[jennyp]

This is only to be expected from evolution

Or from intelligent design. It's a wash if that's what you want to argue.

True enough. However, there are lots of patterns that evolution would not explain or allow for. Intelligent design can be made to account for anything at all. As a result, it's not a scientific theory.

BINGO! I knew someone would use the "could've just as well have been designed" gambit, but tallhappy did it right in post #2!

Every observation is consistent with "could have been designed". The question is, what pattern would an ID'er expect to see? And don't tell me "irreducible complexity", because plenty of creationists here insist that the best designers adapt their existing code to new projects.

The best human designers reuse & adapt our existing code, yes; but that's precisely because our memories & our understanding of all possible algorithms & design patterns aren't perfect. Mindless evolution has only the memory of the most recent previous design, so adaptation is the only design "strategy" open to it.

OTOH, a perfect designer would have to spend an infinitesimal amount more of effort on a brand new design than He would on a purely incremental design. This is why ID will always be helpless to predict a pattern. The perfect designer's choices would be purely aesthetic - an inscrutable whim. Yet ID could make a prediction assuming their designer is imperfect - but they'd never do that because an imperfect designer would never be worthy of being the unchallengable Authority Figure they're looking for who can save society from the awful consequences of (horrors!) "philosophical materialism".

[Ahban]

I am willing to postulate an "imperfect" designer for living things. At least imperfect in the sense of "not all-knowing". This is the bibical position as I see it. While Jesus was on Earth, He was not "all-knowing", yet the Bible teaches that it was Christ, rather than God the Father, who created all things (Colossians Chapter One and also John chapter one plus others).

Why would God separate Himself from his all-knowing nature to create at least some of the living organsims on Earth? I would suggest that an all-knowing creator would know in advance which of Adam's descendents would choose Heaven (God) and which Hell (self). In order to escape that foreknowledge and yet still preserve Free will (a paradox I know) God stepped outside of that one aspect of his nature, and created through the Son.