Is intelligent design a scientific theory?
Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php
jan.
This explanation contains all the quintessential ingredients of pseudoscience. The person who wrote this is propounding lies, disguised as intelligent reasoning. The label "Design theorist" is emblematic of the lexicon of a fraudster posing as a scientist (or a person capable of formulating valid logical statements, perhaps even as an person of average education and some exposure to math and science through basic education).
It's easy to prove thus person's logic invalid through a simple test. Suppose we decide that the number on your ID card serves as a valid representation of "complex and specified information" (whatever that is supposed to mean; it has no meaning in the world of science as far as I know). Now, for each digit in that number, create a deck of cards numbered 0 through 9 (plus A through Z if your ID number contains alphas). Go to Las Vegas and rent a machine that shuffles the cards, plus a high speed card reader which catches all that information and allows you to search it for the first occurrence of your ID number. It will take a while using this method, but eventually your number will come up. For a much faster test, use an equivalent algorithm on a fast enough computer.
The occurrence of patterns in nature, as a consequence of vast chains of events, which arise out of a combination of random processes plus processes which follow deterministic laws, predicts that, over extreme amounts of time, there will emerge somewhere a star system such as ours, with a planet like ours, in which the materials and energies left over from the Big Bang will result in the same natural history as that on Earth: atoms will coalesce into complex molecules, molecules will coalesce into complex polymers, and structure like those of RNA/DNA, membranes, and organelles will coalesce from all of those "complex and specified" reactants, according to the laws of chemistry, thermodynamics, and physics in general.
Your author, for example, would have trouble reconciling his opinions with, say, the way diamond formed naturally on Earth. Pure diamond is nothing more than carbon subjected to high temperatures and pressures over a very long time. Yet the result is a highly organized arrangement of carbon atoms, something your author would have to reject to preserve the pseudoscience they are promoting. And that is ridiculously absurd. Estimate the number of naturally "organized" molecules found in the minerals on Earth alone. Similarly, molecules which organize into systems naturally occur, and those systems organize naturally into primitive cells. We live in an era which is ahead of its time in some regard to this, therefore the Creationists can't "create life" from a kit sold on ebay. Otherwise this whole discussion would be moot. But regardless of that fact, it's crazy to throw out all of the science which leads to the modern explanations of all existence.
Also, I take issue with the term "irreducible complexity". All conventional matter can usually be reduced to molecules, and those molecules can be reduced to atoms, and those atoms can be reduced to their constituent particles, and so forth. Evidently the Creationists who came up with this language (irreducible complexity) believes matter can't be reduced, and/or that living organisms can't be reduced to their constituent particles. The main fallacy in this reasoning is that it ignores the processes by which "complex" organization of particles occurs - such as the way a diamond is naturally formed out of a mineral deposit rich in carbon. Again, some of the science is ahead of its time, so we can't order a kit online and demonstrate every step in detail. But that's no reason to throw out the vast evidence which explains how organization of particles is reapeatably demonstrated in natural processes which formed all of the minerals on Earth which preceded the abiogenesis of primordial cells. Logic requires that we make a few inferences here, but they are not that profound. In fact your author is in denial of the existence of just about all minerals on Earth, without regard to the fact that those minerals can not be exactly explained, captured in a home experiment, and made available to the public. (Noting that synthetic diamond is a relatively new invention; long ago your writer would have to claim that the machine which makes synthetic diamond can not possibly work, for the simple fact that the carbon atoms simply won't "fall into organization" even under the required conditions.) And evidently your author denies the evidence about the conditions that existed by which all minerals were formed.
And those facts are still incidental to the main reasoning from which we are forced to conclude that God can not possibly exist. That reasoning goes like this: there nowhere exists any definition of God which is not purely an invention of the imagination. As a corollary, there rarely exists any definition of God which is not arrived at by first assuming that a pre-existing definition (or set of definitions) is true, which themselves were invented in the imaginations of anonymous predecessors, passed down as oral tradition, captured into text by people who heard the lore, and converted into doctrine by people (e.g. "Doctors of the Church") who influenced all of modern culture even if only through happenstance and the random way stories gain traction on their own.
So all this person has done is to repudiate the vast discoveries and mountains of evidence leading to the current state of knowledge of the natural world. Again, I wouldn't necessarily take issue with this person as stated above, except that I do find it somewhat criminal to attack the repository of human knowledge (for lack of better words), since this is tantamount to any kind of dangerous attack on the public in general.
In a word, the Creationists who believe this either never studied the laws of probability, or else for some reason are in rebellion against facts they learned, for any number of reasons (to include mental health issues) - simply out of a need to justify the absurd belief that something which can not possibly be true, is in fact true.