Evolution and intelligent design

Although I have a beef with evolutionism, I have no problem with evolution in principle as the means of creation. I recently found an article that does a good clear job of explaining what the fuss is about and outlining the issues. In it is this quote which is useful to use with creationist ID-ers [are there any other kinds?] to help get the discussion onto more interesting grounds.

Some obvious questions are not answered by the ID proponents: What is the mechanism of ID? How frequently does design occur? What percentage of organisms exhibit ID? Do we find design to be more prevalent in some lines of descent than others? Are human pathogens such as AIDS, cholera, and malaria intelligently designed? The latter question points to the observation that there are in nature many examples of what might be called 'unintelligent' design. Of all species that have arisen more than 99% have died out. While rabbits have a large and functional appendix, humans have only a vestigial, non-functional appendix that makes us prone to appendicitis. The recurrent laryngeal nerve in mammals does not go directly from cranium to larynx, but extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. This means that in a giraffe this nerve has a length of 20 ft., where one foot would have done. In the cephalopod (e.g., squid) eye the photoreceptor cells are turned towards the incoming light, which seems a good design, but in the mammalian eye they are pointing in the opposite direction, which would be poor design.

Metanexus Institute: Filed in: Intelligent_design, evolution, theology, biology