Even if there was a Designer, does it matter?

Well, that's just the thing - if there is a designer with a plan for life on Earth, then the mechanisms we think drive evolution are wrong. Life would not diversify via natural, random mutation guided by natural selection, but would instead diversify by the guiding hand of the designer, who must cause specific mutations and select for specific features pursuant to his goal.Essentially it would mean that life on Earth did not evolve naturally but is instead the result of some massive breeding program.So think of it this way - does it make a difference that we know that dogs and horses and pigs and bananas and corn and a thousand other species have been purposefully diversified by human interference as opposed to simply evolving naturally without human intervention? I think that's a pretty large difference that changes our predictions for future diversification, what we expect to find in the fossil record and genetics, etc.If there's a designer, there's a plan. If there's a plan, then, if we are able to ascertain what that plan is, we should be able to predict future evolutionary developments in humans and other species. Identifying that there is in fact a designer would be a huge increase to our predictive abilities.That said...the data we have (and we have an awful lot) shows that the predictions made from the mechanism of natural selection and mutation without a celestial breeder are basically a perfect fit for what we observe in reality. That would be an awfully large coincidence - that the designer's plan would perfectly match what appears to be a completely unplanned set of events. That's the equivalent of having a dog breeder somehow produce exactly the same results as dogs in the wild, selecting for exactly the same criteria that nature does. At that point, you'd have to question whether the breeder was actually a breeder at all - if his interference produces no different results, has he really interfered?

It doesn't render the designer less significant if it turns out that teh mechanisms we thought guided evolution turn out to be incorrect, and that instead the designer is the one doing the guiding. There's just no way to conceive of that as a diminishing of significance. You might as well say that, once we figured out how god breeding works, the breeder himself becomes less significant in the process of creating and maintaining dog breeds. That's simply preposterous.Your question in the OP and your continued position seems to be asking whether "evolution as we currently understand it, all of the mechanisms being accurate" is significantly different from "evolution as we currently understand it, with all of the mechanisms being accurate, but caused by a designer."The problem is that the presence and influence of a designer fundamentally changes everything - it's not just a tack-on, regardless of what IDists like to claim. A designer changes the ballgame, making the mechanisms we think guide evolution false, and replacing them with the influence of the designer. The appearance of new or modified genes and features is no longer due to random genetic copy errors, but are now due to some other mechanism used by the designer. The selection of beneficial traits is no longer done by nature (or at least not exclusively so), but is now done by the designer. Sexual selection may be wrong as well, and could be the manifestation of the designers influence in breeding new species.It's not minor at all. Current theory states that evolution has no direction, no intent, and is not a ladder but rather a bushy many-branched tree of life. The presence of a designer completely falsifies that entire model, giving intent and direction to evolution, making it a series of branching, complex interrelated ladders all reaching towards an eventual goal.It's not just a matter of attribution. All of our predictive models completely change. The new ID Theory of Evolution would be that life diversifies according to a divine plan through designer-caused mutations and designer-guided selection.The specific identity of the designer is a historical footnote, just like the identity of the dog breeder who gave us Pomeranian dogs is a historical footnote. But the existence or nonexistence of a designer is a huge difference, not in any way an insignificant footnote, unless you think that the difference in the mechanisms that gave rise to all of our many dog breeds and the evolution of natural canines is insignificant. Which would be absurd.

YES! Of course it matters!All of science, its entire purpose and the reason it's so useful is that it's about being less wrong than we were yesterday about the world around us.Scientific investigation is not just about stopping curiosity. It's about finding a more accurate model, even when the current model works well enough.Newtonian mechanics are sufficient to put men on the moon...but they're wrong. Newton;s model of gravity was inherently flawed and inaccurate - we simply lacked the precise measurements to see the inaccuracies at first. Einstein's model is far more accurate, and accounts for the anomalies that we detected in the behavior of stellar bodies. It didn't change your life or mine at the time, but it proved to be hugely important for larger-scale cosmology...even though the Newtonian model still works just fine for slingshotting probes around planets and inserting them into orbit around Saturn. We don't know what new ramifications a designer would carry. The existence of one means as it is that all of our evolutionary models are wrong, even if they retain some degree of accuracy, exactly like Newton was wrong, even if his models were accurate enough for most tasks. The specific mechanisms the designer uses to produce mutations or guide the selection of subpopulations for the creation of new species or even the mechanisms for creating the Universe such that it evolves as planned from the beginning would be unfathomably significant. Who cares who the designer is - I want his toolbox!Just as with Newtonian gravity, the discovery of the existence of a new, better set of tools does not take away from the abilities of the less accurate model. It does, however, add new tools to our toolbox. That's how we find new ways to fight diseases or put rovers on Mars...or do other things that we haven't even conceived of because we didn't realize a tool existed for such a purpose.The identity of a designer would be a footnote, significant only for theologians. The existence of a designer is hugely significant for science.

It depends on the level of interference the designer exerts. If he's designing specific species like humans, then our mechanisms are wrong - the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection et al are secondary to whatever primary mechanisms the designer is using.Remember, even being proven wrong can never take away the current level of usefulness of a theoretical model. Newtonian gravity was shown to be wrong in favor of the more accurate Einsteinian model...but Newtonian gravity still works just fine for predicting the trajectory of a ballistic shell, or the orbit of a satellite. The modern theory of evolution can't lose accuracy, but it can be supplanted by a more accurate model that observes the real mechanisms behind the variation of life.Part of what I'm getting at is how unlikely a designer is to exist given that the mechanisms we currently use are so observably accurate, and that the mechanisms used by a constant-interference designer would be expected to be different and make our current predictions inaccurate.If the proposed designer only designed the initial proto-life on Earth and then let the chips fall where they may, then yes - modern evolutionary theory and all of the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection etc would remain intact and there would be no immediate reason to replace them.In that case, however, the existence or absence of a designer is still more relevant than a mere historical footnote, because it completely alters the field of abiogenesis by pushing the first lifeform back to the designer at least - a lifeform that may or may not have any similarity to life on Earth itself. It may be that Earth-like life is impossible to form spontaneously and requires a designer based on an entirely different life model.A life-clockmaker has less of an effect on evolution and more of an effect on abiogenesis. A constant-interference designer has a larger effect on evolution, and may or may not have an effect on abiogenesis. In both cases, the identity of the designer is a historical footnote, but the existence of a designer changes the whole ballgame when it comes to Earth-bound life and its origins.

Who wrote Shakespeare is a historical bit of trivia of no real importance beyond the sentimental. Whether Shakespeare's plays were written or occurred naturally without intelligent interference is, clearly, a bit different.The identity of a designer is important only to theology. The existence of a designer is of massive scientific importance.Jar's question,a nd the way you're treating it, pretends that the identity of the designer is of equivalent significance to whether a designer exists at all. Could you honestly say that the identity of the author of Shakespeare's plays is of equal significance to whether the plays had an author at all?

Once again, jar, you're pretending that the identity of the designer is just as important as whether there was a designer at all. You;re pretending that the identity of the author of Romeo and Juliet is just as significant as whether there was an author at all, or whether the play wrote itself spontaneously.Those are different things, not equivalent at all. The identity of a designer would be unimportant. Whether there is a designer at all is massively significant. You're shifting the goal posts, jar. Your OP said, and I quote (with bolding added):

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"Even if ID was true, is there any value to the concept of a Designer beyond a historical footnote or in the case of Product Liability suits?"

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Yeah, it's interesting to point out the tail fins were designed by Harley Earl and that Bill Mitchell had an entirely different point of view, or in the case of obviously piss poor design having an individual that can be held responsible for compensation.

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But other than those two specific areas, historical footnotes and product liability, is there any other value to Intelligent Design?

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If you want to continue your tail fin design analogy:whether Earl or Mitchell designed the tail fin is relatively unimportant and changes nothing of significance.Whether the tail fin was designed at all or simply came into existence naturally on its own is of massive significance and has potential to compeltely rewrite the mechanisms of automotive design.You did not ask whtehr the identity of the designer held value beyond a historical footnote or a liability lawsuit. You asked, specifically, if the very concept of a designer, that is, whether a designer exists or not, has any value beyond a historical footnote.Dont pretend that those are the same thing for even a moment. Once it's known, whatever new mechanisms involved would indeed supplant the currently used mechanisms as the new ones would be more accurate. But that supplanting means that, obviously, the discovery that there is a designer at all (the concept of a designer, as specifically mentioned in your OP) must be of great significance, since it would force us to change our current models. The fact that we would need a new theory of evolution means that, obviously, the discovery of a designer would be pretty significant jar.The identity of the designer is a historical footnote, but again, that's not what your OP was about. It might be what you're asking now, but in that case you're just shifting the goalposts.Obviously, there is more value to the concept of a designer than just a historical footnote, as the existence of a designer completely changes our models for the variation and origin of life. Obviously, there is a great deal of value in Intelligent Design.The problem lies not with the concept itself, but in the manner it is investigated, the manner in which it is pitched to the public, and the refusal of proponents to acknowledge that it's unlikely given that so far any extant "design" has appeared identical to what we would predict if evolution were a completely unguided and natural process.

I think I understand what you're trying to say here, but the single-sentence question is a bit too open-ended.A designer could have been designing all along. A designer could have only started interfering and designing last Tuesday, or a thousand years ago, or a million. A designer could have set the whole thing in motion and could no longer be designing.But I think what you're getting at is the fact that if a designer exists, then the designer exists whether we realized it or not. If we all lived underground and had never seen the sky and believed that it was green, and suddenly broke through to the surface and saw that the sky is actually blue, then the sky was actually blue all along and we were just wrong.So in that context, yes, if there is a designer, then the designer already exists whether we realize it and accept it or not.