I would claim that ID by the nature of the idea itself posits a deity. (Although not necessarily the Christian God) I have posted this argument a few times and have never had a response from an ID proponent:
ID is the idea that life cannot evolve without the guidance of some intelligent designer. Presumably "life" would include intelligent life. Therefore, in order for intelligence to exist, there must be a designer. However, if this is true, where did the intelligent designer come from? There are two possibilities. First possibility: there must be another, even more intelligent designer who designed the intelligent designer, in which case where did THAT designer come from? This leads to an infinite regression of intelligent designers. Second possibility: the intelligent designer must have either created itself or must have existed eternally. In this case, I think most people would recognize this entity as a deity, although maybe not one with all the characteristics of the Christian God.
Like nearly everything else on these threads, this has ben pointed out hundreds of times.
The ID argument works something like this: when you are court arguing ID as science, no deity is mentioned or claimed; in fact the need for a deity is explicitly denied. Meanwhile, back on FR, anyone not believing in ID is an atheist.
Hi Stremba! Thought I, a person with a keen interest in ID, might try to respond. For what my opinion is worth, I suspect that most people who work in the ID field are not all that interested in dealing with theological issues: That is not a proper subject for science. They are interested in the nature of what is. And one of the things they’ve noticed is how fascinatingly “well-tuned” the universe is for the seeming purpose of giving rise to life and in particular to human life. Such fine-tuning (and so many instances of same) of the physical universe seems impossible to account for as an outcome of randomness, of a mere piling up of “accidents.” I should note that insights of this kind are today largely coming from physics.
You wrote, “ID is the idea that life cannot evolve without the guidance of some intelligent designer.” I would hesitate to use the word “guidance”; that implies a kind of hands-on intervention in the processes of the natural world. But it seems to me this would not be required if, say, (for instance) the Singularity of the Big Bang, understood as specifying the initial conditions of the universe (space, time, matter), also promulgated a kind of “cosmic information set” that governs what possibilities may occur in the evolution of the universe. It doesn’t specify what must occur, but what may probably occur, if I might put it that way. In other words, it may deal with probability amplitudes. Yet this is not the same thing as saying that a sovereign will is directly “guiding things.” Within certain parameters, the universe is free to develop. (And this also means that human free will is not an illusion.) What this hypothesis does say, however, is that the Singularity has a certain quality of “design” to it; it may be an “artifact” of intelligence. A philosopher might tell you that the Singularity is analogous to the Platonic Idea that seeks manifestation in the created forms of nature, living and non-living. That, at least, is how Plato conceived the same problem we face here.
But this hypothesis is impossible to submit directly to scientific experiment. The problem is – for ID or physical cosmology more generally – that space and time began with the Big Bang. Therefore, it is senseless to speak of “a time before” there even was time. It turns out that all the known physical laws break down in that first infinitesimal moment of Planck time that succeeded the Big Bang, in which time and space and matter were “born.”
But you ask: “Where did the intelligent designer come from?” You indicate there are two possibilities. “First possibility: there must be another, even more intelligent designer who designed the intelligent designer, in which case where did THAT designer come from? This leads to an infinite regression of intelligent designers.” Yet we know from logic that an infinite regression of causes is tantamount to saying that there is no effective causation of anything. For this, one would need an “uncaused first cause,” or “prime mover.” And it seems to stand to reason that such an uncaused cause cannot exist in the space-time dimensions of our natural universe; for it cannot be contained in that which it caused – it must stand “outside” of it. Or in other words, the uncaused cause created space and time itself. You note that the uncaused cause (which you term the intelligent designer) must have either created itself (and thus would have a cause from itself, which seems redundant); or must have existed eternally. But this latter statement is what we would expect; for not to be “in time” is to be timeless – that is, what we call eternal. You go on to say: “In this case, I think most people would recognize this entity as a deity, although maybe not one with all the characteristics of the Christian God.” And Stremba, you are right about this – BUT: that is not a scientific question.
The question of God (of whatever description) is not what ID studies. I think mainly ID theorists are content to leave such questions to the philosophers and the theologians, who have a better “method” for dealing with them. Science must address empirical facts, period; and thus must restrict itself to the purported design, to the extent it is factual, i.e., amenable to observation and test. And the designed quality or nature seems to be evident – especially when you start to realize how “tuned” the universe is, thus to produce the kinds of outcomes that we see all around us in the natural world.
Don't know if this helps at all, Stremba. But I did want you to have a direct reply from an "ID proponent," even if it's not a very good one (perhaps). Thank you so much for writing.
Have a joyful Christmas and a wonderful New Year!