Why intelligent design "proofs" are pointless

[robvalue]

Well, surely ID is a positive claim, and so has a burden of proof before it should be taken seriously? And since it has no good evidence whatsoever, it can be dismissed as more pseudo-science. We don't have to say that it isn't true, just that no evidence has been given to convince us that it is true. Just like the position of atheism. If any good evidence was being put forward, then myself and other sceptics wouldn't dismiss it right away. If there is actually any evidence I'm not aware of, I'd be happy to be pointed towards it. As far as I know all we have is nonsense about irreducible complexity, and "just looking at things" and saying they look created.

I don't agree that we can know about the designer from the design. We don't know how much of the universe they made, whether or not they set any natural laws, or whether they included trickery and safety mechanisms to stop anything we could find out telling us anything about the designer. They could design all life forms to be unable to learn anything correct about the creator. We can only at best make inferences, and they could never be tested since we have no way to test the creator in any way. So what we think we know may just be trickery.

You could say "we know they design", but that is just part of the claim that there is a designer. And even if they created something, it doesn't mean they did it on purpose or even were aware they did it. It could have been a side effect of something else.