Intelligent design (ID) is the position that life must have been designed by an intelligent creator and thus could not have evolved naturalistically. Setting aside all the positive evidence for naturalistic evolution, there is a glaring problem with the very idea of ID itself. Arguments for ID often take the form of comparing human-engineered mechanisms with biological mechanisms, for example comparing a flagellum to an egg beater. We can tell by looking, the argument goes, that both things are designed.

This hinges on humans being able to distinguish things that are designed from things that are not designed. The problem is that cdesign proponentsists believe that God created everything precisely to be the way it is. In other words, literally everything is designed. There is no disorder in the world that is not ultimately ordered according to God’s will. How can we tell, then, if something happens naturalistically? The question doesn’t even make sense. “Naturalistic” or “non-designed” phenomena can’t mean “without God” or else they don’t exist at all according to ID. If we expand natural phenomena to include things that God does, we essentially get theistic evolution. On the other hand, if everything is designed, then the ID proponent should be able to tell using the same reasoning as before that apparent randomness is also designed.

By invoking an omnipotent creator God, ID makes the distinction between designed and non-designed unclear, a distinction that arguments for ID rely on. Ultimately, this is a problem for creationist arguments from design. ID is essentially just a label for these arguments.