[Buggman]

Until IDers can demonstrate the existence of a Designer (and address who designed the Designer), I'd say that the idea of ID (because it's not a theory) is baloney.

One wonders if we should apply your standard to the field of archaeology:

"Look! I've found clay tablets containing the writings of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture!"

"Don't be silly; there's no evidence of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture!"

"It's right here, in the tablets. What, did you think these writing marks made themselves?"

"Look, first you have to produce evidence of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture--then maybe we'll consider whether your tablets might have been written by them."

"The tablets are the evidence!"

"That's just circular reasoning! You have to come up with independent evidence of this advanced pre-Sumerian culture first, or you're just employing a culture-of-the-gaps approach."

"Okay, so what about these cuneform tablets from the early Babyonian period that attest to this pre-Sumerian culture? They're called the Iddites."

"Oh, that's just ancient legend! You can't take those seriously. Everyone knows that the Iddites are just a myth. Besides, just because you're an Iddite-enthusiast, you think everything points to them. Why couldn't it be Berkley's Creaites or Smith's Desites?"

"It could; I'm not saying on the basis of the evidence thus far that this tablet had to come from the Iddites, though I tend to favor that hypothesis of course. But the fact is that it shows evidence of design--"

"What evidence? I just see a bunch of scratches."

"You think that a scratch that looks like a cat happened in five separate places on this tablet by accident?"

"It could have. Given enough time, anything is possible."

"That's not true, and even if it were, the far more likely explanation is that this tablet was carved by an intellegent being."

"Not if no such being exists."

"Okay, but why should we believe that he doesn't when we're both standing here looking at his handiwork?"

"Oh, no, no, no. Nice try, but you can't get me to try to prove a negative. You have to prove that this Iddite or Creaite or Desite or whatever exists first, then we can discuss whether he or she wrote this tablet. Sheesh, you don't know anything about how science works, do you?"

[xzins]

As stated on another thread:

who designed the designer

No problem at all.

Something has to have been eternal. We can choose to accept that ZERO is eternal or that SOMETHING is eternal.

But if we have ZERO being eternal, then we must accept that ZERO can give rise to something.

[Dimensio]

"That's not true, and even if it were, the far more likely explanation is that this tablet was carved by an intellegent being."

"Not if no such being exists."

Your analogy is exposed as invalid here. The "intelligent being" referenced in your analogy would be a human, and direct observations can be made that humans exist now and have existed sufficiently far enough into the past. You can't use this as an analogy for a "designer" when no evidence of the existence of any "designer" species exists at all.

Unless you're going to suggest that the "D" of "ID" is a human.