Why intelligent design "proofs" are pointless

[Mudhammam]

Moreover, the theist often states his or her case as an "argument from design" rather than "to design," the former obviously question-begging and the latter utterly impossible (and unconvincing since Darwin) to prove. I like David Hume's question and observation at the end of his Dialogues in which he says:

"Where then, cry I to both these antagonists, is the subject of your dispute? The theist allows that the original intelligence is very different from human reason: The atheist allows that the original principle of order bears some remote analogy to it. Will you quarrel, Gentlemen, about the degrees, and enter into a controversy which admits not of any precise meaning, nor consequently of any determination?"

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Or William James, in his book Pragmatism, when he points out: "The mere word 'design' by itself has, we see, no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars."

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Keep in my mind, it's not even apparent order within chaos that requires explanation--scientific laws do that just fine--it is the "brute facts" themselves that scream out for explanation. And here we can rest in the fact that theism offers no solution, not even a satisfactory evasion, to settle the ultimate question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (God postulated as nothing more than an additional and unnecessary "brute fact").