I really don't get the idea of intelligent design. It just pushes the problem up a layer. If I understand the basic premise, life is too complex to be a random chance, so it requires an intelligence to have created it. But where did that intelligence come from? This question seems to be dismissed as unimportant, but it illuminates the soft underbelly of intelligent design. Either intelligence can arise without life, or intelligence requires intelligence to arise. So either intelligent design is based on a vague premise or a contradictory premise.
It seems laughable that people criticize evolution because it doesn't explain how life began, and then those same people don't explain how intelligence began.
Which seems more unlikely, spontaneous creation of life as a super simple level, or the spontaneous creation of intelligence capable of creating life.
It also renders the concept of design moot.
I've yet to have an ID proponent identify anything in the universe that wasn't designed. If everything is designed then saying life was designed is a zero content statement.
The question of 'who designed the designer' is most famously put forth by Dawkins in his book The God Delusion which fellow atheist Michael Ruse reviewed and stated, "would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing".
1. A known designer is not required by Intelligent Design - you don't need to know who designed the designer when you discover an arrow - you know it was designed. (Can be applied the the fine tuned universe, DNA, rare earth, consciousness, etc...) Intelligent Design is an inference - analogia, a fortiori and vera causa - same as Darwin used to form his theory.
2. We know the universe had a beginning (Big Bang) and if there was an infinite past we would never arrive at the present. Logical reasoning leads to the conclusion that the initial cause of motion must be something that is not, itself, in motion—an unmoved mover – the Prime Mover. If every cause is the result of a previous cause, or, if everything is caused by something else, then we have an "infinite regress" of causes which is logically incoherent (who designed the designer). Furthermore, natural processes cannot create natural processes (circulus in probando). So we are logically left with ‘creation’ from outside of nature.
3. When postulating a creator outside of nature, asking who created the creator would be like asking 'how long did it take to create time' - 'how much area did it take to create space' - 'how much weight did it take to create matter'. Something that transcends time has no beginning(unlike our universe) - therefore no designer or cause. (It could literally have no beginning because there was no such thing as “before” or “beginning” or history when there was no time)
4. From a theological Judeo-Christian standpoint, the question becomes "who made God?" - which means you are reduced to thinking about created gods. I don't know any Christian who believes God was created. It just becomes an absurd question you might hear a child ask.
I really don’t get the idea of intelligent design. It just pushes the problem up a layer.