Darwin's Theory - Does it work without God?

Before going through this post, you might want to go through my earlier related post How God Makes Lives Easier...

Charles Darwin seems to be the ideal victim of all religious philosophers' ire for proposing the Theory of Evolution. Such people believe that, by proposing the theory, Darwin went against the premise that God created the Universe, the Earth, all life on Earth and so on. Before taking sides with Darwin or God (or more important to find whether they actually form a part of opposite teams!), let us see what the theory says:

Darwin's Theory of Evolution - The Premise
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor: the birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers -- all related. Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) "descent with modification". That is, complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time. In a nutshell, as random genetic mutations occur within an organism's genetic code, the beneficial mutations are preserved because they aid survival -- a process known as "natural selection." These beneficial mutations are passed on to the next generation. Over time, beneficial mutations accumulate and the result is an entirely different organism (not just a variation of the original, but an entirely different creature)
Source: http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

Notice the use of words "beneficial" and "preserved". The first question that comes to mind is who decides what is beneficial for the organism's genetic code and what is not? Who "preserves"? The process is conveniently called "natural selection". Now, what is nature? Does nature have a will? Is nature intelligent? After all, if, as Darwin proposes, mutations occur randomly AND nature did not have a will (or intelligence) sufficient to decide whether a particular kind of genetic code is good enough to be passed on to the next generation, we could find in nature a large number of organisms with different genetic codes - both beneficial and non-beneficial and that too in varying degrees. However, that, clearly, does not happen. Nature controls the number of bad or non-beneficial species by eliminating them - by blocking that genetic code from passing on to next generations of the same species. This means, there is a force that works behind the scenes to increase chances of survival of a species and helps life to evolve!!! This force might be something that is commonly called God or Nature. So, Darwin's theory may need the presence of God to work as it does.

This conclusion is perplexing to me. It really makes me think if Darwin actually did presuppose (even though unknowingly - I do not know of his actual stance on the existence of God/Nature) the existence of an intelligent force in order for life to survive and evolve on earth.

This further prompts a look at the theory of Intelligent Design that proposes: "while evidence pointing to the nature of an "intelligent cause or agent" may not be directly observable, its effects on nature can be detected."

Even though the theory of Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory because it is not based on experiments, we ought to keep our minds open to the idea that the currently accepted scientific theories of evolution might not be sufficient to explain the evolution of life on earth.