New theoretical base for intelligent design . . . also incorporating evolution?

Last week I mentioned my friend Perry Marshall's Cosmic Fingerprint website.

I have pursued his content quite a bit further. Interesting stuff.

As I wrote to a group of old-earth, intelligent design proponents--many of them well-known leaders in the field: Perhaps I should direct your attention directly to James A Shapiro's A 21st century view of evolution: genome system architecture, repetitive DNA, and natural genetic engineering, but I first learned about and heard of this idea from my friend Perry Marshall's Atheists' Riddle email series.

Perry presents Shapiro's ideas in a popular format through two lecture series--one composed of a single, 60-minute video presentation), the other of two MP3 presentations to a bunch of communication engineers at Alcatel-Lucent in Warrenville, IL, back in 2007. This latter series includes two presentations. One is 51 minutes long and is available in a single MP3 and a PDF of his PowerPoints or four videos (the four videos toward the top of the page).

The second presentation in this second series lasts 54 minutes and is almost identical to the 60-minute presentation of the first "series," but with a stronger bent toward the engineers in the audience and including about 10 minutes of Q&A. Again, you can acquire this in MP3 audio plus PDF or in five videos (toward the bottom of the page).

A very much simplified version of what he has to say is available in brief written form--either by a five-email email series or collected in a single page online.

Perry argues FOR evolution . . . but of a unique type. He says that random variation/mutation plus natural selection cannot generate what we see today:

Darwin was definitely right about natural selection. [Though, t]o be fair, being right about that is no Nobel Prize winning accomplishment. The weaklings die and the strong survive. I think our cave man ancestors were familiar with that one.

However, when evolutionists argue that random variation is "accidental copying errors in DNA"--i.e., essentially, "it's corrupted data that occasionally turns out to be beneficial instead of harmful,"

Darwin and the biology books are wrong.

As a communication engineer I know - with 100.000000000% certainty - that this is impossible.

Nowhere in the vast field of engineering is there any such thing as "the percentage of the time that corrupted data is helpful instead of harmful."

It's ALWAYS harmful. Always. Copying errors and data transmission errors never help the signal. They only hurt it.

I am cutting out much of what Perry says, but, with reference to the work of Nobel Prize-winner Barbara McClintock and University of Chicago biochemist and microbiologist James A Shapiro, he concludes with this proposal: It is not random, unintelligent mutations that yield evolutionary change-over-time; rather,

There is a mutation algorithm in DNA that makes *intelligent* substitutions when species need to adapt to their environment.

I'd be curious--and, I'm sure, Perry would be thankful--to receive any thoughtful input or feedback from anyone who might like to engage with his ideas.