What is the I in ID?

jar writes:

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I do believe that there is an I in Intelligent Design and that the I is GOD.

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But the issue is, where is the evidence of that design?

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IMHO, that evidence is seen at the basic rules level. Where that level is changes as we learn more. A hundred years fifty years ago I would have placed that at the molecular and gene level. As we learned more, it moved to the atomic level, to the four forces. Later, as we learned more it appeared the design was at the sub-atomic level. Now it might be at the string or brane level but I’m willing to bet, as we learn more we will find the design racing away to just beyond the very limits of our knowledge.

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Could you possibly get any more reductionist in your urge to find purpose and intelligence in the universe? I'm no believer, but it seems to me your God is shrinking away to nothingness.Certain people use the beauty of Nature, say, as support for their hypothesis of a guiding intelligence behind our universe. As flawed and selective as this reasoning is, it at least gives the designer credit for something worthwhile. Am I the only one who wonders why the bacterial flagellum represents for intelligent-design creationists the high-water mark of their Creator's activity? You've gone them one better, though: what's so impressive about the basic laws of physics or sub-sub-atomic reality that we need to give credit to a purposeful designer for them?If I were a believer, I'd be inclined to think that Nature has to relect the wisdom of its Creator on every level. If the only evidence of God is at the smallest level imaginable, pardon me for missing it.regards,
Esteban Hambre

Ned states:

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But you're suggesting that God couldn't forsee that wonderous things could come from just the right set of carefully chosen rules.

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I'm suggesting nothing of the sort. I'm asking why the fact that 'rules' exist that make some sort of bioreplication an eventual possibility constitutes evidence for the existence of God. That is, how can anyone tell that these conditions were set intentionally and aren't just (literally) cosmic accidents? What would a universe look like if no purposeful creator programmed these conditions?regards,
Esteban Hambre

jar claims,

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IMHO, there really are no limitations on what a GOD can do including setting self-limitations.

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In that case, the concept is just so empirically significant. I mentioned in one of the Intelligent Design debates that forensic investigators would be able to rule out human intervention by showing that something is humanly impossible. You have just come up with a concept of God that can be applied to literally any instance and could never conceivably be ruled out.regards,
Esteban Hambre

jar,I don't know what the nature of God is, or isn't. You've defined the term to be a perfect non-reducible concept, something that can be literally anything you want it to be. Why do you say the ID creationists are wrong to think that God designed everything, but you're within your rights to claim that God created the rules that everything is based on? What's frivolous about the way they throw around a term they don't understand, when you use it equally indiscriminately?This is why I'm not religious anymore: I get embarrassed when I hear people use God as a catch-all phrase to explain how lazy their thinking is. When someone says God, I know they've given up hope of understanding something in a rational and honest way. It's never used as a demand to know more, to discover more, and to shed illusions in order to see the greater wonder that Nature and the Universe represent.regards,
Esteban Hambre