The hypothesis refers to an “intelligent cause” not a “designer” – and no, the hypothesis has no obligation to identify whether the “intelligent cause” is a phenomenon or an agent – much less a specific phenomenon or agent.
The hypothesis holds when scientific evidence shows that there exists a direct effect/cause relationship between “certain features” and an “intelligent cause.”
As I have mentioned before, it should be obvious that “certain features” in offspring are the effect of the parents’ choice of mates (an intelligent cause.)
Jeepers, it should be only obvious that intelligent creatures choose their mates, good choices directly improving their chances for survival.
The concept of a “random” walk should be dismissed on the merits anyway.
After all, we cannot say something is random in the system when we don’t know – and can’t know – what the system “is.” For instance, a series of numbers extracted from the extension of pi may appear to be random when they are in fact highly determined. And we do not know - nor can we know - the full number and types of dimensions which make up physical reality.
Order cannot rise spontaneously from an unguided physical system. Period.
There are always guides to the system. At the very least, the guides include space, time, physical causation and physical laws.
Self-organizing complexity and cellular automata both require guides to the system.
The intelligent design hypothesis suggests that some of the guides are "intelligent." Again, it simply says that "certain features of life and the universe are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an unguided process such as natural selection."
That would be because I have no interest in what people believe in the privacy of their own hearts.
I care about the manifestations of ID that attempt to subvert science and science teaching. The versions of ID I object to are, in fact, legal entities.
Variation plus natural selection constitute an algorithm, so the term random does not apply to the system. If you wish to call the system intelligent, so be it. It has, over time, a visible problem solving behavior.
It is, however, not particularly kind or sensitive to the individual living creatures that participate in the dance, so I fail to see any moral lessons to be derived from it. Variation exhibits little or no foresight, other than spreading its bets across the table, so that some of them win.