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"Since God is supposed to move in mysterious ways, the particular ends and directions might well be inscrutable"

The Judeo Christian God is the God that made man in his image. If this is true then it is incompatible with the creation of Man by chance a la Darwinism. It is compatible though with evolution directed by God...but that is ID...oh well....

Still, we have Pantheism, which is a nice cozy God that lets you do whatever you want because all is God...both good and evil. Its very popular among new agers and compatible fully with Darwinism.

The great fiction that powers the ID movement is that evolution is inherently antireligious.

Does the shoe fit?

The only way to believe it is, per Tertullian, because it is absurd. Intelligent design will be happening when the humans master not only reading the genomes, but understanding them and then writing them ourselves. If we write [and then implement] them intelligently, then it will be Intelligent Design. Probably something like year 2150, give or take.

It is compatible though with evolution directed by God...but that is ID...

Actually, no, that's not ID. Remember ID bases it's "inference" of "intelligent design" on the presumption that certain features COULD NOT have evolved, even though many ID'ers believe many other things did evolve. ID may coexist with evolution as a kind of supplement: somethings evolved, others were "intelligently designed". And granted it's entirely mysterious what ID might be in terms of positive process, since IDers resolutely refuse to even speculate about how (or when, or where) instances of ID are actually instantiated.

But it's entirely clear what ID is NOT. If it's possible that something "evolved" then that is definitely not "ID".

Still, we have Pantheism, which is a nice cozy God that lets you do whatever you want because all is God...both good and evil. Its very popular among new agers and compatible fully with Darwinism.

Sure, pantheism's compatible too. And most "new ager" types are probably evolutionists of some description (although certainly not all -- as witness our own Alamo-Girl and betty boop, Christian new agers who take the creationism side in these debates). But it should be noted that new agers have often been hostile to Darwinism -- that is to specifically darwinian versions of evolution -- and sometimes champion creationism, or at least creationism's antievolution arguments.

Just a few example of works by new agers in my antievolution library that come to mind: Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (repeats many typical creation science arguments); William Fix, The Bone Peddlers (ditto); Maharahji PradaYadaWhatchmacallhim Life Comes from Life (Hare Krishna -- evolution contradicts reincarnation which holds that souls evolve but species remain fixed); and several others (e.g. anything related to Theosophy, which has it's own evolutionary scheme including "root races" and "vibrational levels" that is utter incompatible on multiple grounds with any scientific account).

No one believes life came into being by pure blind chance. That's a 19th Century materialist oversimplification of Darwinian evolution. If you believe there's nothing special about life itself and there's no unseen reality that guides it along, then life came into being by mere chance. If on the other hand, you believe life is the result of the purposeful interaction of a variety of complicated factors, then evolution is indeed purposeful. There are a number of different interpretations of evolution and a strictly materialist one is not the only one compatible with science. Its only where you deny the existence of natural laws that evolution ends and creationism and its intellectual progeny enters. The world allows for miracles but God chose not to interfere in order to preserve human free will and see to it Nature remained a world apart from that of Man. Nature and living things do not recognize any Higher Law or Truth and Beauty. Only human beings are capable of that and science has only added to our appreciation of the grandeur and complexity of the world we all inhabit.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")