Except I have come up with such a reason @T_aquaticus. Yes, @eddie, struggles to make a coherent scientific argument, that does not mean good responses don’t exist.
What reason would an intelligent designer have for forcing separately created species into a nested hierarchy?
That He was creating by common descent, or by creating new species by modifying preexisting species. By either of those two mechanisms, we expect to see nested clades.
1 Like
If you modify pre-existing species then you can insert DNA and features from other species, and thereby violating a nested hierarchy. On top of that, there is no reason a designer would have to design by those processes, so ID doesn’t predict a nested hierarchy.
You are missing the point. ID generically doesn’t predict it, which is why ID is pretty much DOA in science. However, there are individual ID hypothesis that do predict a nested hierarchy. This might be valid. Of course, ID is not usually in the business of proposing and defending ID hypothesis, nor are they equipped theologically justify them. So even here, they are DOA.
RTB (@AJRoberts) may not have the same problem here. Because they are trying to put forward a hypothesis, and are willing to engage the theology, they might be able to find a way forward. I don’t think they can produce a better theory than evolution, but they might evade all the objections you are raising.
At least in my eyes, it is more of a justification for belief than an explanation. The conclusion should flow from the data, but in this instance the conclusion is already decided beforehand. Life was designed, and whatever pattern of shared and derived features we see is what the designer did.
As far as I can see, it takes a ton of extra effort to make species fit into a nested hierarchy, especially when we consider comparative genomics. Imagine a designer coming up with a new design, and having to go back through the already designed species to find out if a new combination of features will break a nested hierarchy. “Boy, it sure would be nice if this new species could have fur to keep warm and flow through lungs . . . oh wait, I already used those lungs over there for those feathered species”. Just on the face of it, I can’t make sense of why a designer would put all of that effort into sticking to a nested hierarchy when it certainly isn’t necessary from a functional standpoint.
There’s a lot that needs explained, so I wish them luck. 
I agree.
At least they are in a position to have a real go at it, to see how far they can get.
Dodges the question. We’re talking here about “ID” as an alternative to common descent. Not Behe ID but Nelson ID.
1 Like
You have to make that explicit. You can’t just say ID, then. You have to say No-CD-ID.
Agreed. A lot of people are confused on this. It takes extra effort to be clear when others are not.
1 Like
It appears to me that everyone in the discussion this comes from, including those for and against ID, was using the term ID as if it were synonymous with creationism.