First, let's admit it; Intelligent Design is just a branch of Creationism. When arguing for ID in our school curricula, the proponents will claim that the Designer need not be a diety; but be honest, have you every met anyone who believed in ID but did not believe that the Designer was God? Specifically, the God of the fundamentalist Christians? I thought not. (If you do happen to believe that; then how did your Designer(s) get to be so intelligent and capable without being products of ID? And if it/they didn't need ID; why do we?)
The basic premise of ID is that there are some features of humanity (and for some believers, other higher animals) that could not have happened through random mutation and natural selection. I'm not going to try to list any of those features because they keep changing as scientists prove that various things could easily have arisen through natural causes. So, basically, the claim is that God was such a piss-poor Designer that It had to keep tweaking things to get the result It wanted. Which means that ID believers must believe that God is not omniscient and omnipotent. (Or, of course, that It chose not to exercise those facilities for reasons that are beyond our understanding. A wonderful bit of hand-waving that means "You've caught me in a logical contradiction; but I'm going to ignore it instead of reexamining my beliefs.")
It seems to me that a really good Designer would be able to come up with a handful of basic fundamental constants such that a universe based on them would of necessity produce the sentient, sapient life forms desired. And that having created such a universe, It would then just sit back and let it develop according to Plan.
I'm not sure that a diety that needs to meddle is worthy of worship.
- Reverend Patrick Michael Lashley, Universal Life Church
