Debate:Does Intelligent Design deny the Existence of God?

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Consider the following:

Most (if not all) monotheistic religions are based on faith. Their god (or gods if taken collectively) requires followers to believe without direct evidence. The story of 'doubting' Thomas in the new Testament is typical of such requirements to believe and have faith, often in the face of adversity. In addition, these supreme being have omniscience.

However, Intelligent Design requires that there is an omniscient creator who has used his or her intelligence to underpin the creation of living things, and has left the evidence around for all to see. There is clearly a contradiction here.

Let us suppose that the premise of Intelligent Design is true: that is, that Life as we know it was created by some intelligent being, and this can be asserted from the evidence of our senses, and arguments such as: 'The creation of a living being by chance is as unlikely as a Boeing 757 to be reassembled by a whirlwind from parts in a hangar' are valid. This means that Intelligent Design becomes a 'non-negotiable' fact, which proves the existence of a creator.

However, you cannot now claim that that creator was an omniscient God, otherwise you are claiming that you an incontravertable proof of the existence of God, which denies the idea of 'faith', a cornerstone of monotheistic religion. Therefore it cannot be claimed that the Intelligent Designer is God, unless you are claiming that God created the world, then carelessly left the evidence for all to see. This would deny his omniscience.

This is OK, except that you now have an intelligent designer, whose existence you have to account for. This means that the initial problem has not been solved, merely increased; whereas before, you merely have to account for the existence of creation, you now have to account for the existence of the creation + intelligent designer.

There are only two ways out of this:

(i) By invoking an intelligent designer mark 2. This process can be seen to be impossible, as it clearly leads to infinite regress. There is no get out here, as at no point, can you claim that any of these intelligent designers IS God, because the requirement of 'faith' denies you the luxury of proof, which is precisely what you would be claiming to have.

or

(ii) By invoking a naturalistic process (such as evolution). However, we now have the contradiction that the assumption of the validity of Intelligent Design leads to the conclusion that a 'naturalistic' process created everythiong after all. This is clearly a contradiction.

At best, therefore, it seems that any claim for Intelligent Design cannot be used as evidence of the existence of an omniscient God; at worst, by claiming that Intelligent Design is true you would be asserting the non-existence of an omniscient God, because by possessing proof of the validity of ID, you are denying faith, and therefore undermining God's requirement to believe.

--CatWatcher 04:03, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Discuss:

Warning: Religion and logic - strange bedfellows.

It seems to me that what you say is correct up to a point. The logical way out for the Intelligent Designist must be to accept that God does not require belief without evidence. However, adopting that position has the potential to become embarrassing when, at some point in the future, science demonstrates that ID is wrong. At that point the IDist would be left utterly empty-handed. --Horace 05:52, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Warning Don't believe in God because Science is our true master.

Only humans (the clay) tells God (The Potter) you can't do anything for me.--jp 12:48, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

I am obviously completely dense. That remark makes no sense to me at all. Please explain. --CatWatcher 12:56, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

jp is assuming the existence of the IDer (the Potter, notice it's capitalized), in order to utterly demolish your argument. That is, "since the universe was Intelligently Designed, you are wrong". I find your thesis to be fascinating, although I think there might be loopholes - for instance, YHWH giving some evidence for benevolent creation, but not enough on it's own to justify belief in full without faith. I don't actually think that undermines your point, though. I'm going to have to sleep on this one and come back here later. Human 20:04, 9 April 2007 (EDT)