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There is no philosophical answer to their opponents logically-deduced charge that the Designer was monstrous and/or inept (look at all the horrible, cruel, even defective things in the living world), since bringing up the Fall is deliberately, tactically excluded. (However, the Fall was a major event in history, that changed everything. The world we are looking at now is a world that has been corrupted by sin, not the original world that God designed). Thus, the movements success could very likely even be counterproductive, by laying the Biblical God open to ridicule and contempt in new ways.
In fact, these points are not just hypothetical. Historically, the intelligent design in isolation argument has achieved just these sorts of negative results. In other words, its been tried before and failed. The natural theology approach (using design, but keeping the Bible out of it) by the deists of former centuries led to an increase in deistic belief, i.e. a different god just as in point i) immediately above, with its attendant rejection of the Bible and the Gospel. The deists driving force was the rejection of Gods Word and, concomitantly, His right to exercise rule over our lives.
Urged to deduce the existence of the Creator God from design alone, and thus leaving out the Fall and the real history of the world, thinkers concluded that any creator God must be cruel, wasteful, etc. Charles Darwin himself wrote in exactly that vein.
I think the AiG folks are right on target here. What do the believers (Waterrock, David, and others) think about this? Does the fall help to explain the dark side of nature? Do you just accept the viciousness of God without making excuses for it? Or do you deny it as Paley did? And which approach do you prefer: Biblical Creation or Intelligent Design?
And for the deists out there: how does ID differ from deism?
