Facts against intelligent design

Answer 1

One of the common arguments in favor of "Intelligent Design" is that things, such as the eye, are too complex to have happened by evolution. Richard Dawkins, a critic of intelligent design, argues in The God Delusion that allowing for an intelligent designer to account for unlikely complexity only postpones the problem, as such a designer would need to be at least as complex. So God would have to be complex too, so we should expect a designer for God as well. And a designer for that designer as well, and so on.

Answer

Intelligent Design needs no facts against it since it doesn't say anything involving evidence of any kind anyway. It is not theory, nor a hypothesis, nor a science.

The idea that a watch can be found in a lonely little forest somewhere, is seen to be complex and thus there is an intelligent designer is not the start of an argument, especially since the arguer goes so fast from human intelligent designer to supernatural intelligent designer. There is no evidence at all in that little forest or anywhere for anything supernatural. (For that matter there is no evidence for anything religious or god-like or ghost-like at all.) Supernatural things by their very definition of supernatural is more or less admitting that they do not exist. The Intelligent Designer is deemed unfindable and untouchable as is every god and creator, which is more or less admitting an Intelligent Designer's nonexistence.

Looking into empty space (like the air in that little forest) and inferring something is an inappropriate way to infer something. You jump to the conclusion of an intelligence. Fine! Prove it!

Intelligent Design is an example of having an idea before having evidence. The Big Bang and black holes were ideas before evidence too. BUT NOW THERE IS EVIDENCE! The microwave radiation that buzzed through Arno Penzias' and Robert Wilson's telescopes and the red-shift of Galaxies....The Big Bang is a sensible idea! The warpature of space-time of a black hole in the foreground bends light from distant galaxies in the background and this bending of light can be seen through telescopes...black holes are a sensible idea! Also the Big Bang and black holes arose from sensible already-existing knowledges; things confirmed to already exist. The Universe, red-shifts and galaxies receding gave birth to the Big Bang idea. Stars and gravity gave birth to black hole ideas. This is the way to render an idea sensible.

The Intelligent Design idea is not sensible as it relies on staring into empty air (in the forest maybe) and inferring something that is not known to exist, something supernatural. No supernatural things exist. No supernatural things have evidence for them. THEREFORE no supernatural things are worth talking about. To pluck an intelligent designer out of the air seems as appropriate as sucking an intelligent designer out of a thumb.

If your answer requires actual arguments against the claims made by intelligent design advocates; here are a few arguments.

An intelligent design proponent declares that amino-acid sequences are too improbable. It is likely the intelligent design proponent has not at all been careful enough with probability. Say his birthday is 7 August and yours is 4 September. The probability of him having his birthday is 1/365 as is the probability of you having your birthday. The probability of you two meeting in the same room to design an intelligent discussion as you are doing now and having your respective birthdays is 1/133225 which makes it ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for you to have your actual birthdays. I have of course been inspired by a textbook Biology by Raven, Johnson, Losos, Mason and Singer, but nonetheless, note the illogicalness of the argument which is typical and similar to evolution-is-too-improbable arguments from intelligent design proponents. There are amino acid sequences in proteins that do go in the sequence lysine arginine histidine valine. Do not let people claim that is too improbable.

"There are no transitional forms" said the intelligent designer. Yes there are, there is a transitional form Archaeopteryx lithographica that shows the link between dinosaurs and birds and there is the platypus, extant today and representing the basal lineage of mammals that has survived to the present.

And there is Tiktaalik and Ichthyostega and the extant lungfish which represent the transition from Sarcopterygii to Amphibia.

Notice that these ideas propounded by the intelligent designers fight for refuting evolution, not proving intelligent design. This is a ridiculous way to back up one's own argument, by not adding to or supporting it , just simply knocking out all ideas that apparently stand in its way.

The only thing intelligent design has said to build itself up is 'things are complex, thus there is an intelligent designer'. Well, things are very complex yes. Very very very complex. But there is no evidence for an intelligent designer. Until an intelligent designer can be found the notion of intelligent design stands stagnantly and uselessly waiting.

But the intelligent designers propound one other thing as Kenneth Miller describes. They claim the intelligent designer itself to be unseeable, unfindable and unempirically verifiable. If that is the case the notion of intelligent design will wait indefinitely and inextricably in its stagnant pool awaiting verification. In fact there is no need to wait at all, as by the claim of unverifiability from the proponents themselves, there will never be evidence. Thus the idea should well be utterly abandoned as nothing will become of it.