where Intelligent Design takes us

Intelligent Design is the science studying the origin of life as designed robots, mostly at a nano-robot level. Most Intelligent Design scholars don't make any claims about the nature of the designer entity, though we all know this is because the anti-God hysteria in our debased culture has caused many religious people to pursue their religion in secret, much as Jews did during Inquisition-era Spain.

But as I've already shown in a number of blog entries, the designs made by a designer say a lot about that designer's interests and motivations. The iPod was made so that its battery would die in 18 months and no provision was made to replace it, so one could argue that Steve Jobs (the ultimate controlling designer of the iPod) had a plan to force iPod purchasers to buy a new iPod every 18 months. I can't help but think this was intentional; the lifespan characteristics of rechargeable batteries are well known even by laypeople, and anyone sealing them in a box knows what he is doing.

Other designs just point to stupidity: unshielded exploding gas tanks in some cars, or lamp cords that rub against sharp objects in their containment tubes, ultimately shorting out and causing a fire.

Some designs just play to our delusions of grandeur and make no sense otherwise: the McMansion, the Ford Escalade, the supersized quarterpounder with cheese.

My question is this: are we REALLY willing, as deputized scientists, to go where the evidence leads us with regard to the nature of the designer? Because it could well turn out that the designer as revealed by his designs is different in some important ways from the one we know from our various religious traditions. We might find that the designer isn't just jealous, but he's also occasionally hurried, short-sighted, or otherwise imperfect. I have a lot of faith, but I don't know what I will do with this knowledge as it accumulates. As a scientist, though, I cannot help but go with the evidence, even when it tells me that any freshman engineering student could design a better backbone than mine. What was the designer thinking when he designed mine? Or was he thinking? I mean this as no disrespect; these are just the eager questions that any scientist must ask.

Many in the ID community do not want to go to such places because of their faith. But I'm telling you, faith gets you nowhere with scientists. Mention faith and they'll remind you of your faith in the tooth fairy and Santa. They'll remind you of all the religions that have come and gone, many of which aren't even known to history, and they'll ask "of what use was their faith?" Then they might drop the bomb - perhaps the one true religion hasn't even been discovered yet. This might sound ridiculous to you or me, but it would have sounded equally ridiculous to a worshipper of Zeus in Ancient Greece. The fact of the matter is that we accept religions the same way we accept languages - mostly from our parents. To be true scientists we have to be willing to see past such matters ultimately rooted in human tribalism.