Yet again a materialist comes into these pages (this time rvb8) and asserts that ID necessarily entails a supernatural designer. The conversation usually goes something like this:
Materialist: ID is not science, because it studies the supernatural.
ID Proponent: No, that’s wrong. ID is the study of design in nature. While the designer may be supernatural, he is not necessarily so.
Mat: No, you are dissembling.
ID: Why do you say that?
Mat: Because the design of living things would require a miracle, and miracles are, by definition, supernatural.
ID: Let me get this straight. You believe that blind, unguided natural forces are sufficient to account for the staggering complexity and diversity of life.
Mat: That’s right. That is why it is a superior scientific explanation to ID, which requires a miracle-working designer.
ID: Wait. If the design of life is not beyond the reach of blind unguided natural forces, it must follow on your own premises that the design of life involves nothing but chemistry; no miracles are necessary.
Mat (starting to feel queasy as the logic begins to unfold): Well, yeah.
ID: And if blind unguided natural forces can manipulate the chemicals sufficiently to create life without a miracle, surely there is nothing in principle that would preclude a designer wielding super-sophisticated technology from doing the same thing without resort to a miracle.
Mat: Well, who designed the designer? And besides ID is part of an international plot to establish a theocracy. You’re a poopyhead. . . .
The double standard on display here is quite amusing. The materialist swallows right down the camel that blind unguided natural forces can design staggeringly complex life forms. Then he strains at the gnat of a non-supernatural designer wielding sophisticated technology doing the same thing.