Disregarding for a moment the whole Intelligent Design vs. Evolution fracas, I'd like to detour into the nature of evolution itself. It occurs to me that the system doesn't necessarily produce long-term improvements. It can't really, because a given environment typically changes faster than genes can mutate (in the case of complex organisms like humans, dogs, whales, et cetera). Furthermore, there's no indication to me that evolution will continually produce an improved organism -- only a
different organism that is best suited to the current environment.
I'm a big fan of Occam's Razor and the KISS principle, and from there it seems to me that there is no genetic or environmental requirement for the intelligence or capability of the human organism to increase. We wage war and poison the earth, but that's not anything that evolution can help with. Not in this time frame. Those activities, I think, are a result of what evolution didn't cut out. Those behaviors were not cut out because they did not present a problem until very recently, on an anthropological scale.
I am convinced of the validity of evolution, mind you. This is by no means an attempt to undermine its value. But I believe that this point should be brought up when discussing its relation to ID, because evolution is often mistakenly represented (IMO) as a steady ramp of "improvement." But it has its share of dead ends -- and mistakes like us
I add that last part jokingly, but when I think about it... When evolution creates a species that can come to the brink of self-annihilation and, I assume, an ensuing ecological catastrophe, it's done more harm than good to the system by creating us.