 Who is the designer in Intelligent Design? I'm guessing everyone watching this has a pretty good idea of what I mean when I say Intelligent Design. I'm going to avoid going into excruciating detail of the history and writings of the Intelligent Design proponents, nor of the evidence either side claims to possess. The Discovery Institute website in their Top Questions page states, The theory of Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. They also insist that Intelligent Design is not creationism. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of Intelligent Design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible, or any other sacred text. Steven C. Meyer, Senior Discovery Institute Fellow who has a PhD in the Philosophy and History of Science, writes in the Daily Telegraph London, February 9th, 2006, Thus, ID is not based on religion, but on scientific discoveries, and our experience of cause and effect, the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. Unlike creationism, ID is an inference from biological data. Even so, ID may provide support for theistic belief, but that is not grounds for dismissing it. Here's the argument I would like to address. What or whom is the designer? If we suppose biological structures to be designed, what does that say about the designer? What can we infer from the blueprints about the engineer? I will chauvinistically use the pronoun he from this point out because I am too lazy to do otherwise. Point one, the designer gives the appearance of intelligence. There is a great deal of complexity in most living things, more than what is found in the abiotic world except in a few exceptions. It would appear that the designer has at least human intelligence or the appearance of intelligence. Point two, the designer existed many billions of years ago and has visited Earth many times to make adjustments. Because new body plans, called bowel plans, appear in the fossil record, I am going to propose the designer made at least occasional changes to living things every few million years or so, or the designer has arranged the fossil record to appear so. Point three, the designer has the ability to implement these changes in a way that is undetectable to modern science and not within our current technology. Clearly, our best geneticist would be hard pressed to create new genes in the way that the designer does. While we can cut and paste a few genes, the designer clearly has some advanced capabilities we lack. Point four, the designer is malicious or unconcerned with the suffering of his creations or possibly unable to prevent suffering by design. In the natural history of life on this planet, extinctions are the rule, survival the exception. The designer has created organisms whose only purpose is to cause death, pain and disease to others. Organisms always produce more offspring than can be supported by the local environment, leading to high infant fatality, starvation, disease and death. Most animals must eat the carcasses of other organisms to survive, and all of this appears to have been designed into the system. Alternative options certainly existed, but the designer chose this system. He designed a genetic system prone to errors and defects. He apparently designed cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, scurvy, insanity and malaria into us on purpose. All of which a powerful designer should be able to eliminate if he's so desired. Why he chose not to do so is not obvious. Point five, the designer is deceitful or uses processes that are indistinguishable from natural forces. A designer, had he chosen to reveal his existence, could have spelled out his presence by a large stone carving, or by writing the prime numbers in DNA code, or by creating some organisms completely unexplainable, completely different from all the others. Maybe a silicon based life form with a pyramid shaped head and a beam of light shooting from its left toe. Something clearly unrelated to all the others to reveal the presence of design. Instead, he designed life to all share a common genetic code to appear to have a common origin. And he might, we will discuss this in the next point, have made life capable of making small changes by natural processes, but obviously not too many because that would interfere with his design. In short, he has designed life to give the appearance of having arisen from prior forms. He obviously buried a lot of fossils and caused them to appear ancient to hide his design. Point six, the designer himself is not currently detectable by any means known to us. There's no evidence that he is still running around making genetic changes. He hasn't designed any new life lately so far as we can tell. It's up for debate whether he allows for life to micro evolve, or if that's just him making changes undetectedly. There's no clear evidence of when he last designed a new life form because his only hallmark is complexity after all. So let's review. One, intelligent. Two, able to act over billions of years. Three, powerful enough to create new life forms. Four, malicious or uncaring. Five, deceitful or covert. Six, invisible to us. Now I would propose some possibilities for the creator. How about an evil time traveler from the distant future? He wants to ensure that his world gets the way that it is and he cares very little for our suffering in the meantime. He's intelligent, non-time restricted. He has powerful technology. He is covert and he must have invisibility power. I don't like this one because of the fossil issue. How is a single time traveler going to bury all those fossils? Here's option two. This is only a small modification. This time it's an alien from another planet who decides to create life. He's intelligent, possibly immortal or maybe time traveling. He has powerful technologies, covert and cloaked. Now this is better, I think, but we have to assume that this guy's gotten pretty bored over the last four billion years and maybe that's why he's malicious. Here's option three. The devil from the Judeo-Christian faith. He's intelligent, immortal, powerful, malicious, deceitful and invisible. I think this might be the best bet. There's a whole lot of literature on this guy and I think he fits the bill pretty well. So there's my proposal to you. The intelligent designer of all life on earth is Satan or possibly a really bored ET or a time traveling butthead. Go forth and be fruitful.