only difference between uncertain and certain event, is that uncertain events cannot be measured with absolute precision. They can only be measured by their probability of occurring. Thus, uncertainty is a proven scientific principle, and your continuing to demand that "causation is assumed with no way to verify that chance is at work," is a misrepresentation of scientific truth. Whether your unsupported belief that magic controls the fate of the universe is actually true, from a theistic viewpoint, is irrelevant to the scientist. As for what you want taught in school, I couldn't care less.