Design requires a designer (Talk.Origins)

Claim CI410:


 * Design requires a designer; contrivance requires a contriver.

Source: Paley, William, 1802. Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. London: J. Faulder, p. 11.

CreationWiki response:

True, but a non-human designer is required when the design cannot have been done by humans. For example, if humans were designed, the designer could not have been human. Intelligent Design deals mainly with this type of design, hence the designer must be non-human.

Talk.Origins is confusing patterns with design; the two are not the same. Such patterns fail the ID design filter and as such are not considered evidence of design.

Furthermore, according to General Intelligent Design the cloud pattern, uneven heating, evaporation, and other natural causes are all intelligently designed.

While possible, any being capable of the task would have to be at least as complex as we are, and probably more so. In that case they would have had to have been designed by someone else. So giving the credit to ETs only moves the problem to another planet. As long as we are dealing with beings native to our universe, they would have had a beginning, so they would require a designer. Ultimately you would have to start with a being from outside space-time, who by definition would be God.

Talk.Origins is begging the question, since a key point of ID is that variation and selection cannot produce the complex systems observed in life.

Before variation and selection can work on life, life must first exist. Many of the most complex systems in living things are found in even the simplest of cells  and as such could not have originated by variation and selection.

Because "other things" had a beginning, but the designer (God) had no beginning. By definition, God could not have been designed. The fact that He is "God" means that He is infinitely more powerful, all-knowing, and beyond time. If He required a designer, He would not be the God we know Him as. His designer would have had to have been designed by someone greater, and that someone would have had to have been designed by someone else greater, and so on. Ultimately, there would be the greatest, most awesome Creator of all, and He would be the God that we know of and worship. He transcends all time and holds infinite wisdom and power. Without Him, nothing else could exist.