Hi Ashwin,
You did not respond to my argument, not in the least.
Since you did not seem to apprehend the argument, please indulge my restating it:
- Science supplies a limited, non-teleological view of everyday phenomena.
- To speak of any purpose or meaning beyond the bare existence of everyday phenomena, you must speak of ideas or entities outside the realm of everyday phenomena.
- Therefore, no scientific theory–be it gravity, quantum mechanics, co-valent bonding, or evolution–is able makes any reference to God or purpose.
Your statements exhibit, in my opinion, a fundamental lack of self-awareness. Take these two sentences, for example:
You profess here a willingness to accept the theory of evolution, given sufficient scientific evidence. This exhibits a certain lack of self-awareness, in my opinion, because you have another strong, non-scientific objection to evolution. First, please allow me to number your two sentences for the purpose of clear discussion.
No matter what scientific evidence is presented, you are still going to reject the theory of evolution because you believe that evolution is in conflict with sentence #1. I could almost select an Ashwin post at random 
to find your belief that evolution and faith are fundamentally in conflict. In fact, after you professed in this thread your openness to discuss evolution on the basis of scientific evidence, you made this statement in another thread:
So, no, I don’t believe you are willing today to accept the theory of evolution, regardless of the question of scientific merit. You have the understanding (misunderstanding, in my opinion) that the theory of evolution’s lack of reference to God is equivalent to denial of God. Your understanding (or misunderstanding) causes you to portray evolution as opposed to the sovereignty of God.
What you have yet to grapple with is that every scientific model includes a randomness component due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle(*). In some scientific models, the component is small enough to be ignored; for example, you do not need to worry about Planck scale precision of the flight path of a cannonball. In other scientific models–for example, the standard model of particle physics, radioactivity, meteorology, and genetic mutations–the randomness component cannot be ignored.
Seeing something as random does not mean that science cannot say anything about; the distribution of outcomes over time can conform to a probability distribution, and that distribution can be inferred from sufficient observation. Shapiro asserts that the distribution of mutations is not uniform; it has a skew. For the purposes of this discussion, I do not dispute that. However, Shapiro’s view does not mean any one mutation event is not random; it simply means that the randomness can be described by a non-uniform probability distribution over time. This analysis is mathematically identical to the way that physicists view the emission of light particles and other random quantum events: they can be described by non-uniform probability distributions over time, but the outcome of any one event is still random.
Until you come to the realization, Ashwin, that the theory of evolution is theologically and philosophically identical to every other scientific theory (gravity, quantum mechanics, meteorology) that has emerged from Baconian methodological naturalism, any discussion of scientific merit is going to be a fruitless waste of time, both for you and for everyone else. You will never accept anything that you consider to be an affront to God’s sovereignty, nor would I want you to.
I only want you to realize two things:
- The theory of evolution and every other scientific theory have the same standing with respect to the faith-science relationship. If you prefer to agree with atheist philosophers like Dawkins, rather than with the vast majority of Christian scientists, that methodological naturalism is tantamount to a rejection of God, go ahead, be my guest. Just be honest with yourself and your audience.
- Christians who disagree with you and believe that science does not and should not provide a teleology–because the telos is Christ, and science cannot describe Him–are nevertheless your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
(*) Randomness is probably related to more than the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but an in-depth discussion of the ontological nature of randomness is fodder for a different discussion thread.