“Evolution is inextricably tied to inheritance.”
Replacing Darwin, Nathaniel T. Jeanson, Master Books, (2017).
The term “intelligent design” implies a teleological intent in the direction of natural selection. We assume this intelligence is consciously self-aware, but this doesn’t have to be the case. The Grand Canyon was not “intelligently designed”; it evolved from the relationship of solar energy, water chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, chemical bonds, and quantum mechanics.
The same laws apply to the emergence and evolution of life. Matter that reproduces is more stable and survives over time as a species longer than ordinary non-reproducing matter. This creates an entropy gradient from less-stable to more-stable forms of matter. Matter randomly discovered how to create a battery from the voltage difference between hydrogen and carbon dioxide ions under the right conditions of temperature, pressure, and proximity, driving an “engine” of hydrocarbon synthesis and greater complexity. Complixification temporarily raised the individual organism’s entropy, but reproduction increased the stability of its species.
Four billion years later, here we are. No design needed. The whole thing is just a ball rolling down a hill, except the ball is the matter/energy of the universe, and the hill is the entropy of the universe.