Accepting, or Rejecting, Common Descent Has Real Consequences for Biological Understanding

Some have said that intelligent design does not commit one to accepting or rejecting common descent, and I agree. But it does not follow from the neutral stance of intelligent design towards common descent that accepting or rejecting the latter -- which for brevity I'll abbreviate as CD -- has no real consequences for biological understanding. Quite the contrary.

Before I go on, some clarification may help: "Intelligent design" (ID) holds only that we can detect intelligent causation in the...