Good point. Calculus was invented by Wilhelm Von Leibniz, a devout Christian. I think he may have been a Lutheran minister. He was attempting to understand how the universe is structured, i.e., he believed that all creation is composed of huge numbers of discrete pieces. This involved not just matter but motion, time, etc. Because these pieces (he came with some term for them) were so huge in number, everything appears to be continuous. Calculus of course adds together infinite numbers of diffential pieces of things.
PMFJI, but three words: vertebrate blood clotting.
The genes involved in blood clotting have been shown to be closely related to a smaller number of genes in the distant ancestor species (information increase), and the functional steps from the original pancreatic enzyme to the current refined, multistep self-catalyzing process (specified complexity) are plausible (not IC). And the theory has survived an attempt at falsification from Behe intact.
The forces behind the ID movement certainly hope people think it does.
... This rigid scientific materialism infected all other areas of human knowledge, laying the foundations for much of modern psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. Yet today new developments in biology, physiscs, and artificial intelligence are raising serious doubts about scientific materialism and re-opening the case for the supernatural. ...
Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, ca. 5/1997
Because otherwise the ID theory falls into a logical trap. If the biodiversity around us was not created by a supernatural (outside nature) being, heretofore known as "God" it must have been created by a natural being, heretofore known as "Nate." Nate must have come from somewhere; he either came from "God" (so why have a middleman and not just say God did it?), another natural being (ad infinitum -- but somewhere an original natural being had to arise, either through the actions of God or naturally), or he arose naturally. Now, if Nate or any of his predecessors arose naturally, why couldn't the biodiversity of Earth? So, the "Intelligence" in ID boils down simply to "God."
Intelligent design works on the premise that we have the ability to know (usually) when something is designed, and when it is not.
Do we? Crystals have regular symmetrical structures. In general regular structures have a tendency to be artificial ("there are no straight lines in nature," et al), so therefore crystals are artificial, right? DNA is a hodge podge of "information" some of which is no longer used (you don't have a tail, yet the DNA coding for a tail still exists and an occasional mutation activates this coding from time to time). Crystals look far more artificial than DNA does.
Would you accuse an archaeologist of invoking the scribe-of-the-gaps when he finds a tablet and declares that a human intelligence created it?
The tablet usually does not consist of random words or sentence fragments interspersed among random letters. Some natural phenomenon have been mistaken in the past for artificial phenomena. For example, the metallic spheres found around extinct and active volcanos were once thought to be man-made. Now they are known to be created by the volcanos themselves. The human brain often sees order where there is none. The most common example of this is seeing faces in rocks or clouds. There is name for this phenomenon, but unfortunately it skips my mind at the moment.
Intelligent Design merely says that design, represented by specified complexity, is detectable. This is a widely known fact.
Says who? What is this "specified complexity" beyond which everything is artificial? Natural substances behave in complex manners under certain conditions (liquid helium flows uphill, electrons can cross move room point A to point B without crossing the intervening space, etc.). Any threshold of complexity beyond which one declares everything to be artificial is, perforce, arbitrary.
Let's try and apply it to biology. Please tell me why asserting that biological complexity is the result of an intelligent designer, will stifle scientific inquiry? Would we want any less to know how this intelligent designer did it? I fail to see why we would cease to try and understand biological systems simply because we believe they have their origin in an intelligence. Isn't it odd that Newton, and the other Christian founders of science (which most were), didn't find their inquiry stifled? Upon what do you base your assertion anyway?
Upon the historical reaction of religious authorities to scientific inquiry. Galileo was not the first persecuted for his research; Copernicus was roundly denounced for his heliocentric view of the universe. The heliocentric theory was far better at modelling planetary motion, including the retrograde movement of some planets than the church-accepted geocentric model. The church's proclamation that the Bible explicitly states God placed the Sun and Moon (the greater and lesser lights of Genesis) in the heavens, which the Bible also states are "above" the Earth specifically indicates the Earth is the center of everything, therefore, "God did it, 'nuff said." Copernicus, Galileo, et al did their research in spite of, not because of, church doctrine. Newton came along a century later when a lot of the old church-mandated paradigms were collapsing. Eventually, the modern heirs of the church will come to accept that evolution is as tried and true as the heliocentric model and biological inquiry will not be tarred with the "anti-Christian" brush any longer.
Where is the magic cutoff between micro-evolution and macro-evolution? Where do the accumulation of mutations suddenly stop and not allow the crossing of species lines? Or, if you are one to accept speciation, why cannot the accumulation of mutations in the daughter species continue to move those daughter and granddaughter species further and further apart, eventually leading to different genuses (geni?). If we go back far enough, why can't the accumulations of mutations not even lead to different kingdoms in the great (to the nth power) granddaughter species?