I've been reading up on the Intelligent Design debate quite a bit lately, and have decided to subject the theories of the ID movement to the flawless logical processes that generated these ideas in the first place.
Premise: Any biological structure that is too statistically improbable to have developed by a random process (i.e., evolution) must have been designed by an intelligent designer.
Other Premise: Any complex structure or chain reaction that, with the removal of any one component of the complex chain, fails completely, is termed irreduceably complex. According to ID proponents, such structures or systems would have to emerge all at once, fully developed, the likelihood of such happening randomly is so startlingly remote, that it must have been the work of an Intelligent Designer who is not necessarily "God" but is definitely more powerful than you or me. Well, you, anyway. Some examples of structures or sequences that are offered up as examples; The eyeball, the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting.
Rob's super duper thought experiment: The argument goes, that the human sack of genetic material is so chock full of remarkable systems that are so wildly unlikely to have happened by chance, that we must have been created by an intelligent designer. In order to tantalize the ID crowd, I'm going to stipulate that this position is true and correct for the duration of this thought experiment. "Have you completely lost your senses?" you say (to me, not the ID crowd, for this is a civil debate.) Bear with me.
- For the sake of argument, I have been created by an intelligent designer, whose name is Adrienne. We know this is true because I am obviously too statistically unlikely to have happened by chance. Ask my parents. They took all the precautions.
- For the sake of argument, it is even less likely that Adrienne occurred by chance, for designers are predominately more complex than their creations.
- Adrienne, the intelligent designer must have been herself designed by another, more intelligent designer. His name, incidentally is Barry.
- Before Barry left the family disco band, and began designing highly improbable designers, Barry was himself designed by a more intelligent designer named Carla, who, incidentally worked at Apple on the PowerMacs.
- Carla is designed by Devon; Devon designed by Earl; Earl designed by Fiona who disgusted by Earl's work ethic retires in a huff, but not before she can be designed by Gerhard.
- I could go on, but I don't want to tax the bandwidth of my server.
If humanity or life or the US tax code is too complex to have developed randomly and is therefore the product of an intelligent designer, you have to be ready to consider the same argument applied to your designer. By this argument, every designer must have been designed, and now you get to explain to me how an infinite number of creators fit into a finite universe, while leaving enough space for tacos, Tom Cruise's ego, and SUVs.
I don't go around trying to disprove the "There is no god but G_d" crew, but I'd say if Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity were successful in making their way into the science curriculum, it would only result in introducing malleable young minds to polytheism, for any single designer is too complex to have randomly occurred, and ergo must have been designed. My goal here is not to disprove G_d, nor is it to prove a multiplicity of them, I just think the ID crowd might want to polish up another "scientific theory" if monotheism is at all important.