However, as science has taken a central place in modern thought, evangelists have attempted to use its approach, more or less seriously, for their own goals. Certainly the most credible class of scientific arguments for the existence of gods rely on the notion of origins - origins of the universe, of man, of culture, and so on.
I am not talking about the evolution/creationism debate here, a subject which has been milked to death. It has become painfully obvious that science cannot be defeated at its own game, given that it is the most rational method that can be devised in its own field. Observation, experimentation, falsification and testing cannot be defeated by throwing doctrinal dice.
So Creationists and other religionists are trying to undercut the basis for science itself, especially scientific materialism. To do so, they use terms like "Intelligent Design" or "Irreducible Complexity".
Instead of confronting scientific discoveries head-on, these terms and approaches seek to undermine the power of scientific inquiry. If we accept that intelligent design and irreducible complexity are inflexible limits to our knowledge, then we should accept theistic claims, at least that is the idea.
Of course, even if these limits existed, it would not follow that a god exists. It could be that any other religion is true, or even that a non-personal Creative force exists, or any alternative one can imagine. Like any other theistic argument, it lacks specificity. Even if the universe was designed in some way, why must it be designed by the god of the Christian Bible, or the Quran, or any other particular doctrine, or a god at all ?
True, if these limits did exist, it would be a revolutionary discovery in all possible ways, even if we couldn't attribute it to a specific law, principle or being. That is why the issue of the design inference is interesting regardless of religion. The design inference is the method we use to determine whether something was designed. We must infer this attribute from things we observe about the object and its context.
You can see how this could be considered a limit, to a certain extent, on science. But even that is not correct. An obvious but easily-missed point is that science does use design inferences. History, for example, would be in a pitiful shape if historians could not distinguish with extreme reliability between man-made objects and natural ones! Same for anthropology, biology, sociology, and all the sciences about human history or activity.
