It’s late now and I’m ready to turn in, but I wanted to make a few notes for the conversation in the event it is still active tomorrow:
In relativity, an effect belongs to the future lightcone of its cause on an observer’s worldline in four dimensions. But in quantum field theory, that is not the case:
Splitting a single photon of well-defined energy into a pair of photons with initially undefined energies, and sending each photon through a fiber-optic network to detectors 10 km apart, researchers in Switzerland ... showed that determining the energy for one photon by measuring it had instantaneously determined the energy of its neighbor 10 km away
We perceive the physical realm as four dimensions – 3 of space and 1 of time. But string theory suggests that there may be a number of additional dimensions. In Kaluza-Klein theory they are compacted, but in some other theories they are not. In f-Theory, there is an additional time dimension, therefore the time dimension we sense as a line – an arrow of time – under f-Theory is a plane. Therefore, cause/effect could also be effect/cause and past, present, future all are perceptible from the other time dimension.
This is the single biggest objection to the theory because science “wants” to rely on physical causation as suggested by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Non-locality, however, as well as superposition and various other phenomena would make more sense with the extra temporal dimension. Who knows - as with the early objections to inflationary theory trying to preserve a steady state universe, these objections may also disappear.
The Designer in Intelligent Design arguments
Of course most of us would immediately aver that the Designer is God, but as others here have noted the designer could also be alien life in the cosmos (panspermia, astrobiology, cosmic ancestry) or even “collective consciousness” of the universe itself.
Causally-Closed Hypothesis
There is also great resistance in some of the sciences (notably neither mathematics nor physics) - to that which is non-corporeal, i.e. does not exist in space/time. Some correspondents here have the same difficulty: universals, mathematical structures, geometries, physical laws, information, qualia (likes/dislikes, pain/pleasure), complexity, semiosis, the will to live, consciousness, spirit.
It is challenging to discuss evolution with someone who believes that "all that there is" is “all that exists in nature” – but it is particularly difficult when they also dismiss all non-corporeals.
When you think something, and then you do that, how does your thought get converted into action? You think, 'I'm going to send theis post,' and then your finger pushes a switch on the mouse and it's done. How does a thought move the finger?