Before any serious discussion of intelligent design can take place, one must first understand some of the major topics in play.
Intelligent Design: Intelligent design (ID) is the belief that "a power greater than ourselves" created everything and established humans as the sole intelligence in the universe, fashioned after their creator in a bizarre and disturbing exhibition of narcissism. Sounds very familiar thus far.
To disassociate this junk science from religion (its undeniable foundation), proponents of ID caveat the theory with the assertion that, while random and natural processes may be able to explain the vast majority of the universe, it and life within it still contain certain features that exhibit the characteristics of a designed product, therefore requiring them to be the result of an intelligent cause or agent. It also attempts to negate the participation of any unguided process such as natural selection.
ID is at odds with current scientific philosophy and methodology in its entirety. It cannot be claimed as a scientific theory because it provides no testable hypotheses and cannot be evaluated by scientific experiment. Proponents of ID fail to provide real science upon which to build any true evaluation of the subject. Instead, they have focused on gaps in the current evolutionary theory and have attempted to fill those gaps with speculation and beliefs. This, in turn, means that the "designer" is nothing more than the "god of the gaps" (the growing inside joke among true scientists who see ID for what it really is).
Advocates of this baseless claim find it difficult to remove the gap problem because, by doing so, they solidify the entire premise of intelligent design into creationism. By wrapping a belief system around existing scientific theory, they hope to sell the idea as real science — faith-based though it may be.
As of this writing, there is no mathematical or biological precept offered for ID which can be scientifically demonstrated.
Modern Evolutionary Synthesis:
(often referred to simply as the modern synthesis or the evolutionary synthesis; also called neo-Darwinian synthesis or neo-Darwinism)
The umbrella theory which encompasses the combination of Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by natural selection (further delineated as gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection), Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance, and mathematical population genetics.
The Anthropic Principle:
A belief held by very few cosmologists and mathematicians, referenced as far back as 1903, which states that humans may be necessary to explain certain features of the known universe. It shrouds its unsound foundation with the truism that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe.
In essence: "If something must be true for us, as humans, to exist; then it is true simply because we exist." Attempts to apply this principle to develop scientific explanations in cosmology have led to confusion and much controversy.
Because of its mathematical bases, the anthropic principle is more accurately referred to as coincidental physics by the vast majority of scientists, especially those who, like me, proscribe such aggrandizement of mere curious relationships between certain universal constants.
Consciousness:
1. The totality in psychology of sensations, perceptions, ideas, attitudes, and feelings of which an individual or a group is aware at any given time or within a given time span.
2. Waking life (as that to which one returns after sleep, trance, or fever) in which one's normal mental powers are present.
3. The upper part of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes.
Intelligence:
1. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
2. The faculty of thought and reason.
3. Superior powers of mind.
Reason:
The power to think rationally and logically and to draw inferences.