How can it not be? Please explain why the Designer would definitely not intervene in whatever experiment one constructs that is related to proving or disproving ID? It is you who is proposing an interventionary tinkering Designer. How do you know when the Designer is tinkering, and when the Designer is not tinkering?
That's it in a nutshell! Elegantly put.
(PLACEMARKER)
The design hypothesis begins with observations of certain features of the biological world that exhibit specified complexity. The crucial connecting premise to an inference of design, usually left out by opponents, is that we know that intelligent agency is causally sufficient to produce such phenomena.
ID does not necessarily propose an interventionary, tinkering designer. A designer could have started things in motion and now be on his lunch break. A designer could be sustaining the whole universe at every moment by the word of his power. It doesn't matter to a design inference. How would one know if a putative designer is tinkering or not tinkering is not really relevant to whether something was originally designed or not. As I said, I don't know of anyone who discounts the results of experiments because of the logical possibility of unseen, unknown influences upon the experiment.
But suppose that a human designer, unbeknownst to us, tinkered with an experiment. Would we be able to detect it? How? Is there a method for detecting tinkering? Perhaps. Perhaps not. If an unembodied designer tinkered with an experiment would it have any empirical consequences? If it didn't, what difference would it make? If it did, perhaps we could detect it by comparison with the normal operation of things. In such a case an inference of design would certainly be warranted, wouldn't it?:^)
Suppose I was a super microbiologist and I created in the laboratory a new variety of bacteria that used jet propulsion instead of a propeller for motility, and I surreptitiously planted this new variety or species in some organisms so that it would be 'accidently' be discovered by some other biologists.
What would the Darwinist causal story be for the this newly discovered organism? Would anyone using Darwinian explanations ever be able to discover that this organism was indeed designed and not the result of natural selection?
The real question is, if things really are designed, as they at least give the appearance of being, is there a way to reliably detect it?
Cordially,